The on-campus International Justice Mission chapter will stand for 24 hours, from Friday to Saturday, to bring awareness to the global human trafficking crisis during the annual Stand for Freedom event.
“We’re going to be there for 24 hours, bringing awareness for the over 45 million people who are still in slavery or human trafficking rings,” said Emily Counts, the ACU IJM co-president. “We’re also going to have a petition to sign for the End Modern Slavery Act which has been on the Congress floor for the past three years,” said the junior communications major from Abilene.
International Justice Mission, IJM, is an international and non-governmental organization focused on fighting human trafficking and the effects of global poverty. IJM serves as the world’s largest organization fighting slavery.
“We’re just trying to get a really good turnout for Friday, because it’s really important that people are aware of what IJM is and the impact they make,” said Catlin Young, the co-president of ACU IJM and junior communications major from Dallas.
Stand for Freedom will be set up between the library and campus center beginning on Friday at noon.
“We’re going to have lots of things for people to be engaged. We’re going to have a screen and projector playing different documentaries and also videos from what other campuses are doing,” Young said.
Students are able to sign up for hourly shifts through a Google sheet that has been emailed to many different student groups or are invited to attend anytime without signing up.
“Our purpose on campus is to make people look outside their own experiences and make people look outside their own life and realize that there are bad things that happen in the world, and that doesn’t mean you have apathetic in our world view, and you can have a righteous anger and that there is something we can do,” Counts said.
The chapter plans to hold more events in the spring semester to educate the community on injustices around the globe.
“At a certain point, especially in college, it’s important for us to turn our eyes outward into the world because that’s what, as Christians, we are suppose to do,” Counts said.
