A NOTE FROM MARK FISHER

Thank you all for your sacrificial generosity to restore young women served by Red Window so they can live safe, free, and hopeful lives. Those we serve have had the odds in life stacked against them from birth, being born into dire poverty in a developing country where the poor are not protected from exploitation or violence and their prospects for life are dim and limited.

Typically, as young girls, they will experience hunger, neglect, illness without medical care, physical and/or sexual abuse,and having to work at an early age—whether as “house helpers,” panhandlers, or scavengers just to help feed the family.

The necessity to contribute a few cents a day to the family’s food fund will make it difficult to perform well in school and eventually lead to them dropping out in order to scrounge up a few more cents each day instead. They will also witness domestic violence in the home and violent assault in their communities.

While the details of how they became trafficked are individual stories of betrayal and horror, they usually involve the best in life being grotesquely perverted against them.

Hope that they may emerge from these circumstances and earn enough to support themselves and their children well is used against them. Faith in the goodness of neighbors to offer them a rare opportunity to work hard, dare to believe in something better, and reach their potential is also a trap. Finally, love is also leveraged against them as the last resistance to this job offer that sounds too good to be true because it isn’t true dissipates as they think how wonderful it will be to alleviate the hunger and pain of their siblings and parents with money for food and medicine. 

Faith, hope, and love.

As the Bible says, “but the greatest is love.” Your expression of true love will restore faith and give hope. These young women will be equipped to land and succeed in their dream careers, which will far exceed any job path that they seemed destined for as infants.

You are making it possible for them to become teachers, midwives, businesswomen, and social workers. And you are changing what seemed to be an inevitable repeated pattern of poverty and exploitation for generation after generation. Not only are you changing the future of a young woman who has endured some of the worst human rights abuses in the world today, but you are changing the future for her children and their children.

Your sacrifice brings light to darkness for a future that is very bright, indeed. Enjoy the difference in their lives that you are making possible.

Mark Fisher
Former US Director, Red Window Project