Merry Christmas!

From the Noble family.

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A Purist.

I don’t like chai tea. I think it’s sickeningly sweet and tastes too much like pumpkin pie, which I also don’t like. BUT, since starting my field placement at IJM headquarters in DC earlier this summer, I have been looking forward to my first cup of chai tea in the office here in South Asia.

I’m on the listserv for the office I’m doing my research at, so receive all the emails that are sent office-wide. Morning and evening, the office manager sends out an email to the entire staff letting them know that the tea is ready. The best part of these emails is that each one has a DIFFERENT picture or clip art image of something to do with tea: a pot, a cup, loose leaf tea, saucers, tea pots as skyscrapers in a cityscape – you name it. There has not been one repeat image the entire summer.

So, you can imagine my excitement when the first email came into my IJM inbox last Monday morning and I could actually head up to the kitchen to get myself a steaming mug full of the sweet, spicy goodness. You can see by my face in the picture that I was somewhat overwhelmed by my excitement. Either that, or I was delirious from only getting 12 total hours of sleep over the past three nights. Then again, maybe it’s a combination of both.

Oh, and I like the chai tea here. Must mean I’m a chai purist.

Off and Running.

My first week with IJM in South Asia has gotten off to a great start. I am staying with two long-term IJM interns from the United States who are taking very good care of me. They live in a flat just a short walk or rickshaw ride from the office, which makes the commute pretty manageable. We went to the market on Sunday, which was an experience in and of itself. I was very glad I had two tour guides to pretty much tell me what to get and where to buy it from – even buying things for me, which was very helpful in my very overwhelmed and sleep deprived state! We then went to a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf shop (one in the same with the West Coast chain), and ended the evening at a small church plant in one of the other neighborhoods of the city. It was a wonderful time of worship and fellowship with fellow believers. One of the songs had a line about every nation worshipping God. I have sung that song many times in the past, but those lines always have more meaning when they are truly being lived out. It was a powerful reminder that my personal world that I can get so consumed with is very small in comparison to the expanse of the world God is concerned with.

Monday was my first day in the IJM office and I was welcomed with open arms. The fact that I brought around 15 pounds of Snickers, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Butterfinger, and Twix probably helped out! I’ve had a steady stream of visitors coming through the office I’m using to get their hands on some of it. Basically, I’m bribing them into becoming my friends and I'm not ashamed of it. I visited this office a few years back when I was on staff with IJM and it has been fun to see how the staff has grown – not only in numbers, but also in expertise, systems, and effectiveness. I will probably use the word tireless many times over these two weeks, but I can’t think of any better word to describe the staff. Day in and day out they deal with extremely difficult topics, situations, and people. I know they get discouraged, but they keep coming back – with joy even. There is a lot of laughter throughout the office, showing their strength and resilience in the face of the ugly reality they interact with daily.

I got to meet all the aftercare staff on my first day and have since conducted a few interviews. I’ll be conducting a few more this week and will visit a partner aftercare home to interview some of the staff there later in the week. The interviews are going really well so far. I’m getting lots of great information and feel like a whole new world has been opened to me to better understand what aftercare actually looks like. It is so much more complex than I had realized. The problems seem much more insurmountable and the successes that much more sweet. Each life restored simply is a miracle. It is an honor to partner with and learn from such courageous people.

411 on My Research Project

As part of my graduate studies in Social Work and Public Health at UNC, I am required to complete an internship to get hands-on experience in my field. So, this summer I have been interning with IJM in their aftercare department and have been traveling back and forth between my home in Chapel Hill and IJM headquarters in Washington, DC. I have the opportunity to work with one of my UNC Social Work professors to design and carry out a research project looking at how IJM and a partner aftercare organization provide services to survivors of sex trafficking. This is a wonderful opportunity because there is so little information out there about how to do this kind of work. More and more is being understood about the prevalence and consequences of sex trafficking, but little is known about how to best serve those who have experienced this abuse. There are many, many organizations around the world doing incredible work to serve people who have experienced trafficking, but not much research has been conducted on the topic.

For my project, I will be interviewing aftercare staff from IJM and another organization that serves survivors of sex trafficking. I’ll be asking them questions about how they do their work, what works well, what hasn’t worked well, what kinds of barriers might be in place to providing all the services that are needed, and in what areas they think aftercare services need to grow and improve. Then, I will work with my professor to analyze all the information, write it up into an article, and have it published in an academic journal. This will also serve as a program evaluation for IJM, to assist them in strategic planning for aftercare. We also hope that this project will help us to identify other future areas of research, that can provide even richer information about how to best serve survivors of sex trafficking.

(The picture is the view from my room at the flat where I'm staying.)

411 on Sex Trafficking

Sex trafficking and forced prostitution have been gaining more and more attention over the past few years. Literally millions of people, mostly women and children, are coerced and forced into providing sex to paying customers to make a profit for others. This type of abuse can be particularly brutal, as would be imagined. Women and children who are forced into prostitution are often physically and sexually assaulted, as well as emotionally abused. They face a variety of health concerns as a result of the abuse they suffer, such as increased likelihood of contracting HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, unplanned pregnancies, unsafe and sometimes forced abortions, and increased likelihood of other infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. Survivors are also more likely to experience mental health concerns such as post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide, and drug addiction, among others. Finally, if victims are able to get out of the abuse, they can face significant social difficulties, as they face stigma if they return home, and try to live independently and earn a living without education and/or job skills.

This type of abuse happens all over the world, including the United States. There are many great resources online to learn more about sex trafficking. A good place to start is with the U.S. Department of State’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report, which you can access here: http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2010/. This resource ranks and provides information on trafficking for every country in the world.

While learning about trafficking can be very disheartening, there are many organizations, including IJM, who are working to rescue people who have been trafficked and forced into prostitution, as well as providing services to help survivors recover and reintegrate back into society. These organizations are developing programs to provide for the many comprehensive needs of survivors, and are a great source of hope and restoration for survivors, and for myself. This is another great resource from IJM with information about trafficking and what they are doing to confront it: http://www.ijm.org/downloaddocument?gid=1

411 on International Justice Mission

I'm hopping on my plane in a few hours. For those of you who don't know what International Justice Mission (IJM) is, here is some basic information about the organization.

International Justice Mission is a human rights organization that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local officials to ensure immediate victim rescue and aftercare, to prosecute perpetrators and to promote functioning public justice systems.
IJM is based in Washington, DC and has 14 offices around the world. IJM staff consist of lawyers, investigators, social workers, and various other professionals. Check out their website www.ijm.org to learn more about what they do and how you can get involved.

I’m working in particular with the incredible IJM aftercare staff in South Asia who work tirelessly to ensure that women and girls who are rescued from sex trafficking and forced prostitution are able to access services to recover from their abuse. These staff make sure clients receive counseling, safe housing, medical care, education, job training, and many other services to give them the best possible opportunity to reintegrate into their communities and live independently. This link will take you to a story on IJM’s website that provides a great example of the amazing work they do to restore freedom to people who have been so brutally abused: http://www.ijm.org/articles/caseworkbulletin

South Asia or bust!

As most of you know, on Friday (Aug. 6), I’m headed out for a two week trip to South Asia to conduct interviews with International Justice Mission (IJM) staff who work with survivors of sex trafficking. I’m conducting these interviews as part of a research project I’m working on with one of my UNC Social Work professors. So you know a bit about what I’ll be up to, I’ve put together some information on International Justice Mission, sex trafficking in general, and the research project I’m working on. I’ll post a little bit each day in the next couple days about what I’ll be doing. And, I’ll post as much as I am able from South Asia, so you can follow what I’m up to.

For today, many of you have asked how you can pray for me while I’m on my trip, so I’ll provide some of those below. I really appreciate the prayer and support from each of you!

• Pray for safe and on-time travel! I’ve got a lot I need to do in a relatively short amount of time, so I would hate to have to reschedule things because of delayed flights.


• Pray that I stay healthy. Again, I really can’t afford to lose any time, so even a day or two of sickness could make it difficult to accomplish everything I need to. Last time I went to South Asia, I was able to avoid the stomach pitfalls of traveling in the developing world, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed I’ll have the same luck this time around.


• Pray that I would be an encouragement to the IJM staff and other aftercare organizations that I come in contact with. They are doing such amazing work, but it is also extremely difficult and heartbreaking. Just pray that my presence with them would be one of joy, and that they would be encouraged by their time with me.


• Pray for the people I interview for my research project to be open to sharing their experiences and thoughts. There is very little that has been published on aftercare for survivors of sex trafficking, and the people I will be speaking to have a goldmine of information that can be extremely helpful in informing programming. Pray that they would continue to be cooperative and open to answering all the questions I have for them.


• Pray for my heart as I confront the difficult issue of sex trafficking. I have been studying the topic, seen horrific things, heard heartbreaking stories, and met incredibly inspiring and strong women and girls who have suffered this type of abuse. Still – confronting evil is always difficult and it can easy to lose sight of God’s promises to rescue and redeem this broken world. Pray that I would be confident in the truth of His promises in the midst of evil and suffering, and that He would bless me with glimpses of His beauty, provision, and strength during my travel and studies.

And, if you want to shoot me an email while I'm traveling, I'll try my best to respond! My email address is curche@hotmail.com.