Today’s post is selfish. I’m going to just put that out front. I’m married to an awesome woman. Her name is Stacey. She is first year Resident Pediatrician at Emory. In being married to me she gets to hear about all the issues North Avenue Urban Ministry is involved with. One of those issues is the sexual exploitation of children. She is on the frontlines of this issue in our medical system. When she was a third year medical student she came across a couple of exploitation victims and didn’t have any options on how to help them. Thus started a journey for us as a couple.
When Stacey came home and shared the story with me of what she’d seen I thought “what could she have done to have helped this victim?” I didn’t have an answer, but knew that we could get an answer with some work. Fast forward to this week.
Through the work of StreetGRACE and many built relationships through North Avenue’s efforts I was able to get a meeting set up between the new state funded care network for victims and Stacey. Why this meeting? The care connection folks are now putting together training for medical professionals to be first responders and reporters for exploitation and trafficking victims. However, they aren’t medical professionals. Stacey as a first responder didn’t know what resources are available to these victims. I’m just a guy that sets up meetings. But with everybody in the room, we discovered that the training plan was targeting the wrong group of pediatricians. Not anymore, Stacey told them which group serves these victims and which hospitals are covered by which doctors. Stacey was able to tell them the length of time a training could be, how it needed to be scheduled and who would most likely attend. Finally, Stacey gave them the key contacts in the area for adolescents dealing with medical issues around sexual activity. 1 hour, probably saved many hours of failed training approaches.
Why this story? Its to show you that amazing lifesaving work can happen by simply listening and contributing in our own unique way. I saw the value of Stacey’s experience. I knew the people planning the lifesaving work. I didn’t assume someone else would do it. I took action. If they already knew the information, so what, we meet for an hour. But they didn’t and now those victims are that much closer to being helped because the medical professionals are that much closer to being equipped.
One more thing. Not only did we get some great work done around the exploitation issue, but I got to work hand in hand with my wife to answer God’s call to Justice. I was so energized! That’s so cool to me. You talk about marriage building! All of you have something to contribute, it just takes being creative and action oriented. Find your role!
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