How to go
What: A benefit concert for Love146 Dayton Task Force
Where: Blind Bob's, 430 E. Fifth St., Dayton
When: 8 p.m. to midnight April 22, a Sunday
Cost: $5
More info: (937) 938-6405 or www.love146 dayton.org
By the numbers
5th: Ohio rank in U.S. for human trafficking
45,000-50,000: Persons trafficked into the U.S. each year
15,000-17,500: Children in the U.S. forced to participate in commercial sexual exploitation
SOURCE: The Love146 website (online at love146.org)
Upcoming Love146 partner trip
Elizabeth Van Dine, director of the Love146 Dayton Task Force, was selected to go in May with national Love146 staff to Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines in nine days. Donations can be made to: Love146, Box 8266, New Haven, CT 06530. Mark donations with “Elizabeth Van Dine May Partner Trip.” All donations for the trip are due by March 31.
The southeast Asian child was sitting with other kids watching cartoons. Was the little girl in the red dress named Dara, as in a charity organization’s ad campaign? No. How about Kannitha, Sovann or Veasna? No, no and no. This precious child was not known by a name here, only a number. That’s what Rob Morris discovered in 2002 when he and a group of friends went on an undercover mission to find out about human trafficking.
“The girls were lifelessly and robotically staring at the crackling television set. However there was one girl who wasn’t looking at the TV; she was staring directly into the eyes of her potential buyers,” Morris recalls. “There was still fight left in her eyes. I will never know her name, but I will never forget her number. It was 146.”
Devastated by what they saw and torn up inside, the group came back to America and started Love146, an organization that has two core programs to combat the exploitation of children: prevention and aftercare.
Elizabeth Van Dine, a Wright State University student and member of Apex Community Church in Kettering, is co-founder and director of the Love146 Dayton Task Force.
“I first heard about human trafficking in 2008 when my boyfriend was preparing for a tour in Iraq and had to take a class on it. I began researching all the different kinds of trafficking and found myself drawn to the very dark world of sex trafficking,” Van Dine said. “I heard about Love146 through a musician friend, who had been independently raising money for the organization. I fell in love with their concepts, and decided to start the Dayton Task Force with some other passionate people in my area.”
They partner with Abolition Ohio, a rescue and restore coalition in the Miami Valley. That group was inspired to form after the Dayton Human Trafficking Accords at the University of Dayton in 2009.
“A huge milestone for Ohio was at the end of 2010, when SB 235 was passed, making human trafficking a stand-alone felony,” said Van Dine, who has since married that boyfriend, Chuck Van Dine.
“This not only brought more training to local law enforcement, it brought a good deal of awareness.”
This February, the Dayton Task Force raised $700 at Blind Bob’s, a popular spot for food and music in Dayton’s Oregon Historic District. The next such fundraiser at Blind Bob’s is on April 22.
The Dayton organization also assists Theresa Flores’ S.O.A.P. project on a monthly basis. S.O.A.P. stands for Save Our Adolescents From Prostitution. The group distributes thousands of free bars of soap to motels with the National Human Trafficking hotline and key identifying questions.
Love146’s next meeting is from 6:30 to 8 p.m. April 2 at the Dayton campus of Indiana Wesleyan University.
Contact contributing writer Pamela Dillon at pamdillon@woh.rr.com.
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