Fighting Child Sex Trafficking Sparks Fund Raisers

Mississippi College graduate Drew Mellon serves as the USA director for The Hard Places Community.

A Southeast Asian nation of more than 15 million people, Cambodia promotes tourist attractions like the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh.

Visitors pour in to see the ruins of Angkor Wat, a massive stone temple complex built during the Khmer Empire. What Cambodia doesn’t advertise is the country’s massive problems with child sex trafficking, stretching from the Gulf of Thailand coastline to the capital city of Phnom Penh and the borders of Vietnam.

The 6^th annual Walk Against Traffick on April 7 in Jackson’s Fondren community will bring attention to the slavery crisis in Cambodia. Mississippi College graduate Drew Mellon, 33, is helping lead the fight with the organization The Hard Places Community. “A successful walk will allow us to continue to grow our ministries and help more and more kids find safety, justice and a future.”

Funds raised in Jackson will benefit drop-in centers serving hundreds of kids in Cambodia.

Sex trafficking has tugged on Drew’s heart the past five years. That’s when he joined The Hard Places Community, an organization his sister, Alli Mellon, founded in 2008. A resident of Cambodia, Alli remains the group’s executive director. Drew began as fundraising coordinator and now serves as USA director.

A Clinton High School graduate, Drew and others diving in to battle human trafficking know it will be a long and difficult fight. There are 27 million people enslaved in sex trafficking worldwide, reports show. Generating billions of dollars, human trafficking is the world’s second largest source of illegal income. Nearly half of the people in bondage are women, and about one-third of those enslaved for sex are children.

It’s a crusade that literally must be tackled one step at a time. “In Cambodia, children as young as 4 years old have been sold for sex,” Mellon notes. In can get quite frustrating at times taking on such an enormous concern, he concedes. “We can’t do everything.” The focus right now is Cambodia.

The starting point to attack the problem in Cambodia starts this Thursday at 5 p.m. in connection with Fondren’s First Thursday event. Organizers of the 10-mile Walk Against Traffick seek to sign up teams of six to ten walkers. Each are asked to set an individual fundraising goal of $100. So a group of six would raise $600 to benefit the mission of The Hard Places Community. Some walkers are asking sponsors to pitch in. The walk begins at Fondren Corner at 2906 North State Street.

Last year’s Walk Against Traffick raised more than $14,000 and attracted 65 participants.

A 2006 Mississippi College graduate, the Jackson resident believes his education at the Baptist-affiliated university led to his involvement to serve those less fortunate. “MC definitely had a hand in directing me towards serving those in need and opening my eyes up to the world around me. Instead of telling me what to think, my professors at MC taught me how to think,” says Mellon, who works in the retail business.

Others in the Mississippi College family are stepping up the fight against human trafficking in 2016. MC freshmen Kinley Springs and Bethany Weeks, both of Brandon, are raising funds for their journey to send them to Ghana to combat human trafficking. Their two-week trip to Africa will be in May.

The MC women are selling watercolor paintings for $5 and T-shirts for $15 and posting messages on Facebook to boost donations.

The Mississippi College friends from Rankin County plan to team up with the Patriots Ghana organization this spring. Both cannot believe how widespread the human trafficking crisis has become around the globe. “I am so shocked to know that this happens, so commonly and so casually,” says Kinley Springs, a 2015 Brandon High graduate. “I was so caught up in my own little world to even notice.”

For more information on the April 7 Walk Against Traffick, contact Drew Mellon at hardplacesdrew@gmail.com or call 601-942-0429.