Eden Ministry: hand-made jewelry and a hands-on attitude.
For more than a decade Eden Ministry has been offering hands-on support to people exploited by sex trafficking, and from the beginning the charity has been unafraid to get up close and personal with the problem.
When Eden Ministry co-founder Lisa Samuelsen saw the alarming epidemic in Asia of brothels and heavy-faced young women standing in front of them, Lisa walked right up and asked: Who is doing something to help?
The answer – no one – was at once disheartening and inspirational.
The lack of help for those trapped in the Asian sex trade led Lisa and her now business partner Wendy Eldridge to create Eden Ministry: a charity organization devoted to helping exploited sex workers through intervention, education, and a positive employment program that teams global designers with women who have escaped the sex trade, to produce chic and modern bracelets, necklaces and more, with profits going back to families and individuals still on the streets and in need.
Hand-made jewelry, hands-on charitable work.
“[Eden Ministry] began as two women walking around the red light district,” Lisa explains, “and we soon began to build relationships with those in the industry.
“We could see that to impact this world, you have to understand the issues. This understanding can only be gained through building relationships with those that live in it daily.”
To build those relationships with the women and men in the sex trade industry, Eden Ministry offered personal resources and support: inviting “mafia bosses, brothel owners, pimps and girls” for dinner, and listening to their stories. “We became interested in their past and present so that we could then work with them on an alternative future.”
By closely interacting with the people they seek to help, Eden Ministry can understand exactly where to put its resources – into positive business opportunities, for example.
“Many of the brothel owners and mafia bosses are entrepreneurs,” says Lisa. “Sadly, they were poorly educated so the only way to express their flair for business and making money was through crime.”
Eden Ministry, however, gives those with few resources – but plenty of business acumen – another option, through employment programs and alternative job training, including within the Eden Ministry jewelry production team.
As Eden Ministry inspires traffickers and sex workers with opportunities and advice, these former delinquents offer an important education to Eden Ministry as well – helping the charity understand precisely how to structure its preventative educational services.
“Our time with traffickers became the foundation of our prevention program where we now reach thousands of at-risk middle and high school students,” Lisa explains. Eden Ministry prevention programs include courses on self-esteem and life skills, and community centers where at-risk youth can eat, do homework in peace, and get help from adults in a safe environment.
By reaching out to children exposed to the sex trade, Eden Ministry hopes to change the cycle of poverty and exploitation that can lead to prostitution and trafficking. Part of that work is addressing the men, women and children involved in it, and another part of Eden Ministry’s work is raising awareness and encouraging action from people powerful enough to make a change. Lisa mentions the Swedish model of trafficking legislation, wherein prostitution is defined as a crime against a woman, and only a customer can be prosecuted.
However, the core of Eden Ministry remains a personalized offer of help and healing. With its jewelry program, Eden Ministry shares positive employment with women who have escaped the sex trade; women are taught jewelry-making skills – manipulating metallic materials, handling semi-precious stones and understanding fundamentals of jewelry design – and can enjoy working in a supportive, comfortable, empowering environment.
The story of Eden Ministry is a story of beauty, hope and self-actualization; a story about respect before judgment, action before talk, education before persecution. Lisa likes to quote William Wilberforce, who she calls “one of our heroes, [a man] whose determination saw the eradication of the Transatlantic slave trade:
“‘You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.’”
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