Young victims of child abuse and child trafficking need your voice, your vote and your ongoing advocacy. The internet can be such a great resource for child victims and the charities that serve them. So much can be accomplished but are we speaking loudly enough?

In the end of 2011, Chase Community Giving, for one, has made a contest to inspire advocacy for any nonprofit group and their advocates to raise awareness, votes and money by clicking on a Facebook page. The process is simple; click “like” on the Chase Community Giving Facebook page, then use your 10 personal votes by searching for the charities of your choice while encouraging your friends to do the same. The top 100 charities with the most votes receive $25,000 in the first round of voting which lasts only two weeks. Then those advance to round two, where the top 25 charities voted for can move up to receive up to $250,000!

Chase, along with other companies, have held these contests before and a trend is repeating itself in the end of 2011. The current top 100 charities with the most votes include;

33 for animals
21 for the arts
13 for international use
7 for children’s illness causes
5 for gay rights and equality
4 for at risk youth and underserved children
0 for charities that serve child abuse victims
0 for charities that serve the deep needs of child trafficking victims

Child advocates, these children are dying every day. Even if they are “saved” from their captors and abusers, there are not enough quality places to help them transform their broken lives. Child trafficking victims that are rescued have barely any place to go. They are placed in ill equipped foster homes, juvenile detention centers, jail and even back to the streets, where prison or death awaits them. Do the numbers require our voices and votes? Consider this;

Estimated number of human slaves worldwide is 30 million
800,000 trafficking victims worldwide annually
50% of those are children and youth!
Tens of thousands of child victims are trafficked OUT of the United States annually
A much greater number of children from other countries are brought IN to the U.S. annually, to serve as sex and labor slaves of the wealthy and corrupt
Human trafficking rates the third highest grossing profitable enterprise worldwide raising $15.5 billion annually, just under drugs and arms trafficking

Abused children that are victims of human trafficking are purchased and brought to countries where they do not know the language, and fed drugs to keep them under control. The estimated life span of a child trafficking victim is three to five years from the time they are taken. Once rescued, do you think they can make it on their own? They need us!

They need you to be a loud ongoing voice for the efforts of Ark of Hope for Children who is working to create more than awareness. We counsel many victims worldwide using the internet to keep them fighting for their reason to live. We have plans for homes, and an entire community to house them and transform their lives back to the future they deserve. We work with an inspired young architect that has devoted his master’s thesis to bringing this to reality for the children in desperate need. Sadly, the property we were to build our first community on was just foreclosed on due to lack of funds. Does this mean we should quit? NO! It means we need to get hundreds and thousands of advocates for abused children on their feet and on their computers.

In this current competition by Chase Community Giving we have only two days left. There will be many more ways to raise funds, but do we give up on this one since we have fewer than 100 votes, and...