Happy Hori­zons Chil­dren’s Ranch Of­fers Hope to Chil­dren in Traf­fick­ing

MISHAWAKA— On Fri­day, Oct. 22, Nirup Alphonse, pas­tor of Life­Gate Church in Den­ver, Col­orado, came and spoke in chapel. His wor­ship team came with him to lead the wor­ship in chapel and to host a wor­ship night in the Kelly Au­di­to­rium that evening. While Pas­tor Al­fonse was speak­ing in chapel, he in­tro­duced the Happy Hori­zons Chil­dren’s Ranch and pro­vided a phone num­ber for Bethel stu­dents to text that would send them in­for­ma­tion about the pro­gram’s mis­sion and pro­vide the op­por­tu­nity to do­nate to the cause. The phone num­ber given was 80360.

Happy Hori­zons Chil­dren’s Ranch is a com­mu­nity ded­i­cated to res­cu­ing chil­dren from sex traf­fick­ing in the Philip­pines. The ranch is run by a mis­sion­ary fam­ily, the Willi­fords, and sup­ported by Life­Gate Church.

Ac­cord­ing to the Happy Hori­zons Chil­dren’s Ranch web­site, “Our mis­sion is to res­cue, trans­form, and de­fend these chil­dren to en­sure they have a bright fu­ture. We strive to build a bet­ter com­mu­nity for the Fil­ipino peo­ple in our area by pro­vid­ing med­ical care, food, and shar­ing the love of God with them.”

The ranch was founded in 1994 by Glenn and Nancy Gar­ri­son. The Gar­risons were in the Philip­pines on an­other as­sign­ment but were struck with the de­sire to help the chil­dren as they re­al­ized sex traf­fick­ing was out of con­trol and chil­dren were be­ing abused and left in the streets. John and Kelli Willi­ford joined the Gar­risons in 2010.

The truth is sex traf­fick­ing has be­come a grow­ing prob­lem in the world. The main tar­gets are women and chil­dren.

Ac­cord­ing to the United Na­tions’ Global Re­port on Traf­fick­ing Per­sons for 2020, “Chil­dren ac­count for about one third of the de­tected vic­tims of traf­fick­ing. Traf­fick­ing of chil­dren, how­ever, dis­pro­por­tion­ally af­fects low-in­come coun­tries, where it is linked to the broader phe­nom­e­non of child la­bor.” 

This in­for­ma­tion is tragic and calls for any­one in a po­si­tion to help to do so.

In the Philip­pines, there is a ma­jor plat­form for child sex traf­fick­ing. Happy Hori­zons Chil­dren’s Ranch rec­og­nizes this and is step­ping for­ward to not only res­cue these chil­dren, but to also show them the love of Je­sus. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ranch’s web­site, its mis­sion state­ment is, “To trans­form the lives of chil­dren vic­tims of abuse, traf­fick­ing, and on­line sex­ual ex­ploita­tion from vic­tims to sur­vivors by giv­ing them op­por­tu­ni­ties to heal and to re­store their lives. We strive to make a pos­i­tive im­pact in our com­mu­nity by show­ing every per­son the love of Je­sus.” 

Stu­dents who are in­ter­ested in learn­ing about ways to be in­volved can visit the web­site, hhcr.org.

Sources

•  Happy Horizons Children's Ranch (hhcr.org). 
• GLOTiP_2020_15jan_web.pdf (unodc.org).