Saarbrücken

This weekend our team made the trek out to the French boarder of Germany, to the German city of Saarbrücken.

In Saarbrücken we connected with a pastor who had attended the Object Conference. His church is beginning to awaken to the amount of prostitution happening in their city and are beginning to take steps towards engaging the issue. 

When we arrived on Friday night the pastor drove us around the city. The city hall has several brothels only a short distance away. The amount of street prostitution occurring on the roads of this boarder town reminded me of our visit to the Czech Republic, where similarly, many woman walk the streets, waiting for men to drive from across the boarder to pay for cheap thrills.

Interestingly, because this town is so close to France, it is known for its culinary excellence. The city is saturated with Michelin starred restaurants. The pastor told us: "You could go to any one of these restaurants, and even the cheapest thing on the menu, a dessert for instance, would cost you more than 15 €. But you can drive out to these roads outside the city and 15 € is how much these girls are selling themselves for. You can buy a girl for less than a dessert.... something is seriously wrong here." 

On Saturday we participated in the Walk 4 Freedom. A demonstration organized by the pastor and his church in the middle of the city. Almost 200 women walked down the street single file, while men passed out flyers about sexual exploitation in the area. The event had media and newspaper coverage as well. We where glad to be able to support this church as they are beginning to engage the issue of sexual exploitation in their area. 

Gaby Wentland, who runs a major anti-trafficking ministry out of Hamburg, and was one of the main speakers at our Object Conference, was also there participating in the walk, and she spoke later in the evening.  We soon realized something as a team. The pastor had tried to connect with Gaby previously via email and hadn't been able to connect. But he was able to meet her at Object Conference during our networking session. It was there that their relationship started and how they were able to get her and Mission Freedom to participate in their event. In some small way, that day in Saarbrücken was the fruit of our conference. 

On our return trip we were able to stop by another city for a dinner meeting with the leaders of the Justice Project in the city of Karlsruhe. It was great to catch up with them, and again learned that they have been able to develop relationships with several other startup counter-trafficking ministries throughout Germany as a result of meeting one another at the Object conference. It was super encouraging for our team to see that already, all the long months of work for that conference is starting to yield fruit in the fight against sexual exploitation in Germany.