MP USA director Jeff Thompson meets with Ukraine staff and ministry partners to expand our anti-human trafficking efforts there.

Update from Kyiv – For the first time during camp this summer, we have invited A21 staff to join us for a one day themed seminar on the perils and methods of predators and human trafficking. We are excited to be implementing advocacy and action. Young girls in Ukraine are particularly vulnerable to the deceptive ways that traffickers use social networks to meet their victims. The day-long interactive camp seminar will include classes, games, prizes, and drama to communicate this vital information.

Our Ukraine summer camps are just around the corner and the staff here is preparing and praying about how they can best reach kids with the gospel. We still have space available for team members – – so give us a call if you are interested! Camp 1 will take place the first half of July and Camp 2 follows immediately afterwards.

Mercy Projects has done a great job ministering to vulnerable children and keeping them with family members through our different sponsorship projects. Our initial goal was to assist single parent families; and today there are approximately 150 single parent households in our Ukraine program. Our Child Sponsorship program means a Christ-centered, family-focused approach with medical help, education, counseling, and Christian camp. Children often become Christians during their camp experience and go home and share this new faith with family members.

This summer many of our camp counselors will be former children from the child sponsorship program, who now want to serve and reach other young people with the gospel! This is a huge praise report and these young people are very effective at relating to the younger ones. They understand them because they were just like them.

The dangers young people face today however, are new and changing. The advent of the internet, Facebook, social networking and mobile phones delivers new dimensions of danger. Children are being recruited by predators and traffickers and they do not know it. In addition to preaching the gospel at our camps, we will also teach a “life skills course” and provide training on the growing industry of sex and labor trafficking of vulnerable children and adults.