Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Love justice podcast, where we hear from different voices who are joining us in the fight against modern day slavery. Here's our hosts, Jason Dukes and Hannah Munn.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Well, hey, welcome to what we're calling episode zero of the Love justice podcast. It's our very first episode, the introduction episode, and with me co hosting for this podcast is Hannah Munn. I'm Jason Dukes team here with love justice, and we are really excited. Hannah, introduce yourself. Tell our listeners and our viewers it'll be both audio and video. Tell our listeners and our viewers who you are.
[00:00:43] Speaker C: Yeah. So, as Jason said, my name is Hannah Munn. I've been with love justice for almost nine years. It'll be nine years in November. Crazy. Moved to the field right out of college and have grown up with the ministry and the organization. And I'm currently serving as the senior director of installation and compliance and based in South Africa at our program headquarters.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: I love it. I love it. The work that Hannah and our team does on the programmatic side and on the overseas side is amazing. They are the real heroes in this. And if you're new to even understanding and knowing who love justice is, we want to jump into that in just a second. But let me start by saying that the purpose of this podcast, like, why would we have a Love justice podcast? The purpose of it is to get the word out about love justice, impactful work through short conversations about the long time injustices of human trafficking and slavery. And we don't just want to talk about love justice and our work, but we want to let you know about it because we think it's really beautiful and challenging and hard and impactful. But we also want to champion other people in the space. And so we'll have guests on, and we'll talk about concepts and topics related to kind of all of these different angles and vantage points that relate to anti trafficking work.
You know, Hannah, what, when you think about even some of these conversations and some of these topics, what, what excites you about the thought of pulling together something like this and creating a resource like this?
[00:02:19] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a quote that I recently read that went something along the lines of, the victims of injustice don't need our bursts of passion. They need a long walk of obedience in the same direction. And what I hope will be cultivated in this conversation in these podcasts is just an invitation and an entry point for people to participate in the long walk of justice and consistency. And we're going to hear from so many different people, from influencers to program leaders to other NGO's that I think it's just going to be a really well rounded conversation over time.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: I love it. I love it. Well, let's talk a little bit about love justice. Just brief, brief history. So love justice exists to share the love of Jesus by fighting the world's greatest injustices. And we definitely, we are compelled by the love of Jesus, but obviously, we're encouraging and welcoming of any person from anywhere. We look, though, to care for the world's most vulnerable, to fight to prevent anti or human trafficking. Excuse me. And to hopefully see people that are doing these hideous crimes put in jail. And a lot of this information you can see on our website at lovejustice dot NGo. But back in 2004, and Hannah, you actually lived in. In Kathmandu for a season. But like our founder. Right. Went to Kathmandu with a group of people and basically ended up staying. Right. And was brokenhearted. You've heard him tell that story. I mean, you know, what did that lead to? This first element of love justice was so much about caring for the kids that were even there, right there in Kathmandu and in the country of Nepal. Talk about that for just a second of what that kind of led to.
[00:04:05] Speaker C: Yeah. So our founder ended up going on, like, an adventure tourism trip to Nepal, climbing the himalayas. And unexpectedly, his heart was just absolutely broken over the street kids in Kathmandu. There were so many street kids, and, you know, the founder of love justice, plus our, the chairman of the board, those two together, out of the result of that trip were like, we've got to do something. And thus birthed the vision of family homes and having kids become a part of Christ like, family like homes, so that they can grow up in that type of environment and be difference makers for Christ in their nation. That was the vision. And it was in that outworking of what does. What do those family homes look like?
That they realized how connected trafficking was to street kids. And so in 2006, they then started another branch of the ministry, which was our transit monitoring work, and were stationed all along a very strategic border crossing in South Asia and started intercepting pvs or potential victims of trafficking because they had heard stats and numbers about how many men, women and children in that particular part of the world were being trafficked across international borders a day. It was wild. And so that was what birthed, again, just our transit monitoring strategy back in.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: 2006, which is incredible. And I love our story, which in another episode, we'll tell the more full story of that. But, like, in 2006 to 2009, it was a struggle. And kudos to John and to the whole crew for continuing just to try and try and try and try. But there was a breakthrough really, in zero nine. And from zero nine to now, we've seen over 58,000 interceptions across 31 countries at what if we totaled. It ends up being about around 68 transit monitoring stations. And it's amazing. This innovative approach, as far as we know, is one of the only preventative models that fights human trafficking. And so we're super excited to tell you more about that. But one more thing we'll tell you in the history is around 2000, I think it was twelve ish, we began to have an idea, a dream, a hope to create a school. And in 2015, that school became a reality. And similar to what you just said, the hope of it was to provide an empowering education on a world class level that would train future leaders who would also fight the world's greatest injustices with us. Talk about that because you've seen it, you've been there. You even know, I think are pretty close with the people who helped kind of birth it out. Like talk about real quickly about the school and then we'll wrap up.
[00:07:02] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just crazy how even the school and, you know, another branch of the work that we do is still connected to those three kids and realizing that the education opportunities that they had were almost setting them up to fail, essentially. And just as you dig into the education system in that part of the world, you realize it's a lot of remote or remote learning where there's not a lot of critical thinking, there's a lot of repetition, memorizing, and that's not cultivating difference makers. And there's so, I mean, we'll get into the layers, we'll get into the layers of all that. We'll probably have someone from the school really dig into the nuances of that. But what was really cool is John saw that need and he saw that need and he did something about it. And now we have this most amazing campus in, in Asia of these kids who are graduating from school and they're going on to different university opportunities and they're coming back to their nation and they have such a beautiful heart to be difference makers in their own nation, which is, you know, we're just now seeing the fruit of that, you know, almost ten years later. And so it's, it's definitely been a long haul. And, yeah, and I love how it, all those roads lead back to having a heart for those street kids and how that births what is love, justice today.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: It's so incredible. And one of our leaders, I love the word he uses, he says every time he's around those kids, whether they're in the school now, they're in a family home, whether there are people who we've intercepted that are even now transit monitors with us, which we have some of those stories and, you know, but regardless of where they are, where they came from, and through the impactful work that we've been very thankful and privileged to do, the word that he uses is flourishing. He's around them and he says they are flourishing. And that's such a cool thought to think of where they were, where they have been, and then this opportunity of leaning in, engaging there and seeing them now flourishing, like you said, becoming difference makers. And so, like we, in the course of this podcast, as we, as we jump into each episode, we'll take a lot of different angles and vantage points. Even our, you know, even like, whether it's influencers and others who just said, you know what, I want to do something, or whether it's people that are on the field who are in the middle of the very work that love justice is all about, or other organizations who have leaders who do these kinds of work or this kind of work, policy making, even, right, like this is a big deal, human trafficking. And so various ways that other organizations and even governments are engaging in it, there's all kinds of ways that we can come around this topic. But what we're going to do is, we promise you, it'll be shorter conversations so you don't have to commit to listening to one and two hour long podcasts. And it'll be engaging and to the point. And I think you'll really appreciate it. Easy to share. And we just hope that you'll take this journey with us to not only learning more about this atrocity and this injustice, but how to actually get upstream and fight to prevent, not just fight to rescue people in it, which, by the way, we love. And we have partners that do that. And that is a desperate need. But how amazing if we could get ahead of it and help people from ever entering, ever entering into that trauma. And so, any last words or thoughts before we close?
[00:10:29] Speaker C: You know what, Jason? I was just thinking about, you know, thinking about the lineup that we have of episodes, and I think what it ultimately is going to highlight is just testimony after testimony after testimony of how God has been with us in this work from day one and how we wouldn't be able to do it without him, and that being the foundation in which we're able to share the stats, the stories, the overcoming of obstacles, the breakthroughs that we had in expansion. And so I definitely hope our listeners can hear that, too and just glorify God in that, too as we celebrate in just sharing a lot of those, those stories and testimonies.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: I love it. I love it. Well, if you want to learn more about what we're talking about, even right now, we encourage you to go to lovejustice Dot Ngo and, and you can see in the show notes some of our links and socials, things like that. But, but Hannah, thanks so much for not only being willing to do this with me, but just all the amazing work you do day in, day out. And it's going to be a fun journey to bring these conversations to people.
[00:11:38] Speaker C: Absolutely. I'm ready. I'm ready to do it, Jason.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Me too. Looking forward to it. Well, thanks for joining us on this intro episode and tune in and check out our other episodes as they'll be coming out and we look forward to the conversations together.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: We are grateful for the generous support of the love justice community. Please consider joining our family of donors. Learn more at lovejustice dot ngo.
