MCLENNAN COUNTY, Texas — One local non-profit has been supporting women coming out of the commercial sex industry for more than 20 years. KXXV's Dominique Leh sat down with a victim of human trafficking on how she's helping other women who were one in her shoes.
- Lovely Village Waco wants to create a safe place for these women to go, free and stable housing for two years
- This safe space will allow women to go through programs and save money to relaunch their life
- Lovely Village has a 10-year plan with four phases, and each one involves creating a safe home for women coming out of the trafficking industry and three of the phases include creating jobs for them to help rebuild their lives
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
“When you’re living that life, there’s so much shame — you just feel stuck there,” said Sthephanie Welch.
19-years-ago, Welch walked away from a life of human trafficking.
“I had no idea how I did it, But I really do believe that it was a God thing. I woke up one day and realized I don’t want to do this anymore, I have so much worth in my life,” she said.
Eight years ago, she heard Emily Mills with “Jesus Said Love, Lovely Village” at a church talking about her non-profits mission.
“We started as a grassroots outreach organization to women in strip clubs in Waco, we were reaching over 1000 women directly in the commercial sex industry every single month and all over the state of Texas," said Founder of Lovely Village, Emily Mills.
Mills’ plan wasn’t to drag women out of trafficking, instead her goal has always been to love them.
“Somebody is always wanting something from them — and so our goal was truly to say, we don’t want anything — we don’t need anything from you, We just want to serve and love and know your right where you’re at," she said.
Now after 20 years, they want to create a safe place for these women to go, free and stable housing for two years.
“There are very few programs for women who are overcoming prostitution overcoming trafficking, who are reconnecting with their kid, maybe they’ve been in prison and they’re going to re-enter society, they’re going to regain custody of their childre — where do they go?”, Mills said.
It’ll allow women to go through programs and save money to relaunch their life.
“I attribute a lot of my freedom to Lovely Village and Emily and Brett," Welch said.
It’s the help Welch never received, but now, she’s helping the women who were once just like her, get what they need.
“It just feels so good to be able to be free in that and I don’t have shame in who I was or what I did. It’s juts you know it was a part of my life. It shaped me to be who I am today, and because of my walk, I’m able to help other women that are walking this as well,” she said.
Lovely Village has a 10-year plan with four phases, and each one involves creating a safe home for women coming out of the trafficking industry and three of the phases include creating jobs for them to help rebuild their lives.
To help raise money for their safe housing plan, Lovely Village is hosting an event at The Hippodrome — Wild Torch will be a concert of love songs performed by people in the community like Milo Chef, Corey MacIntyre and Jershika Maple from Season 21 of The Voice.
Wild Torch is Saturday October 17 starting at 6 p.m. at The Hippodrome in Dowtown Waco — ticket information can be found here.
