WHY WE ARE PASSIONATE...
In the summer of 2016, the founder of beLydia, Terri Ingraham, heard a story that changed her life. A twelve-year old girl went to a party with her friend and was gang raped. That assault was video recorded and used to bribe her to be “sold for sex” for the next three years.
She attempted suicide 7 times but never told anyone what was going on. Each weekend and after school she was forced to have sex to meet a “quota” set by her trafficker/pimp.
The crazy part of this story is that she lived at home, went to school each day and her parents had no idea this was happening.
THE STORY OF BELYDIA...
beLydia was started in March 2016 when Terri had a dream where she heard "be Lydia" over and over. She woke up the next morning and had what she calls a "download from the Holy Spirit" about being like Lydia in the book of Acts who heard Paul preach the Gospel and responded by showing her faithfulness through hospitality.
Terri was supposed to respond by using hospitality and awareness events to prevent children from being ensnared by these evil traffickers. At that time, she didn't even know what child sex trafficking was and certainly had no idea it was happening in the United States much less her own neighborhood!
Unlike drugs which are a one time sale, people can be sold over and over and over again. It's happening all across America, not just in big cities but small towns or foreign countries. Kids are being tricked into sex slavery/trafficking and we need to stop this!
We are asking you to respond by helping us support our mission of preventing this evil atrocity.
Our mission is to help women respond to the Gospel by using strategic hospitality to prevent child sex trafficking.
We use three pillars to prevent sex slavery:
We encourage adults to host friends and neighbors to share our awareness information so they can keep their families safe.
beLydia provides youth the tools they need to understand the threat of trafficking and how to take the steps necessary to stay safe.
beLydia speaks at churches, bible studies, schools & businesses to create massive community awareness.
Why Hospitality
Hospitality is a biblical mandate and we use it strategically to love and serve others while creating awareness about the atrocity of sex slavery.
If you’re like us, you want to make a difference in the world with your life. You feel like you should be doing more but you don’t know where to begin.
Your Step-By-Step Plan:
We understand what it means to have
gifts and talents that are not being used
to build the kingdom.
The problem is, there are very few volunteer opportunities with anti-trafficking ministries because they work at the crisis level.
beLydia works at prevention and awareness because we want to stop it from ever happening.
