Helpful tips from Marietta College's Human Wrong Initative

By Anna Gill, student at Marietta College

I was a part of the planning team for the Human Wrong Initiative at Marietta College, which took place March 29-April 1, 2010. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship sponsored the four-day event.

Several of us first saw the Human Wrong Initiative while attending the Urbana 2009 Conference. Last year, our InterVarsity group did a social justice campaign focusing on hunger awareness on our campus and we saw the fruits of that effort. We wanted to see that happen again, and the Human Wrong Initiative was a perfect fit.

We did a lot of advertising for this week. This included: a Facebook group with events, article on school website main page, article in online school newspaper, painting “the rock”, hung a sheet banner at the dining hall, a lot of posters, table tents in dining hall, emails to professors, and word of mouth.

We had a goal of selling 100 of the Human Wrong Initiative shirts at $5, and in the end sold more than 90 of them. Between the shirt money and donations, we were able to raise $500. We were told by International Justice Mission that it takes $500 to release one person from slavery, and how incredible that our campus came together to accomplish that, with God’s help!

We had everyone wear the shirts on Thursday, our culminating day, so that it was a very visible statement about child slavery. Everywhere you looked, people were wearing shirts labeled “Sold,” “Defiled,” “Threatened,” “Forced,” and more. It was very powerful. I still get excited every time I see someone with a shirt walking around campus. I know that the message is still being spread each time someone wearing the shirts walks around campus or into the community.

Besides selling the t-shirts, our table stations had a few other functions. We asked people to sign the petition for representatives in Congress to endorse the Child Protection Compact Act. Furthermore, we had a “proxy” station, which is a tool InterVarsity chapters commonly use. The proxy station we used was titled “How Does Evil Invade Your Space?” and allowed students to identify with the plight of enslaved children through seeing other evils and injustices in their own lives.

From Monday night to Tuesday morning, we had a prayer room in the solarium attached to our library. I had organized 12 groups of people to pray throughout the night and into the morning. We transformed that room into a place for expressions and acts of prayer for those children and adults in forced bondage. It is a powerful and beautiful thing to see people willing to get up in the middle of the night to pray for child slaves.

On Tuesday, we had a theme night in our dining hall. We put up Human Wrong Initiative posters, balloons, and “table tents” in the napkin holders with dates and times for events. We set up our table display in the dining hall, which gave us another venue for selling shirts and talking with students.

On Wednesday, we held an open mic night in a small café-type setting with a small stage. We told specific people about the open mic night beforehand, and they prepared songs, spoken word, poems, and testimonies about the topics of injustice and oppression, as well as the hope that comes from Christ.

As a part of the open mic event, we used the story cards that come with the HWI package. We had two performers play some softer music to create a contemplative atmosphere, and then passed out the cards to have people read them. People then shared the story of the child slave with those sitting at their table. I was pleasantly surprised by how easily students engaged with one another. A lot of people were very touched by the story on their cards and were eager to look up the ending to the story on the Human Wrong website.

The culminating event for the week was screening the documentary, At the End of Slavery, on Thursday night. Almost 70 students and staff were present. We began by giving students crayons and describing stories of innocence from childhood. The students were then instructed to break their neighbor’s crayon to symbolize the broken innocence of a child slave, and to show how slavery boils down to people hurting other people. I am told that the students were really moved by this small demonstration.

The film, At the End of Slavery, is very well done and shows the work that is being done around the globe to bring justice to those who live in the appalling reality of forced bondage. When the film was over, I gave a short presentation for ways for them to get involved with this issue right away, all of which came from the Human Wrong Initiative website. Then we had those in attendance fill out the response cards lying under their seats. These cards allowed us to do some follow-up work with specific people who were especially moved by the Human Wrong Initiative and who wanted to know more.

It was an exhausting week for those who planned and implemented the events. However, I must say that I am so pleased with how things turned out. ACTS makes it fairly easy to implement the Human Wrong Initiative. They provide good resources so that you can customize the campaign to your campus and your vision for how things will go.

I am so thankful that God was able to use us this week to raise awareness about child slavery as well as to show that his faithful servants really care about doing good in a broken world. Perhaps the biggest accomplishment of the week was getting college students to step out of their self-centered lives to care for someone they will most likely will never know or meet by raising enough money to free one such person from slavery.

God is stirring the hearts of many who want to see real change and an end to the hurting in our world, both in their own lives and in the lives of child slaves. It is my prayer that this campaign will outlive the four days of this spring and the limited efforts of a few students. Child slavery is a painful reality, but there is hope to bring it to an end. The Human Wrong Initiative brought these truths to light for many people in the Marietta College community, and I hope that the message continues to be spread.

ACT NOW: Host a Human Wrong Initiative