Human Trafficking

SCHOLARSHIP AND SERVICE LEARNING. 

We congratulate Sr. Martha Ann Kirk, a professor of Religious Studies at the University of the Incarnate Word, who was recently granted a $3000 grant from the Lilly Fellows Program, for her proposal “Service Learning and Engaged Scholarship Considering the Mission of the Incarnate Word Founders to the Vulnerable.”  This grant will enable faith-based faculty conversations that can promote service learning and engaged scholarship on human trafficking.  This initiative will invite faculty members, especially those new to Incarnate Word, to involve their students in service learning that might contribute to systemic change in regard to this tremendous global problem. First, faculty will be invited to reflect on how their academic discipline – whether art, business, communication arts, criminal justice, economics, education, ethics, health care, history, literature, philosophy, psychology, sociology, theology, etc. – might relate to this challenge. Then faculty would strategize in regard to plans for teaching with service learning. How could students be more engaged in learning through research, advocacy, and service projects related to this? 

Thank you to Sr. Martha Ann for finding ways to incorporate the Congregation’s Corporate Stance against Human Trafficking into our educational institutions!  What a wonderful opportunity for all those at UIW to not only learn more, but also encourage students to take direct action to address the systemic change needed to end human trafficking. We encourage others to do the same; to search for opportunities for education and service learning in your own work spaces or mission sites!  And then share with us what you are doing so we can share it with others.  Working together and sharing our stories with one another we can spread hope and encouragement in living out our commitment to respond to Christ suffering in the world. 

PRAYER.  St. Josephine Bakhita, you were sold into slavery as a child and endured untold hardship and suffering. Once liberated from your physical enslavement, you found true redemption in your encounter with Christ and his Church. O St. Bakhita, assist all those who are trapped in a state of slavery; Intercede with God on their behalf so that they will be released from their chains of captivity. Those whom man enslaves, let God set free. Provide comfort to survivors of slavery and let them look to you as an example of hope and faith. Help all survivors find healing from their wounds. We ask for your prayers and intercessions for those enslaved among us. Amen