Every Minute in May

Every minute, someone is being trafficked around the world. But in that same minute, you can help stop it.

Right now, traffickers are luring vulnerable people into slavery with false promises of work, safety, and a better life. But our teams are stationed at transit points—identifying trafficking in real time and stepping in before exploitation occurs. 

$132 keeps one life free from slavery. This May, we’re seeing how many lives we can keep free—one minute at a time. 

One minute. One life. How many people can you keep free?

The problem

Picture this for a moment: You are 15 years old, living in a small town, attending school while your family struggles to make ends meet. There isn’t always food on the table. 

When a stranger from the city shows up one day as you walk home from school—name-dropping people you’ve only seen in magazines—and says she’s just passing through but desperately needs some bright, young, capable people like you to help with a job, promising to pay more than both your parents make combined—how can you say no? 

How can you pass up this opportunity? At such a young age, you don’t have the awareness to ask questions like: Is it legal for me to work though I’m underage? What about school? Why are you recruiting from this small town instead of your own city? Or to make reasonable demands like: No, you may not have possession of my ID, or Please draw up a legal contract and I will talk to my parents about it first. 

You know your family needs the money, and you know they would want you to stay in school—so you don’t tell them. You pack a backpack, accept the stranger’s generous offer of a bus ticket out of your small town, and figure your parents will understand once they get a fat check in the mail. Your 15-year-old brain underestimates the risks. You imagine this opportunity will change everything for your family. 

It will change everything, but not in the way you think.

Some variation of this hypothetical story affects hundreds of thousands of people every year. An estimated 50 million people are trapped in modern-day slavery today. One report estimated that in a single year, 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders. That breaks down to at least one person every minute. 

Although anyone can be trafficked, the most common targets are people with extreme vulnerabilities—those living in poverty, orphaned children, refugees, etc. To someone in desperate need, a suspicious offer can seem well worth the risk. 

Our solution

Transit monitoring is the only tangible prevention model. It allows us to:

• Stop trafficking AS it is happening but BEFORE the person experiences the irreversible harm of exploitation.
• Hold perpetrators accountable by working with local law enforcement to secure arrests.
• Educate the person on how to avoid similar deceptions in the future.
• Connect them with other organizations who can care for them further (if needs go beyond our scope of reach).
• Rely on local national staff teams who know their area’s culture and dialect better than anyone else and thus are best equipped to spot something unusual or suspicious.
• Involve the community through partnerships with local police, high-value contacts, subcommittees, and churches.
• Make a significant impact on a life for a remarkably low cost. It can cost upwards of $1,000 to rescue one person from slavery, and depending on the type of rescue, investigations, and aftercare required, sometimes much more. For the same price, Love Justice can prevent eight people from ever being trapped in slavery in the first place. 

We’ve seen tangible results. According to Walk Free’s 2023 report, in all 17 countries in which Love Justice started working prior to 2022, human trafficking declined by an average of 5% per year. In the rest of the world, human trafficking increased by an average of 11.5% per year. 

Get involved this May!

One person is trafficked every minute, and our global teams can stop one of these transactions for $132. Thanks to a generous matching gift, every dollar you give in May will be doubled—up to $500,000—helping protect even more lives. How many minutes in May can we cover together?

We have lots of ways for you to join us:

1. Cover a minute in May by giving $132!
2. Start a fundraiser. Get your school, church, company, or friend group involved—we’ve created toolkits (at each of those hyperlinks) with resources to make it as easy as possible!
3. Join Project Beautiful, our monthly giving community, to make a lasting impact against trafficking. Your ongoing support helps us stop trafficking all year, not just in May. 
4. Take the 60 second challenge. What can you do in a minute? Try something for 60 seconds—catch popcorn in your mouth, hold a plank, juggle, or jump rope. Then, challenge three friends to do the same AND donate $132 to protect a life. Post your challenge using #EveryMinuteInMay and tag @lovejusticeintl.
5. Share the movement: Help us cover every minute in May! Spread the word on social media using #EveryMinuteInMay and invite others to step in before the next minute passes. Check out our social sharing wall to see what others have posted.

Let’s do this, Love Justice Family!

*All data and statistics current at the date and time of publishing. Names and specific locations excluded for privacy and security purposes.