The Zoe Challenge

Hello friends, I hope you are all as well as possible,

Well last weekend I went to a ball with my friend Dean, a charity ball to be exact, to launch something I'm really excited about; the Zoe Challenge. I've not posted about it until now as I was utterly exhausted from the outing, and have been really poorly since the weekend. 

But what is the Zoe Challenge  I hear you ask?
In about a week, four men including Emmerdale's Tom Lister (I have no idea about soaps but apparently he played Carl King who got his head bashed in with a brick...) are cycling from Riga, Latvia to Southampton, UK in just 20 days. Covering approximately 100 miles every day, together they will push their bodies to the limit, crossing through six countries and cycling in challenging and gruelling conditions. They are doing this cycle ride because of Zoe. Zoe was trafficked from Latvia into the UK for the purposes of sexual exploitation. In our country she was repeatedly raped for profit. After months of investigation, Hope for Justice found and rescued Zoe. Now she’s living in freedom.

From the Hope for Justice website:

Zoe was asked to come to the UK from Eastern Europe by a friend who said she could arrange a job for her in a hotel. Zoe was excited about the opportunity to come to the UK and on her arrival she was picked up by a man and a woman and taken to a hotel. Then she was handed some underwear and told to put it on. Zoe was confused and said she hadn't come to the UK for this kind of job but she was threatened, violently assaulted and told she was in debt to the couple. She was raped on multiple occasions and forced to work as a prostitute.

Zoe’s hopes quickly turned to horror as she realised that she had been trafficked. 

Moved from town to town in the UK and then sold to another trafficker, Zoe was too terrified to escape. The traffickers had told her that if she tried to leave they would come after her family. At one point a police officer even spoke to her but she was too scared to tell him what was really going on. The traffickers had told her that they ‘owned the police’. Zoe said that no good thing had happened to her in the UK.

Hope for Justice found Zoe and rescued her from this devastating situation.

She was immediately placed into after-care to allow her to recover and now she’s rebuilding her life. Good things are now happening to Zoe in the UK. She now has hope and we, here at Hope for Justice, have hope for all the girls not yet found.

Freedom is priceless- I know what it feels like to be trapped. Not to the same extent as the victims of this horrific crime, but the terror was much the same. When I was rescued from my trap, the feeling of freedom I experienced was phenomenal. It is the most indescribable feeling in the world, I felt light, I felt like singing and dancing, and we can bring that same freedom into the lives of men and women as old as 59 and children as young as just three months old, who have been sold and abused, for profit.

You might be thinking 'hang about, wasn't the slave trade abolished in 1807 by Wilberforce?' or even 'well that stuff goes on in poor countries but what's it got to do with me?' You are very wrong. Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing crimes in the UK. If you're one of my local readers, you'll be shocked to know that there have been cases of exploitation in Wrexham, Chester and even Shrewsbury. This is not a distant crime in a third world country, this is on our doorsteps! I could throw more statistics at you, but instead I want you to watch this:

Zoe's Story from Hopeforjustice on Vimeo.

You can find out more about Hope for Justice and the Zoe Challenge on their websites:
http://hopeforjustice.org.uk/
http://zoechallenge.com/

You can donate by visiting The Zoe Challenge Just Giving Page or you can text ZOEC55£10 to 70070 to give £10 or text ZOEC55£5 to 70070 to give £5.

Thank you for supporting this really amazing cause. You are helping to rescue princesses.
With so much love,
Alice xxxx
© Alice Daley 2013