This Women’s History Month, Everyday Life News will highlight the women founders of nonprofits and businesses in the Carolinas, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Read more about this week’s woman founder who is making history. In this article, human trafficking is mentioned. We will be discussing human sex trafficking the most.
PEE DEE REGION, SC – Glenda Skipper’s nonprofit, One Child at a Time was created after she saw that human trafficking was a problem everywhere. She created a lesson plan for classrooms in the region for human sex trafficking prevention.
Skipper’s nonprofit has been around since 2018.
How did it start?
She was working on her master’s at Liberty University in 2017. She was studying health and human services. She had an opportunity to go to India with an organization that worked in human trafficking safety in Mumbai, India. This opportunity was a week in Mumbai’s red light district with the brothels.
“It was forever changing. It was soul crushing,” she said after she watched a woman take a man into the brothel. Skipper, law enforcement in Mumbai and possibly the woman’s pimp watched the woman enter into the brothel.
“This is their normal. This can never be our normal in South Carolina,” she said.
While on the plane home she was convinced this never happened in South Carolina. The fall of 2017, 84 children were rescued in Myrtle Beach from sex trafficking.
January 2018 all she could think was, “If I can save one child.”
Her experience in Mumbai was still on her heart and mind. She hoped the feeling would go away if she did something about it.
She created her nonprofit, One Child at a Time in January 2018. She was discouraged at first with people describing the work that goes into starting a 501(c)(3).
She started researching about nonprofits and creating a 501(c)(3). She nipped that research in the bud and contacted the IRS.
She inquired, “How hard is to start a 501(c)(3)?”
The gentleman laughed and walked her through the process. Three days later, she had a 501(c)(3).
However, she still needed help. By the end of January 2018, she had told a friend she had a nonprofit and did not know what to do next.
The friend referred her to someone with a nonprofit to stop or prevent human trafficking.
She and the founder talked for about three hours. He told Skipper he and his wife would be going to Cambodia with Agape International Mission.
She went.
Prevention Through Education
According to Skipper, the experience was a full circle experience because Agape International Mission believes in prevention through education, rescue and restoration.
This gave her a readiness for her nonprofit.
After that trip, she learned more about South Carolina’s Human Trafficking Task Force. She utilized reports from SC Attorney General Alan Wilson and made sure she used this information to make the community aware of human trafficking in the Pee Dee.
By the end of 2019, she was integral in schools across the Pee Dee Region educating 50 kids at a time until she educated 1,000 kids on human trafficking dangers.
At the time, she had a middle schooler herself that was online and she knew traffickers targeted children between the ages of 10-14. This age group are focused on many things like their looks and who likes them.
She said traffickers’ prey on that age group’s vulnerabilities due to being easily coerced and controlled through fear. Case after case a lot of children are extorted online by predators.
She said predators know preteens and teens seek attention and love – and they offer it.
Lesson Plans in Schools
While working in schools 2019 and 2020, she inquired within schools was there curriculum on human trafficking and online safety.
She learned it was in the curriculum, but many schools in the region did not have lesson plans on it.
In her research, she learned sixth grade health and physical education teachers are supposed to be teaching online safety.
She said seventh through ninth grade health and physical education teachers are required to teach human trafficking.
She created a lesson plan for these age groups.
In the course of two years, especially in Florence School District 1, out of 5,000 students taught from this lesson plan, 70 were brave enough to say they were targeted online or on their cellphone device.
For the parents who home school their students, Skipper has the lesson plan on her site for access.
It’s Not Normal
“[Human trafficking] is not normal and will never be normal,” she said. “There are people out there who care enough to make sure this is not happening.”
Skipper said this type of work is not something she can do by herself.
“You can’t reach the masses by yourself,” she said.
While she does not think she is making history, she knows she is putting in the work for prevention.
“I’m preventing future women from succumbing to a life filled with trauma and pain from being trafficked as a child,” she said.
She said in this field many women told her they were trafficked or started prostitution at the age of 14.
Skipper is inspired by Mother Theresa quotes and utilized this quote, “Do not wait for leaders. Do it alone, person to person.”
Skipper said that is what One Child at a Time does.
“We’re going person to person. We’re educating our needful children. We’re responsible for one child at a time,” she said.
