Episode 13: Rescue One More - Fighting the Good Fight.

The mission of Rescue One More is to eradicate sexual violence against children by supporting local leaders in Uganda in establishing Community Action Teams. These teams aim to assist children who report cases of sexual violence, providing them with safety and support. The initiative was founded by Sarah and Scott Lambie after their adopted daughter, Vanessa, bravely shared her personal story. Vanessa's courage inspired the Lambies to create Rescue One More ministry, with the hope that more children will seek and receive help. Tune in to hear the inspiring story of the ripple effects that unfold when one child's journey to justice leads to the establishment of a powerful ministry dedicated to protecting the children from sexual violence in Uganda.

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Transcript

welcome to hello world where we help you ReDiscover the good that is all around you doing good in this world often requires confronting evil in today's episode we visit with Scott and Sarah lambi who have been involved in many Ministries that in particular serve children and one of those Ministries is what we're going to be visiting about today that Ministry is rescue one more which is a child advocacy or organization specifically helping sexually abused children in

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Uganda so welcome to hello world so good to have you both here today thank you thanks for having us on so we're just glad that that we can meet in person yeah uh Austin is not exactly a s throw from Houston but we used to live here and uh so we're glad to be back here and visit with you all yeah thanks for having us on some of our some in our audience may not have seen episode five so maybe share with the group a little bit about yourself and maybe some of the Ministries you were involved in okay um my name is Scott lambi and uh my wife is Sarah and we have six children living back here in Dripping Springs close by Austin now but uh we we started our family in Austin in 1998 and got involved in the tech world when we uh got here Sarah was working in public relations and I was uh in sales Tech sales and we did that for a number of years uh and then started to feel like something was missing and we weren't Believers at the time uh but we started down this little spiritual journey trying to discover uh meaning hope um and what what our Spirits were calling out for because we just didn't understand it and along the way ended up finding Jesus and getting involved in our local church serving in our local church um and the way we our Our Calling is played out is we've just really had a heart for children who live in po poverty who are vulnerable and that path ended up leading us to Africa in 2008 s Sarah made me take a trip to Kenya and made you well I didn't want to go she really wanted to go we were going to go together on a mission trip and then I I felt God urging me to pull out he like I I felt very strongly that God um wanted me to pull out because he needed to do some work and show Scott something and I would be a distraction and so with with great sadness I I agreed and did not go and urged Scott to go regardless he was not pleased with me at the time but he did I didn't want to go uh they had they had just gone through some postelection violence in Kenya it was a bit scary uh but we went over with the African Children's s and did an Outreach in the slums and God just showed me at the time right this is this is where you need to be yeah and when I came back uh felt like we needed to pick up the whole crew and move over there and the African Children's Choir offered me a job in Uganda and we had never been there before but sight on scene moved our family to Uganda to serve with the African Children's Choir so prior to this you had never been to Uganda or Africa you'd never heard of African Children's Choir no we had we had been involved with the African Children's Choir that that's who I went to Kenya with okay so you trip before that trip you had worked with them or knew of them yeah we had seen concerts our church had hosted an African children's choir concert and we we hosted children in our house and so we were pretty familiar with the organization Sarah was doing a Bible study with one of the directors and that's how we were really connected into it so at that time you guys are already married met at church was it U no you you weren't met at church no we we met in high school oh oh okay and we as we actually came into our marriage as non-believers okay so y became Christians together yeah down on our knees together in our living room and gave our lives to Christ it was a journey that we started separately but came merged together on that's wonderful yeah awesome yeah we both got baptized the same day when was that it was 200 five 200 yeah I was nine months pregnant with our our now 18-year-old wow yeah okay so but you probably were called into Ministry at different times it sounds like maybe Sarah you were kind of tugged at it a little earlier and that's why you're wanting to go on this trip right that's true that's true I had a um three years prior to us moving to Uganda I had had um an experience where um the Lord showed me that we would be doing Ministry abroad and I didn't know where and he didn't give me very many details but I knew we were on a journey there and um was being obedient in what he had told me to do to prepare for this so yeah and then you stepped aside for Scott to experience the same calling that's exactly what happened brilliant brilliant you could you saw the you saw the vision you saw the light and you felt tugged your heart was tugged when you went yeah I've never seen poverty that extreme we we were in the slums in Nairobi Kenya and the kids had just experienced this violent Uprising and they they saw people in their neighborhoods killing each other and they were at the same time like the most joyful little kids and appreciative and hospitable and they were just enjoying what small thing that our team brought over there with games and a little you know Vacation Bible School and it just seemed like um the most one of the most needy it was the most needy place I had ever been before was like maybe we can do something here to to help these these kids so today um seeing your Facebook page you have a rather large family uh can you introduce your family a little bit to us you want me to do that good for you uh okay so I could tell you from oldest to youngest we have hope who's 27 uh we adopted hope while we were over in Uganda okay and then we have Andrew who's 25 he's a biological and he's off on tour in Europe he's a musician yeah and then Vanessa is 23 and she is from Uganda we adopted Vanessa there we have Corey who's our nephew he's 20 uh he's in college Noah's 18 he's at Dripping Springs High School football player we have a big playoff game tomorrow in San Antonio and then we have Mack who's the youngest and he's an eighth grade out there in tripping Springs he's also a little football player and adopted yeah and he's he's adopted as as well so that's our crew there's six and it's crazy so you went to Africa with how many children three and you came back with six fantastic so we knew each other from Lake Hills Church and uh I know at least when I met you guys um I know you were very involved in the children ministry as well right yeah uh I even had when I preparing for episode 5 I saw a lot of picture with you just jamming Away guitar in the children's ministry and uh so um so what were some of your past uh children Ministry that you got involved in or just Ministry in general prior to the current one well that was the really kind of the first one was at Lake Hills base camp base camp and yeah it was like one of the pastors asked if I would lead worship like kind of with no audition or anything I was just like are you sure you want me to do this and learned along the way but we were also taking trips down to the panda vaita home in mexo uh and you guys went we went one time with Hannah that was that was our first um entry into International missions we did that for about three years and we probably went four or five times a year leading trips down there yeah I just remember taking the van just crossing the border you went from a lot of CC bright lights to Darkness just dark the no lights and the road unpaved and you hear chicken chicken in rooster Croak in the morning and we don't get that here no right it's a natural alarm clock yeah that for us is really um just an an incredible time because that was you know we were going into this situation of extreme poverty and we were seeing these children whose parents were incarcerated and they didn't have a whole lot sometimes we'd show up and the refrigerators would be empty might not be toilet paper but they always had a smile on their face and that was the first time I realized like you can have nothing no physical possessions but if you have Jesus you've got the joy of the Lord I didn't know those things were inseparable until then yeah so um I know I interview Scott for your past uh time at the African Children's Choir and uh we titled that episode called the ripple effect because you said it's it's working there is like having this ripple effect of touching other people and other Ministry you know especially in Africa spun out of that yeah and um uh you currently are CEO and founders of of another Ministry called wcu Ry Moore uh can you tell us more about that I mean we knew about it but we can tell our audience more about rescue one more so okay rescue one more is two and a half years old and it came out of our time with the African Children's Choir and our time in Uganda um during the lockdowns and covid uh our daughter Vanessa who's 23 years old now she said she wanted to start telling her story she had she had been abused as a as a young girl and that's how she came into our life in Uganda um and we knew her backstory and struggles she had gone through to get to us and she wanted to share those so she could help other children and we were pretty concerned about that because yeah in Uganda they don't talk about abuse and it's a pretty um silenced story uh so we had asked Vanessa to go and just tell her story to a couple of friends of ours and see if she could get her story across to just a few couples before sharing it with a broader group of people and she went out and met with some of our friends and they all came back and said we need to do something so we started dreaming up different solutions to help the children on the ground in Uganda and a friend of ours ended up introducing us to the Children's Advocacy centers of of Texas and the director of the cic's met with us and gave us their program and that program uh is what we're implementing in Uganda now so in a very short amount of time uh rescue one more was born and got implemented what we do there is we work with communities building teams we call them Community Action teams Children's Advocacy centers uh they call them multi-disciplinary teams but uh we get the police Child Protective Services prosecution off office we get a a Christian Ministry that's already on the ground um and then the mayor typically sits on one of our teams and some executive level politicians and they come together and they work out uh protocols and processes Communications child-friendly uh interviews child friend friendly processes to deal with the sexual abuse cases because a lot of time of the time a child might come forward in a sexual abuse case and these agencies aren't speaking to each other and so the child might get bounced around from place to place and just end up giving up and so our process allows that child to know exactly where to go for help and then all of those agencies are working together to make sure that the child gets to safety and if there's a perpetrator out there which there obviously is um there's an arrest made made uh and that the casee is compiled well and that the child gets healing in the aftermath we've been doing that for 2 and a half years and right now we're active in three different districts in Uganda uh with a fourth about to come online so a district is like it's like a county it's like a county we would call it a county okay and so you know those those jurisdictions have between 500,000 and 2.5 million people in in a district so they vary in size but we work with those um Community leaders in in those different agencies so that everyone in that district is on the same page when a child sexual abuse case comes forward yeah it's a really cool model because you're taking the leaders that are already in these roles who maybe want to help but don't have the resources to and might generally work in sort of silos and bringing them together so they can sit and do case reviews and what it does is essentially streamline the process and enable them to manage a case and resolve it as efficiently as possible and successfully well so some of these relationships probably were born from your time previously right because you can't just in a span of two and a half years have grown to where you are so maybe talk about how some of those relationships that you had from your previous time um came into play here and kind of connecting the dots to you know the the districts and and how you're able to grow um versus you having to go back to continue to develop some of those relationships the the odd thing about when we moved back to the US was kind of feeling like we had made so many relationships respected trusted relationships with people on the ground in and like there what what was the purpose behind all of that we were lost on that for a while and then when this came up it all just together completely made sense it was just like a bunch of puzzle pieces were out there on the table and then they all came together and it's was like we went over and met with um the people that we we know over there and said do you think this program would work in Uganda and they're like we we want to be on board we want to help so um right out of the gates we had uh Ministry partners and Community leaders on board to get started and that was putting us leagues ahead of where that's amazing and how do the children there know about the programs to go for the help that they ultimately need to get yeah well so one of the things that our community action teams do is they they go out and they um they do a lot of we call them sensitizations in Uganda but essentially they're educational outreaches they're in the schools they're talking to to the students they're talking to teachers they're in the local communities they're at the markets talking to um parents talking to just regular citizens talking to children it's pretty aggressive we've talked to like 37,000 people face to face in the last two and a half years and so word is really spreading um and there those children when they go into the schools are um offered an opportunity to speak with a social worker or a counselor during that um Outreach but then they're also told what they should do if they themselves are experiencing abuse or if they know somebody even the teachers you know if you know somebody that you suspect is experiencing this kind of abuse here's what you should do here's who you should call and where you should go so that's the first step really um think there's also been there's also been quite a number of um radio interviews and National Television interviews that our daughter Vanessa has done speaking out on the problem okay and we've done um some campaigning that way and right now we're running a campaign on one of the television stations to get some Nationwide um information out there so this is an issue that you know okay first of all it's an issue everywhere in the world it's an issue right here in the United States it's not comfortable to talk about but in the in Uganda particularly it's very um there's a lot of stigma and shame around it so you just don't open your mouth about it and it's not uncommon from the stories we've heard if it's happening to you like our daughter Vanessa who's very upfront with her story when it happened to her her grandmother told her to be quiet right you don't tell people about these things her older sister said just wait you know when you start your period he'll move on to the next child kind of situation so we're making noise like we're breaking the silence and we're trying to kind of mainstream this conversation to a degree so that people are more comfortable with it and willing to come forth right talk about it right so just for our audience uh sake because um is this originated as a culturally acceptable practice beforehand uh and now is illegal or um it's always been sort of illegal and it's happening people just hush hush hush hush it's it's illegal so the laws and the policies are in place to protect children they're just not enforced very well and then culturally um there's there's a lot there there are so many different tribes over there that have different customs and traditions so you can't speak directly to the to the culture and have that map all the way around Uganda okay uh but for the most part culturally children are not supposed to report adults and if you bring shame on your family you bring shame on the community and this is a thing there it's a shame culture so um when you bring something shame forward you're shaming everyone and so that keeps a lot of the children in this problem for a very long time and a lot of them will not report a case um in fear of that shame and so they'll just suffer through it and what's starting to happen is when children know okay I can go somewhere for help and the people are going to help me get Justice and I'll be safe then that releases them to come forward and we're seeing that more and more in the communities where we're serving almost sounds like it's like a culture shift because maybe before they reported it but nobody did anything or they were shamed and now they're seeing some positive results come out of it and maybe sharing it with others that it's okay are you seeing that well we see that we see that um and then like one of the other major cultural issues that we're trying to overcome um and we feel like if we can switch this um thinking there will be a lot of prevention taking place but one of the problems is a lot of time of the time the child is being sexually abused by an uncle who's also providing for the family and so the child is treated like the the criminal in that in the case and the and the perpetrator is the victim and that's the way it gets seen a lot of the time and so what we're trying to do is kind of flip the script on that and let the community and the country understand like this child is the victim of this crime and the perpetrators need to um be held accountable and if we can get that kind of settled into the culture we'll see a lot of prevention come out of of um communities and yeah it also it does seem things like the culturally the children aren't before was protected by law but in practice it's not protected by the culture potentially even within the family and there has to be a cultural shift to bring about the advocacy for for the children so they're not exposed to that danger the biggest the biggest way to move the needle like right right now one in three girls are sexually abused in Uganda a lot wow and so that's you know that's a big needle to move and the best way and the the most efficient way to start really seeing that ratio drop is to get prevention out there in the community and shift people's mindset towards the problem we can capture cases there's 46 million people in Uganda half of those people are under the age of 15 and half of them are girls so we're talking about millions of cases across the country we would have to scale up a massive massive program to make a dent and just rescue millions of children from the situation um flipping the mindset will move the needle and change that number significantly so we're working really actively on that as well yeah I think part of that would be education and you guys are seeing you guys doing that that's and also having laws on the book that's not enforced it's not very good law or or at least not put it in practice do you feel the government um the law enforcement are you know are they behind you to yeah like 100% they're behind us I think that what we've we've recognized going in is that there are really good laws and there are police officers who really want to help these kids you know and attorneys and and social workers um and Child Protective Services but they don't have the resources just the basic resources because it is a developing Nation so um police officers often don't have cars or Vehicles so how do you do a crime scene investigation if you don't have wheels to get to it how do you make an arrest and bring a perpetrator back to jail without a car but if we can you know they call us our social worker goes over gets the police officer takes them to the crime scene takes the child to the police surgeon who's the doctor that performs the medical exam takes the um the police officer to arrest the perpetrator gets them back in jail like all that can be done so easily it's just a matter of providing that resource and they're very happy you know they they recognize that this is an issue we want to help these children um we just don't have the resources and so we say great you're the experts here we want to help you be able to do that so let us support you in that okay and and one other problem there is that there is a lot of corruption in the police department and this happened to our daughter Vanessa her uncle was arrested and then the next day her grandmother bribed him out of jail and so with a very small amount of money you can get out of jail but since we've uh put these teams together across agencies and they're doing case reviews on a regular basis that corruption is pretty much eliminated because everybody's watching that one case and knows okay is this guy in jail where is he in the process the prosecutors are involved and so we're really curving corruption on top of you know handling some of the logistic obstacles in the way so does your organization actually Also Serve almost as a watchdog to keep everybody honest we have a team member who's an administrator on the Community Action team and they're carrying the case files for each one of these um children and so every every month there's a case review across all of those cases and everybody's watching so you talked about the cap model I know it's you know theoretically yes there there there is sort of a war process but if you can kind of lead the our audience through lead us through from the discovery of a crime to the resolution what does that process look like how do you even get a case started yeah so Scott was saying earlier when we set up a community action team or a cat team they established their protocols so those protocols might involve like what does our intake look like if a child comes to the police or it comes to um the What's called the probation officer there it's their child protective services person okay and they have one in every neighborhood community and reports a crime what's the process and usually pretty immediately in that process is you call a rescue one more social worker and you mean the victim well the police officer or the person that has um received the report from the child the child is reporting to so they'll immediately call a rescue one more the police right would immediately call the rescue one more social worker who would then come and be with that child hold that child's hand while she goes through the you know difficult process of having to to make her statement and basically share her story which can be really traumatizing right every time you have to tell that so our social workers are very involved with that they'll accompany her to the medical doctor who does the exam collects the evidence they'll talk her through what's going to happen next they'll make an assessment um working with the uh child protective services and the police to determine if it's safe for her to return to her home um we we hope that it is you a child always needs to be in their home if they can but sometimes it's just not safe at home um sometimes the stigmatization that's going on or the family um is is not wanting them to come home because they brought shame to the family or the perpetrator hasn't been caught and had threatened uh that child's life things like that happen and so in those cases when it's not safe for them to return our social worker and and and the officials they're working with make the decision to place them in one of our safe houses and um there they get a lot of emotional support we have um four uh psychologists or therapists who are certified in um play therapy and trauma therapy and so they work with them for a long time they provide um psychosocial services to their family they work with the family so they can help them process what happen understand what's happening in the mind of their child what their child might be going through and how they can best um support them when they do get back home um they have medical a Care Medical access while they're there um they're are discipled we have a group of mentors in these homes that work with these children and let them know how much they're loved and adored and cherished by their father in Heaven by the people around them um they do literacy and school um many of them are in vocational training program so if they're maybe we you know a number of girls might come to us say pregnant and going back to school might not be an option for a 17-year-old girl who's pregnant or a 14-year-old who's pregnant um she may not have somebody who's able to look after her child and so we'll provide them with vocational skills and training so that she can eventually make a life for herself and a living wage for her her daughter so typically how long are they in this program before they are kind of more independent and can be on their own so the goal is is always to get them back into a safe and loving home within six months we think that's about how long it takes to stabilize the child and um there's a lot of case work that has to be done if they can't return to their immediate family and that might mean tracing down a grandmother or an auntie who's willing to take that child back in and then working with that grandmother and auntie and providing them with the psychosocial Services they need would need to be able to manage a smooth resettlement for that child but yeah we we'd love it to be done within six months um and some sometimes it takes closer to a year so all of this is voluntary I mean their their participation and the family's participation they have to want the help right yeah and it's so maybe talk about situations where it may not be so because fear you know family retribution how do you overcome that yeah so there are I I think it's about 177% of the cases of the children that are in are safe shelters um we are just not able to resettle at this point for the reasons you said either uh there is no family that's willing to take them in uh or you know this shame or the stigma is just uh it wouldn't be safe for them to return home um and so that's something we're looking at like how are we going to handle these situations long term because we never want the safe shelter to be long term that's intended to be temporary um but yeah right now we're exploring what it looks like to move forward with a more long-term program for those those that percentage of children who who we just simply can't resettle at this point it's baffling some of the situations that we're dealing with and and our social workers are are the ones who are really the heroes on they're on the ground dealing with these really traumatic situations every day right and you know we've taken in girls who are 18 months old and so young children very young wow and um there there are so many the the the Maze of of complications is pretty overwhelming you hear some pretty intense stories that come out of this so right I mean I almost wonder what the for the social workers that are working with these how are they filled because I imagine this is such a difficult to live this day in and day out hearing these stories it's kind of one of our top priorities is to make to check in with our social workers on a regular basis and make sure that they're getting space and you know counseling is not something that adults in Uganda take on right you know pretty easily but they they seek help and then um once a year our our goal is once a year to give them a retreat and so Sarah went over there with a group of ladies this past summer and took all the social workers on a little uh vacation retreat relax and really impactful it was so impactful we took 24 women to a resort for three days and we focused on the topic of Sabbath and Sabbath rest and what does that look like and how do you do it here but more importantly how do you take it home how do you take this concept of Sabbath which is not a really a a concept that's practiced very well here or in Uganda right um but how do you bring that into your daily life right and especially when you're dealing with secondhand trauma right which is a real and right yeah typically how big is a cting for a district or or why cting per District well they vary in size so um we'll have a core team and that's typically five six members on that core team and that those are the leaders of the primary agencies they do Thea case reviews so those would be the people you need involved in a case review and you want as few people as possible but the people necessary right um to get that case solid for court and to ensure that that child has all the services she needs to to um experience safety and healing right and justice but then you know it's kind of open to some of the politicians too so we we have a an executive layer over that and the politicians have really been on board they they take credit for the you know the the program they want to see their legacy lived out and it's a service that they're providing to the community so we've had we've had groups where there's like 30 people in the initial meeting 40 people in the initial meeting and you know slowly that starts to whittle down to the court team but um when we launch uh a new uh Community Action team there's like aund hundreds of people show up really and they really celebrate it it's it's something that's relatively um big for yeah for a a government agency to get rolling so when we launch it what we do is we have a signing ceremony and that's where the cat team members p in public in front of all the public sign their commitment to being on this community action team and so now we have accountability throughout the entire Community you are the people who are going to address this if it happens to a child here so they take their roles real seriously right we we get a big banner a huge banner and have everyone signing so sometimes those Banners are signed by hundreds of people yeah you get a whole Community pledging to protect children so the quarantine kind of watch that and you know say hey I this is my BR of De of people I can go to to to en list to help me yes essentially it's almost like a volunteer to join in the cause to to solve the problem right and it's and it's telling the community oh like these people are really coming together and um and building you know a a a group that is going to tackle this and once they see uh the arrests place and and somebody goes to jail and they can't bribe them out that information gets gets communicated around the community fast like o over in Africa it's very communal there's a lot of um we call it lugambo in the local language it's gossip uh but people know everything that's going on so that's actually like one of the best ways to spread info yes so if someone gets arrested and they're not out everybody knows about it second one third one fourth one and I think we have 101 we currently we have arrested 101 perpetrators so far in the last two years and years two and a half years yeah in in four different three different communities so far so that gets out there and sometime people start to really take it serious that prevents it from happening as well so wow yeah well I want to kind of go back two and a half years you mentioned Vanessa during the pandemic kind of it she felt called to share her story was there something that kind of triggered her that says I want to make a difference I want to share my story what what was it that was in her she she was at home doing school online and was on some sort of online Facebook group well and or Instagram Instagram or whatever they were talking about different things and she shared shared her story in that group and when that group uh closed down a lot of people started texting her and saying this happened to me I you know I didn't know what to do um even young men were texting her saying this also happened to me and that's what really kind of brought it out of her she was like I shared this painful story right but then other people had wasn't alone in it and they weren't alone and she can make a difference yes yes yes so our guiding scripture is Genesis 50:20 don't be afraid because what man intended for evil God intended for good the saving of many lives which is being done right now so we really saw this as an opportunity and Vanessa saw this as an opportunity to take a very horrible and messy and awful like the most tragic thing you can think of happening to a person and using it somehow turning it around in her resilience to make something good out of it right so brave of her to even share her story over and over because I imagine she's having to relive that but it's almost a kind of a Selfless Love that she feels she needs to to make this difference right so how is she doing now she's 23 she's in college she's in college and she's working um she's spent a lot of time in Africa since this started and uh last year she went back for the first time since rescue one more started uh Last Summer Okay and she was invited to be on national television shows speak in conferences uh speak at churches and schools and it really kind of filled her up uh we had we had rescued a pretty good number of girls at that at that point point and so she got to spend time with the girls who had been rescued okay because she was courageous enough to tell her story and she she said that was you know of all the things that she did being on like National shows and all of that she said the most impactful thing that she did was see her girls she calls them her girls and we we opened up a safe house uh in November of last year and and she was there for the dedication and couldn't believe it yeah you know all of the things that have have been born out of this story uh that are really helping yeah a pretty good number of girls and we're just continuing to grow it and God's opening doors and she's there just kind of um serving as a spokesperson and an inspiration for the other girls and may maybe when she finishes school uh she'll want to take on a big role but for now she's our spokesperson and and inspires these other other children fantastic yeah that you know when Vanessa first you know it's very rare like we said for a child to go to the police and report this kind of thing but Vanessa was that that child at one a million who did she went to the police and they when she went they didn't have a program in place for kids who were going through this and she couldn't return home because she had just brought shame on her family and they had said don't come home and so the safest place for her at that time was a jail cell and she spent two weeks in jail which is why she knows her uncle was she saw him get bred out by her grandmother and then her grandmother told her there don't don't come home you're never welcome here again so wasn't it one of those times that you were connected with her well actually when she came into our lives we were visiting with the social worker in his office um he was helping us with the adoption of our two other children and that day that particular day we went went in we were trying to get him to um fill out some forms and he said look I can't help you today because I don't even know what I'm going to do with this child the police brought her to me this morning she's been sleeping in jail for the last two weeks she was abused by her her family members and I have I don't know where she's going to sleep tonight and so we were like oh that's awful like she can sleep with us you know go she can sleep with us until you find her family and um 5 years later you know she she'd been with us and we were in love and we just ended up adopting her and she became a part of our forever family but but when she was at the safe house and got to see the the dedication and the opening of that safe house she says um that that moment was just really impactful and and overwhelming almost because she she saw now that now when other children come forward they don't have to sleep in the jail C there's a safe place for them to go yes yeah yeah Jail's the wrong place wrong place wrong place after you report a crime you go to jail you you g in jail is next level too so yeah it's it's not appropriate yeah yeah so what's next for rescue one more just um there's plan to expand to other districts or kind of broaden this scope to uh maybe even other countries in Africa is this a serious issue in the in the entire continent of Africa in other countries as well it's a it's a serious serious issue everywhere um Africa the the the big problem is there are not resources you know in a lot of the countries there but our Focus right now is um to build community action teams in every District in Uganda okay and there are 135 districts there right now by by this time next year we'll be in five or six districts and um so what's next is District after District after district and we're concentrating mostly on the the capital city and the surrounding area um as a major center of influence and okay uh density of population uh this year this coming year that will be our Focus but then we'll hit the major cities uh out on the outskirts of town as well so um we have we have a couple of uh big challenges to overcome in the next year as well what we're going to do with the children who can't be resettled what kind of um shelter and refuge can we provide for them and then on the prevention front we have a pretty exciting development that the the president of uganda's daughter has joined our team and she's real passionate about uh child sexual abuse and trafficking and so we're going to put a plan together with her to really make an impact on the cultural side of things the awareness and the education side of things her mother who's the first lady is the Minister of education and has line of sight to every school in ug so we can really uh make a broad broad impact on prevention and just keep going one one child rescuing one more one more one child one District at a time one district one child at a time and really trying to bring an end to the problem if we can do if we can if we can really make a an impact in Uganda our hope is that any other country yeah African or South American um that doesn't have resources and doesn't have a program in place they can they can can look at what's been done in Uganda and we'd be happy to help Implement in other countries as well so so how how do you resource your program to build the I mean resource have to come from somewhere right we're we're out there we're out there you know uh getting fundraising we're hustling getting donations uh putting on events uh speaking on hello um podcasts hello world podcasts and really trying to get the word out there um to gain support so you know the finances behind it the government in Uganda doesn't have money so we're supplementing a lot of the things that the government would normally in our you know in the United States provide we're trying to provide those things to overcome some of the obstacles so yeah we're we're gaining funding from individuals and churches and um some corporate sponsors as well so maybe we can use this opportunity what is your next event well we just we just had one last Thursday oh uh and that's all right our annual fundraiser that we do out in Dripping Springs that'll be coming back around next November okay and then we do smaller things outside of that but we're kicking off our yearend fundraising campaign now because this is the time when people start to give of the entire year we'll see we have the opportunity to gain more you know donations in the next month and a half than any other time so we're gonna be very aggressively fundraising and so um if you have to leave with our audience some important points on why this ministry is important what would be some of the main take way that you wanted to really grasp from this episode well I think you know the ministry is so important because you're dealing with one of the most evil things that exists in our society and it's so dark and it's it's so tragic for a child to have to go through this and the healing process takes a lifetime when a child's violated like this it's just so hard to overcome um if if if healing doesn't take place and there isn't proper counseling and there isn't proper intervention you know children will go into drugs alcohol

rate that comes out of this it's just shattering you know and we can we can help like we can help these little kids that don't have anyone else to help them so from an impact standpoint the you can't think of too many things that you'd want to see eliminated from our societ our Global Society um and then I think you know we're we're a young organization and uh growing quickly and so if people want to get on board we're easy to contact we're very accessible and it's not a bohemuth organization almost everything is on the ground in Uganda and so if people want to partner with us financially that goes so far we just we just had um our annual fundraising dinner and talk to the people who had given last year about what we've done in in the past year and they camp believe how much is being done with the the small amount of money that we have right now so if people want to partner financially they can go to rescue1 more.com and get involved they can sign up for our newsletter and that will give them more information about what's going on every month and then social media uh you can follow us there and then people if they can pray um pray for our teams on the ground the children the children the prayers people really like feel the prayers this is a spiritual battle sure we need all the prayer support we can get yeah when we first started this podcast Holo World our mission was to find all the good that's all around us ReDiscover right and um my sister she always got well are we going to be one of those feel good only and ignore other things that may be happening but your story is also good because people are working good on behalf of children to confront evil and it doesn't always make you you know it's it's not a happy situation but it is a necessary situation you know for the good of the children and you know I want to thank you for what you guys are doing and it's um tough job and in some way you're creating something out of very little next to nothing and and then in a whole different country that present its own challenges just pray for the ministry and you know I know we we're both supporting of of what you guys are doing and we we know you guys you know your heart it's more than just a Ministry because we know you're you have a good heart to want to pursue for the good of others especially your heart for children so but today confronting a very serious situation and children need our help and uh this is uh very important to get across and you know there is there is hope out there we have 100 over 153 kids that we've served and we've rescued 88 from dangerous situations Sarah gets the numbers every day um this is awesome and she knows them every day she knows every case yeah um but you like we even even last um August I was at our our emergency shelter like where we do assessments and there were four new children that had just come in and um 14 other girls that were there the 14 girls who had spent more than a week there they were laughing and playing and dancing and having a great time and the four new ones looked like there was no hope but in a very short amount of time the counselors and the therapists they can lead those children from that dismal Outlook that very dark Outlook into that better head space that spiritual place and so there's a lot of like I think there's a lot of Hope there too because if those kids were just left at home suffering from this problem and never get a chance to get out of it that's the way their life is going to be you're yeah you're helping to change the trajectory yeah it's it's really changing and transforming the kids that have to go through this and giving them a a vision and a and a Jo and a joy back into their life and so right taking them out of Darkness over to Hope and helping them see that even though may be a long road ahead but kind of giving them that hope for wanting to keep staying on on it MH thank you Scott and Sarah this was really um such an amazing time together to learn about rescue one more learn a little bit more about um the two of you and sharing about Vanessa who really I think is a heroine in in all of this um that started rescue one more or instigated this rescue one more mission two and a half years ago um to where we are today so thank you both for your time and thank you you both for having us on the podcast getting the word out and then all the support and encouragement that you've absolutely you glad glad to be yeah well thank you so much we appreciate it thank you thank you I hope you enjoyed the episode we have a lot of fun putting the episodes together trying to bring you quality guests and good content so that we can Inspire each of us to be the our best version of ourselves it would mean so much to us if you would subscribe subribe to our Channel and like our videos hope to see you next [Music] time