READ the Faith Perspective and Neighbor Focus stories, as well as the quote in What Does the Church Say?

REFLECT: What was one thing you heard from these stories that was important to you? Divide the group into pairs and EXPLAIN: We are going to do interviews. Each person will get a chance to be the interviewer and to be interviewed. When you are being interviewed, you will play the role of Lita from the Neighbor Focus story, imagining how you think she would respond. Begin by each person WRITING at least ve questions to be used when you are interviewing Lita. Remember, a good interview gets people to share about their feelings, including their fears.

ROLE PLAY THE INTERVIEWS in front of the class using your written questions. As you listen to Lita, interviewers may ask follow-up questions based on what they heard. IN A LARGE GROUP, ASK: What role did listening play in this activity? Give examples of interviewers who listened well and followed up with questions. Both James and Pope Francis emphasized the importance of listening to the survivors of human trafficking. What did you learn in this listening exercise that helps you understand better why listening to others is so important?

Lita carefully traces daisies on the cake she is preparing for her client in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She is grateful for the work and the skills she has learned as a pastry chef. But her life has not always been one of cakes and daisies.

Lita was very young when her father died. Her family found it difficult to make enough money to make ends meet. When she was only 10 years old, her stepmother began selling her to men for sex. Lita’s life has included many years of being used by other people to make them money or give them power.

When she was a teenager, she was helped by a private organization to escape the control of her stepmother. Soon after, she was connected to another group called Chab Dai Coalition, where Maryknoll Lay Missioner James Havey works.

In the work that James does with Lita and other survivors, he explains they “work for economic justice with an emphasis on the elimination of poverty and the empowerment of impoverished people.”

Besides helping people out of poverty, James says, empowering them means allowing them to be themselves. “We need to take care not to silence each other, especially those who have been abused. Survivors in particular need someone to listen to them because it is they who have the best knowledge of the services they and other survivors need.”