Support Freedom Story—Mully Children’s Family—Kenya

Creating Beautiful Lives

Mully Children’s Family and WorldCrafts partner to offer hope for the future.

Imagine being offered a new life and financial freedom only to be enslaved. Imagine being offered an education, a job, or a marriage only to be forced into sexual exploitation. Imagine being so poverty-stricken that you have no choice but to offer your body to traffickers in order to survive. Imagine having your passport, identification, and personal items, even your children, taken away so that you are trapped in bondage.

This is the experience of many in Kenya, a country known as a major hub for human trafficking. Kenya is listed as a source, destination, and transit country where poverty-stricken victims are captured, bought and sold, and carried back and forth across the borders of neighboring countries to satisfy evil greed. Some young victims here even fall prey because of a belief that those infected with AIDS can cure themselves by having sex with a virgin.

In this environment, Mully Children’s Family (MCF) has opened the Yatta Vocational Training Centre. This center came into being because of the dream of Esther Mully. Mummy Esther, as she is known, felt compelled to open a center for young women who have been exploited. When these young women come to the training center, they are shown love and compassion. While they learn what it is to be loved by a family, they also receive emotional and spiritual counseling, wellness interventions, and job skills training, such as jewelry-making and sewing. Their goal is to introduce each young girl to her Creator, offering her the hope of a totally transformed life.

Here, young women like Louisa are being offered a second chance. Louisa was forced to sell her body because of her poverty-stricken existence. Her rescue was arranged by a neighbor who saw her great suffering and offered to connect her with MCF. Louisa says, “I was so happy that finally someone was concerned with my life.” She uses the money she now earns at the training center to pay for her daughter’s nursery school fees and to help her family. She has also begun saving money to achieve her goal of starting her own business in the future.

Rose, another Mully Children’s Family artisan, also suffered exploitation because of her great poverty. Rose and her four siblings are all orphans. Her eldest sister left the family to search for work in Nairobi, but Rose says they have not heard from her. The remainder of the siblings are now scattered among relatives, with the youngest child living in a children’s home. Rose says, “We really do not have a home.” All of that changed after her rescue by MCF. Rose now has a home, and she has learned hairdressing, knitting, tailoring, dressmaking and design. Mummy Esther herself taught her how to create beadwork. Rose hopes to soon start providing comfortably for her child. She says she wants to give her customers her best, and she desires to fully provide for her family.

Victims of traffickers become trapped in a cycle of helplessness, despair and shame. Yatta Vocational Training Centre creates a grace-filled environment that restores these young women’s dignity and self-worth. WorldCrafts is humbled to partner with MCF in this endeavor. As an artisan group featured in the Support Freedom campaign, the Mully Children’s Family artisans are creating lovely handmade products. While crafting these beautiful pieces, each artisan is taking steps to create her own new beautiful life, a life that is now filled with hope for the future.

Support the artisans of Mully Children’s Family by purchasing their hand-crafted products.