Around 4,000 women have been assisted by the Adorer Handmaids of the Blessed Sacrament and of Charity in Ccuta, Colombia, for 27 years as they attempt to flee human trafficking organisations at the city’s three border crossings into Venezuela.
The Spanish St. Mara Micaela formed the Adorer Sisters in the middle of the 19th century to aid women in leaving prostitution. Sister Mara Soledad Arias founded the residence they manage in Ccuta 27 years ago, and it currently houses women and young girls who have been the victims of sex trafficking.
Although there are 74 unofficial paths and eight legitimate crossings between Colombia and Venezuela, the majority of travellers enter through Ccuta and go on foot there.
As a result, this city is strategically located to combat human trafficking because a large number of women fall prey to these networks while attempting to escape Venezuela’s economic catastrophe.
Soledad, the home’s administrator, claimed in a piece on the Adorers website that when she asks “the girls why they came to Colombia,” they respond, “Because in Venezuela it’s worse.” that they lack opportunity and employment, are driven by hunger, and are unable to provide for their children.
Thus, these nuns are crucial to the emancipation of women who seek to reclaim their life after being victims of prostitution and human trafficking.
“It’s about alleviating the pain, listening to them, telling them that there is a God who loves them and who manifests himself in the Adorers because we were founded for them,” Soledad explained.
The sisters give the young ladies job training as part of their efforts to help them leave prostitution so they may have a source of income.
The sisters teach manual labour through listening centres like the so-called “Anchor” or “Sparks” workshops, giving the young women a marketable skill to help them start their new lives.
The women receive food and toiletries after the series of workshops is through. Supplies are provided for mothers to care for their newborns.
Workshops are offered in cosmetology, jewellery making, corsetry, and sewing.
The Adorers’ online story include Mara Inés Herrero’s statement, who credits the nuns for saving her from human trafficking networks and is now committed to paying it forward by working with the nuns to rescue other young women from prostitution.
“In 2009 I ended up being tricked by a job they told us about; they took us into prostitution [instead]. Coming to Colombia is hard because you don’t have a family, there’s no work, and with time a woman ends up doing things that she doesn’t [think] she’s going to do,” she explained.
Herrero is now an essential component of the Adorers’ mission, carrying St. Mara Micaela’s message of liberty to the young ladies living on the streets of Ccuta and the surrounding area.
Herrero adds that she has been able to enhance her relationship with her children in addition to the manual labour training, the spiritual life, and the development she receives from the sisters. She also underlines that these young women have the power to change their lives and that the Adorers will provide them with all the support they need.
Herrero said, “the change is that they begin to study, to make progress in other things, to become independent and not be dependent on other people. The sisters invite all the women who are going through difficult situations to come to the home, because their doors are open to everyone”.