Working for Free to Give Freedom — One Community’s Response to Sex Trafficking
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Enslaved. Raped. The humiliation of being dehumanized. Intolerable is an understatement. This is the nightmarish reality that 2 million people endure every day. The dark and hidden slavery of human sex trafficking not only exists, but thrives.
Origin Coffee & Tea is a non-profit coffee shop resolved to end human sex-trafficking. Located in the Northern California city of Rocklin, just 30 minutes outside of Sacramento, the coffee shop sees nearly 100 people each week willingly work for free to give freedom to those who are enslaved.
“What if we opened a coffee house where everyone worked for free to set girls free?” In 2009, the co-founders set out with a clear vision and little else and began to tell the story and invite people to join them on this mission. Soon a small, but passionate, community of people began to move forward, one step at a time, to open Origin Coffee.
Why a Coffee Shop? Ridding the world of the $32 billion sex trafficking industry doesn’t happen overnight; it’ll take a generation. Origin exists to create, resource, and propel a movement of people against sex trafficking and toward lasting redemption.
Woven into the fabric of Origin Coffee is a simple invitation to selfless sacrifice: To be intentional with your life, everyday, for the benefit of others. A coffee shop is a place where mission and relationship can move together towards change. A catalyst to move ordinary, mundane, daily routines into the fabric of a movement. Where something like a simple coffee habit can become a step toward change.
In their first year, Origin Coffee had the following impact:
Voices:
- More than 600 applications came to work for free at the coffee shop.
- More than 300 volunteers worked as as baristas, abolitionists and storytellers. Most of whom were previously doing nothing, now actively sacrificing from their freedom to abolish sex-trafficking.
- More than 1 million people were made aware of sex trafficking through relationships, school campuses, lectures, news stories, blogs, and media including a segment on the Nate Berkus Show.
Job Training:
- After rescue, many survivors have no work experience, maybe a GED, and certainly no impressive resume, thus recovery doesn’t end until reintegration happens. Origin has facilitated job training for 3 of these young survivors thus far.
- Hand-crafted products from Cambodia are sold to provide profits, jobs, and funding for a recovery home in Cambodia is only part of the impact. The Sak Saum recovery home in Cambodia has expanded the capacity of their home by 33%.
Money:
- All revenue goes to the International Justice Mission and Sak Saum in Cambodia. More than $20,000 went out to the rescue and recovery work of these two organizations.
People:
- Approximately 10 volunteers have outgrown the Origin shop and have been sent to fight sex trafficking in Cambodia, downtown Sacramento and other parts of California.
No single person made Origin Coffee possible, and no single person can end sex-trafficking. Yet together, a movement of passionate, selfless people, each playing their part, sacrificing what they can from who they are, can forever change the landscape of this global emergency.
More About This Charity
Region
West
Category
Small Charity of the Year
Name
Origin Coffee & Tea
Mission
A non-profit, for-benefit coffee shop resolved to end sex trafficking through giving, serving, and sacrifice.
Impact
- This Achievement raised $25,000
- This charity raised $20,000 in the past year
- More than 1,000 people were helped by this Achievement
Works In
United States, Cambodia, India
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