Tikvah: Bringing hope to the hopeless
Alyssa Waller, Staff Writer
Flyer courtesy of Tikvah.
North Greenville University has a chapter of Tikvah, an anti-human trafficking group.
Tikvah started back in 2012. Tikvah raises awareness to try to reduce sex trafficking as much as possible. The president of Tikvah is Adelaide Dickens, a junior interdisciplinary major.
The main goal of Tikvah is to educate and equip student to give hope to the hopeless, which ties to their mission statement: Give hope to the hopeless.
The ways that they want to give hope to the hopeless is to have events to grow and raise awareness for the club. They strive to share actual information, considering there are a lot of misconceptions out there about human trafficking.
They want to raise awareness that human trafficking is also happening here in Greenville, S.C and surrounding areas.
Sarah Wylie, junior Interdisplinary major, Adeliade Dickens, junior Interdisplinary major and Abby Nix, broadcast media major each play a role in Tikvah.
Tikvah is working on getting more opportunities for students to actually do something about human trafficking and partner with local organizations like Switch, which is an organization here in the upstate. They help women as well as other victims who have gotten out of sex trafficking to help them reintegrate them back into society.
Switch gives the victims supplies, and they are there for them. Tikvah also works with The Poster Project, which is going around and hanging up posters in public with the human trafficking hotline.
Tikvah has been trying to work with different organizations to get opportunities so students just do not come in and listen to Dickens talk about the issues, but actually do something about the issues.
Tikvah meets every Monday at 5 p.m. All students have to do is show up. The meetings will also be planning events. There are a lot of different parts that fit together to make their goals happen.
It does not matter what a student’s major is, they can be a part of Tikvah and get involved.
Members are able to use their unique talents in different ways. Dickens mentions another member by the name of Abby Nix, a broadcast media major. Nix used her talents as well as her network to make a movie, Running Through the Shadows.
Dickens wants students to know that Tikvah is here and that there are a lot of opportunities. She wants people to understand the issue and that it is not so far out of reach that a person cannot do anything about it.
Dickens wants people to see the gospel behind Tikvah because of the issue of human trafficking and seeing what it does to people’s lives and how people are treated as objects.
Dickens said, “It is really powerful to look at that in light of the gospel and seeing that God has put His image on people and through advocating against human trafficking, Tikvah is really saying ‘No, people are really made in the image of God. They all have value.’ Tikvah is trying to bring that light to them.”
Nix mentions that some goals of Tikvah are to help victims of trafficking, and they do that by trying to help Switch Upstate as much as they can.
Nix also shares that Tikvah’s main goal is to raise awareness because there are a lot of things involved in the sex trafficking industry that people do not realize is bad, or one might not think contributes to it, but does contribute to it.
Another goal that Tikvah has is to do more. Nix mentions that Dickens shows an educational video that she has found. When someone comes to the meetings, they leave with more than they came in with.
Tikvah tries their best to come up with ideas for fundraisers. All the money that Tikvah gets goes to Switch Upstate.
Tikvah tries to get together and come up with ideas to raise funds for Switch. An example of a fundraiser they did three semesters ago was when they were selling $4 stickers.
They still have some, and they are going to sell stickers again, but with a different design.
Tikvah also takes place in the End It movement.
“Running Through the Shadows” gives a little insight into human trafficking. Nix has a friend who is a police officer, Lieutenant Alia Paramore, who has a platform called The Blue Heart Initiative and human trafficking awareness.
Paramore also does pageants called Mrs. Cosmos United States. Nix would like to get her friend to come and speak at one of the meetings. Nix thinks that doing so would get people in criminal justice interested as well.
