Lewes-Rehoboth Rotary donates $1K to Zoe Ministries

The Lewes-Rehoboth Rotary Club recently donated $1,000 to Zoe Ministries, a Sussex County nonprofit organization whose goal is to provide an aftercare facility for victims of sexual trafficking.

While not yet in operational, the proposed facility would provide a home offering physical, emotional and spiritual healing to minor sex-trafficking victims in Delaware.

Many Delawareans are not aware there is a sex-trafficking problem in the United States, much less right here in Delaware. Trafficking is second only to drugs as the largest criminal enterprise in the U.S. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, this modern-day slavery involves the use of force, fraud or coercion to obtain either labor or commercial sex acts involving people under age 18.

More than 40 percent of all sex trafficking in the U.S. involves children, and 83 percent of all trafficking victims are U.S. citizens. In Delaware, over the four years ending in 2016, 48 cases were reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, with 153 potential victims. And in 2018, 16 cases were reported through June 30. According to Yolanda Schlabach, Zoe Ministries executive director, these are just the known cases; they don’t begin to represent the actual scale or scope of this type of criminal activity in Delaware.

Rotary's mission is to make the greater Lewes community a better place to live, work, go to school and raise a family, through both service and fundraising projects. The club meets at 5:45 p.m. every Monday for dinner at the Children’s Beach House in Lewes. Community-spirited individuals are invited to attend.