South Korean Basketball Team Raises Funds to Help Victim of Trafficking Bounce Back
Republic of Korea - South Korea’s largest amateur basketball team, GOAT (Greatest of All Time) Basketball Korea, will organize a special fundraising match in Seoul on Saturday (11/6) for Sansa Rani, an Indonesian survivor of human trafficking, who plans to open a small bakery to begin a new life.
At the age of 28, Sansa was a domestic worker who went through a whirlwind of abuse before being rescued on the side of a road in Malaysia. Sansa’s story came to GOAT through IOM’s 6Degree.org initiative, a humanitarian crowdfunding portal to support individual survivors of human trafficking.
“With 6Degree.org, IOM is bridging a divide between those individuals who have fallen victim to ruthless greed and those who are committed, generous and willing to reach out and help,” said IOM Seoul Head of Office Miah Park.
Sansa’s case was chosen by the founder of GOAT, Hindson Her, who immediately empathised with the challenges Sansa faced, but was also touched by her incredible resilience.
“I clicked on Sansa’s case on 6degree.org first because the funding goal was the furthest off being achieved. When I learned that Sansa has been reunited with her family and hopes to establish a small bakery business to support herself and her son, I thought that we at GOAT should definitely try and help her,” Hindson recalled.
As the leading inter-governmental organization in the field of migration, IOM has provided over 70,000 survivors of trafficking with humanitarian, medical, legal and migration support over the past two decades.
Launched in June 2015, in collaboration with Microsoft, 6Degree.org enables the public to donate and support the voluntary return and sustainable reintegration of former victims of human trafficking.
“GOAT’s fundraising initiative is a good example of what we are trying to accomplish,” said 6Degree.org Project Leader Mike Nedelko. “6Degree.org is not just another way to donate money, but a platform to connect individual users with individual human stories.”
“6Degree.org not only ensures that individual’s charitable contributions go directly towards changing the life of another individual. It also helps to develop awareness, build understanding and nurture conviction towards stopping human trafficking through the many actions of a united collective,” he added.
The funds collected from the match will be donated to 6Degree.org to help Sansa open her bakery. Currently, according to the crowdfunding portal, she needs USD 1,375 to reach the funding goal.
For further information, please contact Mike Nedelko at 6Degree.org. Tel: +66-8301-80838, Email: mnedelko@iom.int or Eunjin Jeong at IOM Seoul, Tel: +82-10-7217-2428, Email: ejeong@iom.int