LINDA EGLE
exploitation. ey also represent a movement that started as a spark on the Abilene Christian University campus and has spread like wildfire. e Red read Movement can now be found on 75 university campuses, partners with dozens of musicians and businesses, and interacts with students in numerous high school and youth groups across the United States. e idea is as simple as the product itself. Wearing the $3 bracelet raises awareness of human trafficking and modern-day slavery around the world. Proceeds support anti-trafficking work in Nepal that rescues as many as 100 girls each month and fund a “safe house” where the girls can take shelter. In the process, the Nepalese girls earn an income from weaving the bracelets and learn a sustainable skill that makes them less vulnerable to the lure of sex-traffickers. ACU Honors College seniors Brittany Partridge and Samantha Sutherland, who co-founded the movement in 2009 as freshmen, never dreamed their cause would grow as quickly and spread as widely as it has. Partridge was a high school student in Annandale, Minn., when she first encountered human trafficking. While on a mission trip to Romania, she was invited to tour a safe house filled with teenage girls who had been rescued from forced prostitution. Partridge felt an immediate connection. “ese girls looked like me. ey were mostly my age. I couldn’t help but think that could have been me,” she recalled. When she returned home, she began to research the sex trafficking industry. “I found out it was happening all over the
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world. I was just shocked that nobody was talking about the issue,” she said. “People never brought it up at school. We talk about slavery from 200 years ago but not about today.” at first encounter with modern-day slavery ignited a passion within Partridge. She decided her purpose in life was to combat human trafficking, to champion people who were being exploited. When she arrived at ACU a year later, she entered the political science program with plans to become a public-interest lawyer and prosecute the traffickers. “I didn’t really think I would be able to do anything big while I was still in school. I had this vision that my goals would have to wait until I had more education,” she said. But one of her political science professors, Dr. Caron Gentry, convinced Partridge she shouldn’t wait to act on her dreams. “I was so intimidated by college, by the atmosphere where nobody knew who I was, nobody knew what I was capable of doing,” Partridge said. “And Dr. Gentry really called that out and helped me have more confidence in myself. She was the catalyst for Red read and my inspiration.” Gentry told Partridge about Eternal reads, an Abilene nonprofit whose mission is to improve the lives of women and children most at risk of extreme poverty, trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Eternal reads creates jobs in developing nations by buying simple products like hats, totes and scarves made by women and reselling them in the U.S. Partridge and her roommate Sutherland, an advertising and public relations major from Brownwood, began volunteering two days a week at Eternal reads. ere they met Linda Egle, the