Lethbridge organization helping girls in Mexico recover from being sex trafficked

‘We wanted them to have a home where they could be kids again and they could just hopefully start to heal from the trauma of what has happened to them’

Joy-Lynn Stickel is the executive director of Not4Sale, a Lethbridge-based organization with a home in Mexico where girls can recover after being sex trafficked. Stephen Tipper/Postmedia

For over a decade, Joy-Lynn Stickel says her heart has been breaking every day.

Stickel is the executive director of Not4Sale, a Lethbridge-based organization helping girls in Mexico recover after being sex trafficked. The non-profit received approval in the fall to open a home at an undisclosed location in Mexico. Currently, three girls are staying at the home.

Stickel, a pastor at Parallel Church in Lethbridge, told Postmedia she first heard about human trafficking 14 years ago at a conference.

“It grabbed my heart,” she said.

Fighting back tears, Stickel told her husband, Kelly, also a Parallel Church pastor, about what she’d heard, and he replied that they had to do something.

With another organization, they ended up opening a home for trafficked women and girls in Cambodia.

“We learned tons about the industry, we learned tons about how to fight against it,” said Stickel.

In the three years they were in that home, 23 women and girls went through.

But the couple wanted to move out on their own, and close to home. They went to Mexico in 2015 and had a team there, ready to go, said Stickel. However, due to a few factors, including government corruption, they only got all their approvals last fall for the home, which can house up to 10 girls. It was “quite a rollercoaster,” Stickel said.

“The idea of actually being the team that goes out and rescues girls feels heroic, but it’s so dangerous,” said Stickel. “It’s like you’re kidnapping these kids from the kidnappers, unless you’re working with the government.”