Boundless Mercy

We desire to give employees in the sex industry in Houston hope for other lifestyle and career options through building relationships of trust. We regularly distribute the local anti-trafficking hotline number available to sex industry workers in Houston; we also give away artisan cookies and notes of encouragement. Our next step is to procure space for an office and The Ark Bakery & Café (a non-profit dba of Boundless Mercy), which serves to raise public awareness of the sex trafficking problem in northeast Houston and fund anti-trafficking initiatives. The goal will ultimately be to solicit corporate endownments for culinary internships to hire women and men exiting the sex industry and train them in culinary arts and small business management.

In addition, we provide awareness and training sessions to various groups upon request. These sessions educate participants in the scope and severity of the sex trafficking problem in our city and help direct them toward available courses of action to combat the problem.

Through prayer, awareness sessions, and regular outreach activities, we strive to re-direct those in the sex industry to other lifestyle and career options. We provide encouragement, assurance, and a sense of personal worth to those we visit regularly in our target locations. We also ensure they are equipped with the local hotline number, which provides services for those wishing to exit the industry. We work equally with club managers, customers (when they initiate conversation with us), dancers, prostitutes, traffickers (when they speak with us), as well as security guards, club bartenders, and valet parking attendants. Our desire is to build relationships with them and encourage them to have confidence in their ability to learn viable skills outside the sex industry.

Over the past 11+ years, we have sustained a regular, consistent outreach schedule to strip clubs, brothels, and sex shops in northeast Houston. Managers have given us permission to visit their employees, and they consider us a part of their regular routine; they have said repeatedly that they look forward to our visits. We distribute artisan cookies and personal notes of encouragement to each person; our average number of people visited every two weeks is 150 (around 3500 encounters annually). This interface requires 4000 notes written and 8000+ cookies baked (each person receives two cookies). The percentage of repeat encounters is approximately 30%, as we visit the same locations regularly. The numbers of women versus men: 2:1 (roughly two thirds of our encounters are females; one third are males). Our capacity to maintain a high-intensity level of outreach has been proven and maintained.

Similarly, we conduct awareness and training sessions when requested by any group to do so. We cover topics that are needed by the requesting group: scope and severity of the sex trafficking problem, how to recognize a potential sex trafficking victim, how to decide what type of outreach or intervention might be useful in a given community, how to identify possible locations to be visited, ideas for strategies to combat human trafficking in a given community, and how to speak with potential victims of human trafficking.

Please see above. Outreaches can continue to expand as more people are trained to visit sex industry workers. The proposed bakery (which went "live" online in August of 2020) serves to raise public awareness, as it openly advertises that all funds received above cost are used to fund anti-sex trafficking initiatives. The bakery is currently in the black, as sales (not including any donations) are covering the cost of goods sold to the public as well as the cost of goods given away free to sex industry workers. The long-term plan is to hire those who desire to exit the sex trade and train them in culinary arts and small business management.

We currently are operating online and by word of mouth under the Texas Cottage Industry Law. In 2021, we expanded our product line from cookies to a number of other baked goods. The customer base is growing. Our next step is moving our baking efforts to leased local commercial kitchen space prior to soliciting corporate donors for our own commercial space and for endowed, salaried positions with benefits for those we wish to hire out of the sex industry.