The headline blared: Boko Haram Militants Raped Hundreds of Female Captives in Nigeria.

It was the above the fold story. The first thing I read in the paper that morning. The opening paragraph from the Times on May 18th screamed this indictment: Hundreds of women and girls captured by Boko Haram have been raped, many repeatedly, in what officials and relief workers describe as a deliberate strategy to dominate rural residents and possibly even create a new generation of Islamist militants in Nigeria.

The voice in my head screamed louder: HOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW?

The how rapidly morphed into a howl: within the same 24 hours I read the gut-turning, mind-shattering story of the atrocities being committed by ISIS against NINE YEAR OLD girls over at Ann Voskamp’s corner:

Click away, turn the other way if you want, but those girls are wild to turn and escape — and they can’t. They are categorized. Stripped. And shipped naked. Examined and distributed. Sold and passed around like meat. Livestock. You can walk into any mall and buy a pair of NIKE running shoes for what they are buying a Christian or Yezidi girl from 1 – 9 years of age – $172 dollars. And she’s yours. For whatever you want, for as long as you want, to make do whatever you want. Sit with that. Yeah, we’re all done living in a world where a pair of shoes can last longer, have more worth, be treated with more value, than a fondled, raped and discarded 9 year-old-girl.

Dreamers, we CANNOT permit this to happen on our watch. These girls are our SISTERS. They are our daughters, our friends, our nieces, our cousins, and we will never forgive ourselves if we do not use every ounce of the God-given talent and vision we have to CHANGE THIS.

There is no other audience that would understand this. Everyone else would say, We can’t do anything? That’s well beyond our control.

But we here, this tribe of God-sized Dreamers, we believe in the impossible. God places us on the starting line AT impossible. {===> Click To Tweet}  No is ammunition for us to prove them all wrong and show them all what a BIG GOD we serve.

THIS IS NOT BEYOND HIM. But we have to be willing to do something.

We have to do more than pray. We MUST act.

Here are some ways you can step out in faith and make a difference:

1. Preemptive Love Coalition, which we previously introduced to you, has a new initiative to support the women and girls in crisis in Iraq.   They are on the ground bringing a message of uniting not dividing and working across people groups and faith to bring healing.  You can find out more about the Love First mission and how to give on the link.
2. Doctors Without Borders/MSF – MSF is on the ground in Chad, on the border of Nigeria, helping the thousands of refugees fleeing Boko Haram.  There are still some areas they can not get to because MSF is unarmed and the fighting is too dangerous in certain communities.  DWB/MSF is in numerous such communities, not just supporting those suffering under Boko Haram attacks, but they are one of the few organizations actually supporting this particular region.
3.  Catholic Relief Services – This organization partners with local entities in both Iraq and Nigeria (as well as throughout the Middle East and Africa) and has long worked with governmental partners like UN to get relief to areas most under siege.

What shocked me more than anything in researching how we could specifically support our sisters in Iraq and Nigeria and the adjacent countries setting up recovery camps is how little specific relief efforts are underway.  We should be able to change this.  We have to stand up for these precious ones.

If you know of other organizations directly supporting girls and women that are recovering from ISIS and Boko Haram assaults, would you please share that information with us in the comments or on Facebook so we can update others?  I believe this community wants to help.  But that also requires letting everyone within our sphere of influence know what is going on.  Let’s blanket our social media outlets with a cry to unite in supporting these sisters in the greatest need today.

Photo Credit: New York Times.