Please Respect the Rights of the ZOE Children

Dear Friends of ZOE,

Our heart has been and always will be to rescue orphans and other vulnerable children from human trafficking. We have further committed ourselves to raise them in God’s love – free from the shame and trauma of the past. We treat every child as our own. Through God’s grace, we have witnessed great success.

We must also help many more children in crisis.

In order to meet the goal of caring for additional children, it is necessary that we secure funding on a continual basis. One of the most impactful ways to raise both awareness and funding is to show pictures of the children and share their stories. These two things, protecting our children from shame and raising funds to help more children, are often at odds with one another.

We would love to tell all our partners and the world the amazing rescue stories of the kids and show the faces of these children whom we love. However, in order to protect them like we would protect our own children, we must limit what we share and limit what we show.

We must act in the best interest of our children

When they are adults, they will be free to choose whether or not they want to tell their stories to the world. Until then…it is our duty to protect them. This is the basis of our Media Guidelines.

1) We will tell a child’s past story only if the story cannot bring shame to the child. We will NEVER show a child’s face when sharing a story or using the term “human trafficking.” We will NEVER reveal the real name of a ZOE child. When sharing about a child’s past, we will allow only preauthorized pictures that show only the child’s back view or a blurred out face.

2) We will tell a child’s present story only if sharing the information will not bring shame to the child. When we do this, we will NEVER mention the child’s past story or share anything shameful related to human trafficking. Many of our children are orphans. Some were victims of human trafficking. Therefore, we do not want to show a picture of our children and imply that all of them were victims of human trafficking. To save them from this stigma, please include the word “orphans” when showing pictures of our children’s faces.

We want to thank you for your interest in ZOE and the children we serve. You could greatly help us by sharing about the work we do.

We want you to share stories, videos, and photos with others as long as you follow the guidelines laid out in detail in the ZOE Media Guidelines.

Thank you for helping our children and for being a real hero in their lives. We tell them all the time about the wonderful people who help them and they are forever grateful.

We too can never thank you enough.

Sincerely,

Michael Hart

CEO