Would you jump into a cold lake in the middle of February? What if it helped women exit and recover from sexual exploitation? This year, five people from the HtH community decided to do just that by joining the Calgary Ice Breaker Challenge [ http://calgaryicebreaker.com/], and took the chilly plunge in support of Reset [https://resetcalgary.ca/] (formerly Servant's Anonymous Society).
"I decided to do the polar dip this year because I watched my dad do it last year, and thought if he could do it surely I could," says team leader and HtH participant Jaymie Schouten. "Since it is a cause so close to my heart, and I’ve been wanting to do more this year, I thought the polar dip would be a good start in this journey. I thought creating an HtH team would be a good way to get more people involved in the event, and also thought it would be a cool serving opportunity for our community "
Team HtH brought in a total of $1440, and Jaymie's goal for next year is for the team could raise at least $5000.
"It was a little hard to get everybody involved with fundraising, so my goal for next year would be to encourage everyone to fundraise more, and give ways in which we could do this better," She says.
The event itself was a fun, supportive and energetic atmosphere, but it wasn't free from some fear for what was to come.
"The day of there was a lot of built up excitement as well as fear amongst the team, however, we had a great day of laughs, and cheering each other on," says Jamie. "At the end of the polar dip there is an awards ceremony, and we were asked to sing a song, and we sang the doxology, we were a very small group that day, but people still enjoyed hearing us sing."
Jaymie credits her journey as an HtH participant with motivating her to organize a team and make the effort to fundraise. "When I joined HtH it was the first time I really became aware of sex trafficking,|" she says. "In the 4 years that I’ve been part of this community I’ve been able to learn, and investigate the issue for myself. This year I’ve been feeling that I need to do more in order to stop this issue, and I definitely believe gathering a team for the polar dip was a great way to start this journey."
