UWM Diverse Ideas Hosts Franciscan Peacemakers

UW-Milwaukee’s Lubar Entrepreneurship Center hosted a Diverse Ideas Talk featuring the Franciscan Peacemakers to talk about the root causes and solutions for trafficking and to foster discussion and empower women.

The Franciscan Peacemakers work to provide a pathway to a sustainable, healthy, safe and productive life for women engaging in prostitution due to trauma, human sex trafficking or drug addiction.

This pathway includes using entrepreneurship as a way to help women get out of their current situation.

“Our goal really is to create jobs for survivors,” said Shelly Roder, Director of Social Enterprise and Marketing PR for the Franciscan Peacemakers.

The Franciscan Peacemakers’ products, “Gifts for the Journey: Clean for Good,” include hand-made soaps, lotions, bath bombs and candles made by women in the Greater Milwaukee area who are healing from life on the streets.

“Entrepreneurship doesn’t look the same to everybody,” said Nicole Powley, a program manager for the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center. “The root of entrepreneurship is to find a problem that you want to solve and create an innovative solution. The Franciscan Peacemakers do that.”

The Franciscan Peacemakers’ work provides services like street ministry, housing and healing, employment and education. But, they also help to building trusting healthy relationships.

“I think it’s also the comradely of the other ladies,” said Roder. “Being with the right people and doing something meaningful.”

During the talk the group discussed trafficking in our area, recovery and their new store front that open Oct. 26, 2019 on 3333 W. Lisbon Ave.

Wisconsin, specifically Milwaukee, is a hub for human trafficking. Milwaukee is surrounded by cities like the Fox Valleys and Chicago, making it a geographical hot spot.

Areas near Lisbon Ave., 20th and 35th, and north of Capital Drive are popular areas for trafficking and prostitution.

“Trafficking is much more organized than people understand or realize,” said Roder.

Many of these areas are near freeways because it allows easy access for travelers to the city and corridors into downtown.

It’s important to recognize systems of power and inequality within our communities and how its connected to the issue of prostitution and addiction.

“Abuse is the misuse of power,” said Roder. “Traffickers target people who don’t fit in and are looking for affection.”

When women are considered less than human or less than important it plays into traffickers ability to objectify and create this culture of exploitation.

It’s important for people to recognize and trust their gut in romantic situations and to never fall prey to the promise of love.

“We’re constantly doing outreach to women on streets with the intention of building relations with women that they know they can trust,” said Roder. “It’s all about building relationships so that when a woman is ready, they can turn to us.”

This is why women are often entrapped in the industry as teens and why the Franciscan Peacemakers create a place at the table for people who don’t fit in and work to let them know there is a place for them.

“Honestly it’s the women who have chosen the path of recovery and stuck with it,” said Roder. “It’s been a really beautiful thing to see.”

Following the grand opening of the new store the Franciscan Peacemakers hope to grow their sales so they can employ more women and house more women.

“I think another goal is to continue educating the community and continuing to raise the question of systems of power,” said Roder.

The event took place on February 14th and was organized by the Women’s Resource Center, the Global Inclusion and Engagement Office and the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center.

The Lubar Entrepreneurship Center works with multi-cultural groups on campus to create a more broad audience and inclusive environment for diversity.

“Diversity doesn’t just mean race,” said Powley. “Diversity means culture, it means religion, it means gender identity.”

Diverse Ideas Talks strive to create events and conversations about entrepreneurship within global and local Milwaukee communities.

Participants who attended made valentines to deliver to the Women’s Veteran Clinic, Milwaukee Catholic Home, Sojourner Family Peace Center, and Black and Pink Milwaukee.

Powley estimates that 30 people showed up for the event and around 300 valentines were delivered.