Chris Castro

Elijah Rising is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization whose mission is to end sex trafficking through prayer, awareness, intervention, and restoration. Elijah Rising was founded in 2012 as a prayer gathering that focused on ending sex trafficking in Houston. Across Houston women and girls were being sold for sex, but there was little outcry. Elijah Rising began hosting Van Tours and showing the public the injustice happening across our city. In 2013 Elijah Rising negotiated the closure of a brothel (Angela’s Day Spa) and converted it into its headquarters. In 2014 Elijah Rising launched the Museum of Modern-Day Slavery. Now the same building that used to be a brothel houses one of the nation’s few museums dedicated to exposing the brutal realities of sex trafficking and exploitation. The museum allows the public to explore what it looks like inside a brothel, and it displays a collection of artifacts and information from the fieldwork conducted by Elijah Rising staff and volunteers. Elijah Rising also leads volunteers on Interventions in Houston and the surrounding areas multiple times a month. Through outreach into the brothels, sexually oriented businesses, and streets Elijah Rising provides women with resources to leave the sex industry. As Elijah Rising’s mission expanded a new facet was added with the purchase of Kendleton Farms: a residential program dedicated to the restoration of survivors of sex trafficking. Kendleton Farms provides housing, trauma-informed counseling, educational resources, life skills training, and transferable job skills to help survivors of sex traffickin live an empowered life.