When Cristhina first arrived in Bologna, Italy, more than a decade ago, she was surprised by how public prostitution seemed to be.
Girls stood along suburban roads and in family neighborhoods, sometimes in broad daylight, visibly soliciting passersby in cars and on foot. “They were everywhere,” she recalled. “Downtown, residential areas. Being prostituted out in the open.”
Cristhina, a Colombian who grew up in Florida and studied social work, learned about the realities of abuse and exploitation in the sex industry through her volunteer work in Miami. Feeling called to bring her knowledge and experience to Italy, she moved to Bologna after college in 2013 to join what was then a small outreach to prostitutes at a local church called Nuova Vita (New Life). Cristhina asked to use only her first name due to threats from traffickers, pimps, and the Mafia.
Before she arrived, church members under the leadership of an American missionary approached women on the streets with cups of hot tea, baskets of snacks, and handwritten notes listing helpline numbers and safe houses. Volunteers received training from ministry workers in Greece and the Netherlands.
“The idea was to listen,” Cristhina said. “To befriend them. To share hope and a way out.”
In 2011, the church converted the outreach program into a full-fledged ministry called Vite Trasformate (Transformed Lives), which works with women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation.
“In the evangelical world [of Italy], we were among the first doing outreach in this field,” Cristhina said.