News & Stories

Cinderella’s House: Offering Hope to Abused Women

May 14, 2009

By Betsy Blanchard, serving in Spain

Editor’s note: Excerpts from Betsy’s recent newsletter describe her vision to assist immigrant women in Spain, many of whom are victims of sex-trafficking.

Great needs and spiritual darkness are a tangible part of life in my adopted home-Spain.

Spain’s Most Vulnerable

According to experts, immigrant women from Eastern Europe, Africa, Arabia, and Latin America have a 25 percent higher risk of being subjected to domestic violence in Spain.

Domestic violence is not the only problem these women face. There is a growing problem across Europe—including Spain—of sex-trafficking.

Young women-often girls in their teens, mostly from Latin America, Eastern Europe, and a few countries in Africa-are being forced into prostitution. Enticed to Spain by what seem to be legitimate jobs, they find themselves enslaved in prostitution, with almost no way out-hopeless, their young lives in ruins.

Cinderella’s House

God has laid a vision on my heart to establish a residential center—”Cinderella’s House”—to minister to these women in crisis. A center for restoration, it is where a hopeless and broken “princess” (a daughter of the King of Kings!) can meet the Prince of Peace and be transformed.

I spent the last six to eight months of my term in Spain laying some groundwork for this dream, researching possible sites for this ministry. My efforts will now focus primarily on getting this project off the ground—as God leads and provides.

Please continue to pray with me that God will soon make the Cinderella’s House project a reality that will impact women in crisis across Spain with the love of Jesus.

Learn More

Read about our work in Spain.

What You Can Do

Your support of Alliance Great Commission Ministries allows dedicated international workers like Betsy to continue their work-reaching the hopeless with the transforming message of Christ’s love.

To help get “Cinderella’s House” off the ground, you can mark your gift in any one of the following ways: “Cinderella’s House,” “Women in Crisis-Spain,” or “E. Blanchard Work Funds.” (Any of these designations will go toward the costs involved in Betsy’s ministry to women in crisis, as described in this article.)