USA Mission Experience day 7.   Our group boarded the BART train for the Tenderloin district and a meeting with the San Fransisco Department on the Status of Women.  Emily Murase gave us information and an explanation of the work since 1998 of San Fransisco as the first city in the world to adopt the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Domestic Violence Against Women, CEDAW.  The three requirements to become a CEDAW City are 1. Analysis of the city 2. Establish an over site body 3. Allocate funding.Their grants programs funds 24 community based agencies to address domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking.There are 6 staff members and a budget of $7 million which is a fraction of the $9.6 billion  city budget.  Emily emphasized that a proportional part of the budget should be dedicated to the needs of women and we need to hold the government accountable notable to this standard.  Because of the work of the department on the status of women in San Fransisco a homicide of 95 women in 2005 was improved to 0 homicides in 2010-2014.  She talked about the profit a pimp could make with four women in a year $600,000 tax free.  Selling of guns and drugs is less lucrative because they are gone after the sale.

In the afternoon we met with Glenda Hope the founder of San Fransisco Safe House and Jessica Lee the Executive Director.  Glenda heard the call to create the safe house and began the quest by applying for a PW Birthday Offering of  $.5 million.  She bluffed her way into purchasing the land for $ 850,000 with only the promise of the Birthday offering.  Glenda's idea became a reality affordable housing that has beauty, safety and is a place of dignity and healing.  The key she said was to grow to the place where your love for women is greater than your rage for their abuser.  "We must remember that the ground at the foot of the cross is level."
Jessica told us about the ten bedroom facilities that allow women to heal and grow for 18 months, services on the street for women on the waiting list.

We end d our day with Bible study on Joseph and his brothers a sibling rivalry that involved selling of a human.  We reflected on our experience think of how to interpret this experience as we travel home to our Synod sisters.