You may know Tim Tebow as the praying quarterback for the collegiate Florida Gators. You may remember him playing for the NFL’s Denver Broncos and New York Jets. He also briefly played minor league baseball for the New York Mets organization. He is a man who became a celebrity for his athletic achievements, but he has used that platform to start a Christ-centered foundation.

The Tim Tebow Foundation (TTF) has been around since 2010, and its public mission was serving orphans and children with profound medical needs and disabilities. This is a great ministry and a very needed one, especially when families of children with special needs want to develop a community. But TTF had also quietly been fighting a battle against human trafficking. In 2020, the foundation announced that anti-human trafficking was going to be another of its missions.

Both Tim and his wife Demi are very passionate about this work. Demi, a former Miss Universe, had a terrifying brush with hijackers that very well could have ended in her being trafficked. Before she married Tim, she created her own organization called #Unbreakable whose mission is to empower women with skills and knowledge to get out of bad and violent situations.

Tim’s father, a pastor, rescued four young women at an auction and inspired his son to keep up the fight. Tim rightly calls human trafficking and the exploitation of children “one of the greatest evils in the world.” He said in an interview that “40.3 million people right now … are trapped in this horrible evil of human trafficking. So many more are actually being exploited online, and that number goes up every day.”

Both Tim and Demi are united and see their organizations as tools to love and obey God and show Christ’s love to others. As Tim himself recently remarked: “There have been many rescues in many countries, including here. And there are so many stories of amazing survivors who have gone through such horrendous times. One of our non-negotiables is that we’re on a rescue mission because we believe that Christ was on a rescue mission for us — and we’ve got to be on a rescue mission for humanity.”

This past weekend was Tebow’s 35th birthday. In honor of that day and of the extraordinary life God has given him, he and his team hosted a fundraiser to build a safe house for girls in Thailand. There are currently 15 girls who are survivors with impending court cases to convict the evil people who trafficked them. Their lives are still in danger; some even have a price on their heads.

The Tim Tebow Foundation is partnering with Rapha International, an organization that provides care to survivors of human trafficking and exploitation, to protect these girls and provide them with a home and healing.

Thank you, Tim and Demi Tebow, for using your platforms to honor God and equip people to combat the evil of human trafficking and exploitation here at home and around the world.