Bags of Love: Bags of Christmas!

Communications Office

December 13^th proved to be a day of good cheer and hope as sisters loaded Christmas gift after Christmas gift into the truck of a volunteer’s car. This holiday season, RIA (Ready, Inspire Act), an organization that provides services to human trafficking victims and survivors, reached out to Marilyn McGoldrick, CSJ and Bags of Love with a mission: providing holiday cheer in the form of Christmas gifts for a group of human trafficking survivors. Sister Marilyn happily said yes, anticipating that they would need to assemble six or seven gift bags. However, there was a greater need, and that seven bags evolved into serving over twenty mothers and forty children.

With the help of Sisters Fran Butler, CSJ; Mary Ann Crowley, CSJ; Mary Theresa O’Reilly, CSJ; and Jo Perico, CSJ, the mothers received gifts of warm winter pajamas and toiletries, necessities and comforts to lessen the bitterness of the cold weather. They also received gift cards which would, in the words of Sister Marilyn, “… allow them to play Santa.” Sister Marilyn went on to explain how it’s important to give these women the opportunity to provide for their children to allow them to create some of the holiday magic they want their children to experience.  

This holiday mission is accomplished, but Sister Marilyn says that the need for Bags of Love is perpetual. These women have absolutely nothing. No clean clothes, no necessities, no points of contact. And these bags of love provide what Sister Marilyn hopes to be enough to get them through the first challenging days; not just necessities of the flesh, but nourishment for the soul. “The women who received these bags love the notes of encouragement the most,” Sister Marilyn says.  

Bags of Love are assembled all over Massachusetts. “Often, when an entity hears about our mission, they ask, ‘How can we join?’ and we are so thankful for their support. We have people creating Bags of Love in Lynn, Swampscott, Allston and Brighton, Somerville, Plymouth, New Hampshire, and elsewhere,” Sister Marilyn says. 

They are distributed all over New England. They’re often provided to undercover officers so that, upon rescuing another victim of human trafficking, they have the necessities the women need to make the transition from being victims of human trafficking to survivors. 

Recently, an FBI agent called Sister Marilyn, saying that a human trafficking survivor needed to appear in court and that, “She’s got nothing to wear!” A Bag of Love provided her with what she needed to testify.  

As we hear about the horrific tragedies that happen right here, right in Boston, there exists a desire to do something big and grand to stop it. Often, what we can do is smaller in nature, but has a far greater impact than we ever could have imagined. These Bags of Love provide necessities that, without, would make life even more challenging than it is already for these survivors of human trafficking.  

Want to help make a difference? Please contact Sister Marilyn McGoldrick at marilyn.mcgoldrick@csjboston.org for details on how to be part of the ministry to human trafficking victims.