We are honored to share a powerful piece published this week in El Telégrafo, one of Ecuador's leading newspapers. Columnist Wilfrido Muñoz Cruz writes a deeply moving Christmas reflection that highlights Foundation Aerial Recovery, our new chapter in Ecuador, and their anti-trafficking work.
In a season often saturated with gestures and materialism, Muñoz challenges readers to confront the uncomfortable reality that while many celebrate in comfort, children across Latin America are being trafficked and exploited. His recognition of our veterans and first responders who have channeled their "conflict experience into a tool to save lives" reflects the international impact of the mission you make possible.
We've translated passages and invite you to share this profound challenge to live for peace rather than simply wish for it.
In the midst of holiday celebrations and year-end reflections, a powerful voice from Ecuador reminds us that Christmas is more than seasonal sentiment. It's a call to action.
Wilfrido Muñoz Cruz challenges us to move beyond the "digital prosody,” the artificial tone of doing good that has made the essential noisy and the urgent silent. The comparison is stark:
But hope does show up. Mr. Muñoz highlights what makes Aerial Recovery different: we don't operate from spectacle or seasonal activism. We bring real presence to places where children are the most coveted prize for criminal networks.
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This year alone, our teams have worked alongside law enforcement partners across Latin America to rescue dozens of trafficking victims and arrest criminals connected to transnational networks. Each operation represents not just numbers, but individual lives restored, girls who were told they owed fabricated debts, threatened with death, stripped of their identities, and forced into exploitation.
Christmas becomes a mirror, Muñoz writes. It doesn't ask how much we gave, but what kind of world we're funding with our choices: what we amplify, what we ignore, what we normalize.
This Christmas, you can give the gift of rescue.
You can choose to be part of operations that dismantles trafficking networks, that brings hope, that transforms the experience of conflict into tools for saving lives.
Your year-end gift to Aerial Recovery funds:
Joint anti-trafficking operations with international law enforcement
Undercover personnel, surveillance equipment, and technical expertise
Trauma-informed aftercare for survivors beginning their healing journey
Training and deployment of Humanitarian Special Operators to the frontlines
Thousands of supporters will make generous gifts to meaningful causes. But how many will fund the kind of operations that actually dismantle evil at its source? How many will equip veterans and first responders to walk into the hardest places and bring children home?
Your donation doesn't just support the Mission, it is the Mission. It's about choosing to walk with light and purpose and refusing let evil go unchallenged.
Merry Christmas, and may you walk in peace.
With gratitude for your partnership,
The Aerial Recovery Team
