Women & Children

​Through the Good Shepherd ministries and agencies, the sisters and their lay partners work to meet the immediate needs of impoverished women and children, while their National Advocacy Center works for a social structure that better protects the vulnerable among us. All are working on a path forged by the Congregation's foundress, St. Mary Euphrasia.

Good Shepherd priorities are outlined in a series of Position Papers that have their source in the spirituality, vision, mission, and heritage of the Congregation.  Read or print the 2018 Position Paper on the Girl Child by clicking here.  To read or print the complete series, click here.  ​For more background on the Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd 2018 Position Papers and to access them in Spanish, French or English, visit this site.
Former President Jimmy Carter wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post expressing disbelief that some people and organizations are calling to decriminalize prostitution.

We can't adequately fight human trafficking if we give a green light to the purchasing of sex and women's (and girls') bodies.

Read Carter's op-ed online. (Or read PDF of op-ed here.)
Then sign up for our e-letter and action alerts.  Together, let's Rise Up & Act for Justice.

Older Foster Care Youth Act

The Continued State Flexibility to Assist Older Foster Youth Act, S.3078, is critical legislation that would allow states to continue supporting youth who are aging out of foster care through the end of the pandemic.

At Good Shepherd Services (GSS) in New York City, the effects of the expired moratorium are felt deeply among the current and former foster youth that GSS serves. According to Michelle Yanche, executive director of GSS, “the pandemic has presented new challenges in how we support foster youth, and this legislation is the step forward we need so that we all can continue to support them as the cope with the impacts caused by COVID-19.”

We need the Senate to pass the Continued State Flexibility to Assist Older Foster Youth Act immediately as youth are struggling and being dropped from the system every day once they turn 18. Please click the button below to contact your Senators and show your support for all the foster youths who have struggled because of this pandemic.

VAWA

VAWA has passed and been signed into law!

"VAWA was groundbreaking legislation 28 years ago, and it remains critical to this day. We have witnessed during our long two years and counting of the Covid pandemic that domestic violence has increased and opportunities to escape have narrowed.

This victory is all of ours. Thank you for your advocacy. Without the actions of committed people, change doesn’t happen. And this passage was a long time coming. Advocates - you among them - have been working for years to get the VAWA reauthorization through. The outcome is a testament to the importance of perseverance and resilience. So let’s celebrate this success.

"We thank VAWA’s bipartisan sponsors, Senators Dick Durbin, Joni Ernst, Dianne Feinstein and Lisa Murkowski for crafting this reauthorization including key enhancements that would ensure predators who prey on American Indian women and children can be held accountable and would prohibit future individuals from possessing or purchasing firearms if they have a protective order against them and are convicted of a domestic violence crime," said NAC's Executive Director Fran Eskin-Royer.

Girls Speak for Themselves

Good Shepherd Sisters Australia & New Zealand with Good Shepherd International Foundation release report on realizing rights of girls in the Asia Pacific region
The Summer 2021 study, A Good Shepherd Practitioner Understanding of Girls Rights’ Attainment, reports for - and with - girls in the region.

"Across the Asia Pacific region, the futures of millions of girls are imperilled as the result of unequal rights realisation. This is only being exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While the girl child is not a homogeneous group, many face similar challenges. They are disproportionately disadvantaged in health,
education, work and family life, especially in the region’s poorest countries. When factors like poverty, disability or ethnicity intersect and where gender stereotyping and unequal power relations dominate, girls’ disadvantage is amplified," the report begins. It goes on to identify four key gaps: access to justice; access to gender equality; access to quality education; and access to health and well-being.

Human Trafficking

Human Trafficking comprises the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, based on the recruitment, harboring, and transportation of people solely for the purpose of exploitation. It is a debasement of the human person, a grotesque injustice rooted in the dynamics of our global world and current global economy.

Worldwide, human trafficking is the second largest and fastest-growing organized crime in the world. There are an estimated 40.3 million people enslaved today, including 24.9 million in forced labor (including sex) and 15.4 million in forced marriage.
 
Estimates for profits taken through all forms of exploitation and slavery total roughly $150 billion a year, with profits from commercial sexual exploitation amounting to $99 billion.

What can you do? Take action against human trafficking!
 
"I have always been distressed at the lot of those who are victims of various kinds of human trafficking. How I wish that all of us would hear God’s cry: 'Where is your brother?' (Gen 4:9). Where is your brother or sister who is enslaved? Where is the brother and sister whom you are killing each day in clandestine warehouses, in rings of prostitution, in children used for begging, in exploiting undocumented labor? Let us not look the other way. There is greater complicity than we think. The issue involves everyone!"
 - Pope Francis, 2013, The Joy of the Gospel, #211 

As an active member of the Coalition of Catholic Organizations Against Human Trafficking and the Interfaith Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence (ICADSV), NAC lobbies for legislation that protects girls and women from exploitation and abuse.

Prostitution

To Curb Prostitution, Punish Buyers, Not the Victims

​The prostitution of women and girls is a chronic form of gender violence that has been structurally embedded in societies over the centuries.
 
Good Shepherd’s position echoes the UN 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others “that prostitution is incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person, and endangers the welfare of the individual, the family and the community…” (To learn more, read the Congregation's 2018 Position Paper on Prostitution.)
 
Prostitution is, by its nature, exploitative and is never part of a global decent work agenda.

In August 2015, NAC joined with other organizations opposing the Amnesty International decision to support the legalization of the sex industry which would place girls and women at greater risk of forced prostitution and human slavery. 
 
NAC advocates to reduce the economic factors forcing girls and women into prostitution through protection of safety net programs; ensuring minimum wage for food servers and other low wage employees; guarding against wage theft; opposing male privilege and patriarchy by supporting initiatives such as the Violence Against Women (VAWA) Act and the International Violence Against Women (I-VAWA) Act; supporting CEDAW (the UN Convention to End All Forms of Discrimination Against Women); opposing the Amnesty International effort to decriminalize the sex industry; and seeking to end racist attitudes and white privilege through work with the Ecumenical Advocacy Days Gathering.
 
For the Ecumenical Advocacy Days Gathering in 2016, NAC provided guidance in the creation of the domestic workshops with the focus on Racism, Class, and Power. 
 
NAC serves as a core member of the Interfaith Coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence. 

In Support of Girls

Today, in all cultures, girls continue to experience exclusion as a result social and systemic injustice, discrimination, gender violence, violations of human rights, and, especially, gender inequality. Lack of access to education and adequate health care, sexual abuse, female genital cutting, and too early child bearing are some obstacles that impede full development and deprive millions of girls of childhood.

In June 2015, NAC cosponsored an event honoring the work of the National Women’s Law Center. Over the years, NAC has worked closely with NWLC to lobby for adequate income for low-income women. 
 
NAC also has lobbied for an end to child detention in immigration facilities.  With immigrant women and girls being at high risk of rape, NAC has advocated for immigration reform.  One case worker reported that she had never met a female immigrant who had not been sexually molested during her trip to the United States.
 
The National Advocacy Center supports the Convention to End All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) since it helps to ensure equal educational opportunities.
 
NAC focuses on people-centered sustainable development and economic justice, physical safety, security and peacemaking, with a particular concern on those most impacted – women, girls and families.​