THE RED LIGHT DISTRICT: (Thessaloniki, Greece)

So who on earth gets to take a year out of life, sauntering around the world just to have fun? I'll have you know, this trip is all part of our charitable portfolio…it's not all beaching, dining, and elephant safaris you know.

Our good friends and ex-colleagues in Bristol, Polis & Maria, have just set up the Salvation Army in Greece. They are doing fantastic work feeding people who do not have the support of wider family or the state, building

relationships with homeless people on the street, and making in-roads into the dark underbelly of the city's human trafficking and sex industry.

Kris was privileged enough to accompany Polis on his work with the Homeless, and with Maria into the Red Light District, where, accompanied by some great volunteers, she is taking on the gangsters and pimps, and getting alongside very vulnerable women. She values them, raises their fragile self - esteem, and offers an opportunity of a 'way out' for those who have lost their way or are being held against their will. Not satisfied with simply 'finding' the women the rest of society overlook and forget, she also prays with pimps who keep them there, and challenges them to turn their life around!!! Madness right? With a God-given fearlessness that borders on crazy, Maria dragged Kris into the various trouble spots with his camera, to try and capture these efforts and avoid a beating from various hardened  'Lock-stock-esque' characters.