Calif. University's Plan: Help Sex Slavery Survivors

A Christian university in California has launched what it says is a first-of-its-kind scholarship to help survivors of sex trafficking start new lives. Point Loma Nazarene University has started a crowdfunding campaign and a longer-term donation page for its "Beauty for Ashes" scholarship, which gets its name from a Bible verse. The San Diego institution says it aims to be an "educational leader in the global movement to end modern slavery" and provide higher education "not just for the privileged youth of our culture, but also for the most vulnerable," Fox reports.

Survivors of human trafficking often "so badly want a college education, but that just seems so completely out of the realm of possibility for them," a university spokeswoman tells USA Today. "Many of them, when they're rescued, don't even have their high school diploma." The university says it aims to provide a full $40,000 scholarship for one person a year to begin with and more after it has raised the "seed money." Candidates referred to the institution by service agencies are already going through the application process. (More human trafficking stories.)