There are 20 people who owe their lives to the Village Mission’s support. TVM’s pledge to protect its concentrated network of people is a story of enduring loyalty, professional accountability, and sacrifice.
Kevin Graham, the founder of The Village Mission, sat down with Overt Operator and gave reporters an inside look at the journey the team has taken to save 20 souls from Afghanistan following the democratic government’s collapse at the time the American and NATO joint mission withdrew.
About the Founder
Graham’s service to his country took him to many regions with high levels of human rights violations. Driven by the crimes against humanity he witnessed, Graham was inspired by a moral obligation to do what he had to do to tackle the problem.
Graham served eight years of active duty as an infantryman in the Marine Corps. Then, he transitioned into intelligence roles as a Congressional personal staffer at the U.S. House of Representatives and later as a lead intelligence specialist with the Virginia State Police department.
From there, he became a Special Forces intelligence officer and served with the U.S. Defense Department.
Graham shared his personal difficulty transitioning from the military to the private sector. While he was skilled in his transition career choices, he was not motivated by them.
“My sales job I was good at…But my God, I was so bored,” Graham said.
So he was eager to accept the invitation to serve in the Special Forces. As a Special Forces intelligence officer, he was deployed to unstable regions where he gathered intelligence on U.S. threats that the Defense Department may want to eliminate and intelligence on western hostages that may need to be extracted.
Graham was sometimes deployed for many months at a time, spending enduring periods away from his family. A significant number of these days were spent living in hotels. In these situations, he bore witness to women, and children being human trafficked. Graham recalled seeing little boys and girls being led upstairs at hotels by people bearing the signs of human traffickers. As horrific as these acts were to see, he was forced to stay objective and not intervene due to his sensitive missions.
The First Effort
“It really wears on you,” Graham said, explaining how the burden of what he witnessed inspired him to take the first step in the journey that would become The Village Mission.
In 2019, Graham formed The Village Project LLC company to create education and awareness about human trafficking patterns for members of the hospitality service. The company offered personal training and support if a victim of human trafficking sued a hotel for failing to intervene.
Human Trafficking: What Signs To Look For
Graham told reporters the basic signs to look out for to determine if you are witnessing human trafficking. He explained that the perpetrator would be controlling over their victim’s information. Typically, this is a male perpetrator who exercises this control over a female victim.
“They aren’t allowed to talk. They aren’t given access to their own information,” Graham explained.
Additionally, a person will show signs of drug use or may have markings from restraints or minor restraints injuries. Hotel staff should also be aware of items in a hotel room that look out of place, such as recording equipment found in the trash.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Blue Campaign to end human trafficking highlights these signs from their training manuals page. If you suspect you have witnessed a case of human trafficking, contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or text *233733.
Pandemic Causes Pivot
The Village Project, as a company, was impacted heavily by the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to this, Graham was looking to find ways to support his family. The birth of Graham’s son led to his retirement from Special Forces, as he wanted to spend as much time with his new child as possible.
To ease his transition into the civilian branch, Graham attended the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Business. At this time, he wasn’t sure how to keep The Village Project alive. It was at this stage that his colleagues encouraged him to seek investors and keep the project moving, this time in a different direction. Peers at the school influenced him to use Mendoza business school’s resources and pivot The Village Project to a 501(c) nonprofit status.
The Mendoza School would recall later that Graham had confided in colleagues during week one of electives week, in June 2022. Graham merged his passion project
It was then that The Village Project as a company became defunct and The Village Mission was born.
Afghanistan Falls
Photo: Ministry of Defense
When the American and NATO joint mission to Afghanistan ended, many service personnel had friends and loved ones on the ground at the scene. Graham and his colleagues were thrown into a flurry trying to secure their Afghan allies, who would become immediate targets of the Taliban for their involvement with Americans and NATO. It was now a race against the clock to secure safe passage out of the country for the vital interpreters and other Afghan comrades who had served alongside American forces during the western democratic mission.
The group had developed a “snatch and grab” sort of system for pushing people out of the zone and onto planes. They used a method of holding up a photo of the missing individual at checkpoints, cooperating with allied civilians and Marines alike, to identify the separated individual and then brought them rapidly back to the evacuation checkpoint.
Graham described the process as being somewhat of a barter system. If one refugee finds another one who needs a seat on their bus, they may ask, in return, for a seat on that refugee’s departing plane. In this way, the mutual exchange kept pushing people toward the security checkpoints, the last point of tangency for freedom before the Taliban brought down its totalitarian rule in Afghanistan.
While he said that he would have loved to be able to help everyone, this was a “highly compartmentalized” effort to mediate the safe evacuation of a specific network.
“It was such a crazy time, but this wasn’t a rescue effort,” Graham explained, reasoning that such an effort on The Village Mission’s part would have been logistically impossible given time and resources. This comes down once more to the project’s pressing need to engage new streams of investment outside of its personal network.
The Village Mission's effort to save individuals was narrowed down to 20 people dear to the network. Today, five of those people are still trapped on the inside, and The Village Mission is seeking every resource at its disposal to bring them safely out. The remaining individuals were removed to safe houses in Turkey and Pakistan and are awaiting the final approval of Visas. The process has been delayed by the need for funds. As the project is heavily funded by its founders, it requires much of its personal wealth or capacity to raise money to keep afloat. Personal fundraising feats can take a long time, making the cash flow a constant battle.
“Four of those people will live with us in our home when they get approval to come to America,” Graham explained. The status of the others awaiting visas was not a certainty. Graham said that if these individuals were not approved to come to America, they would go on to have lives in Brazil or Bolivia.
“They will be starting new lives somewhere,” Graham said.
Not About Politics
Graham cautioned his audience to understand that this was not a political effort for him. The Village Mission effort has been a family and friends affair from the beginning. Graham praised his wife and colleagues for the personal sacrifices they made, saying that his wife had been like “a hammer” in working to drum up funds. Graham himself sank a massive portion of his finances into the project, making steep personal sacrifices from his savings account and personal wealth fund in his effort to keep his promise to his Afghan colleagues. In alignment with this, Graham’s wife used her personal finances to keep their family support stable while Graham applied the funds he could to the mission.
Graham explained that he made such steep personal sacrifices because this project is his passion. The people he supports are people with recognizable faces, stories, and dreams. For Graham, it is this familiarity that sets his mission apart as more than another general effort to do good.
A family helped by The Village Mission
“I don’t care about politics. This is purely a thing trying to keep kids from becoming child soldiers, little girls from being forced to be sex slaves, and single women from being forced into marriages,” Graham explained. Graham told reporters about a Taliban decree to force all young, single women to marry Taliban commanders. He then explained that child soldiers were being recruited from the population of young boys.
The Taliban has long practiced forcing children into their ranks, a fact that Human Rights Watch condemned. Taliban commanders recruit children from religious schools called madrassas. They are indoctrinated and trained how to fight in exchange for “protection” The Borgen Project reported.
Where TVM Goes From Here
When Graham was an active service member, finance was the easiest issue he faced when solving critical missions. He reasoned that with The Village Mission, his problems are reversed, with logistics of relief efforts now being the most straightforward task and securing money to pay for things like passports and safehouses now being the hardest.
Despite the struggle, Graham still feels a sense of personal duty toward his task. The Village Mission has pledged to find a way to support and save the 20 people in its network before they think about what comes next for the team.
Visit TVM’s landing page for more info about the founders, team members, and current objectives of the mission. You can also find more info about how you can help the effort at The Village Mission on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin.