If you have the chance, take a look at this weekend's New York Times article by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn. It's part of a section called "Saving the World's Women," and it dovetails nicely with the ideas raised in the below video. Through microloans and educational opportunities, the authors argue that women and girls could be the best weapon to fight global poverty--which of course would strike a huge blow to the world of sex slavery.
"While a precise number is hard to pin down, the International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency, estimates that at any one time there are 12.3 million people engaged in forced labor of all kinds, including sexual servitude. In Asia alone about one million children working in the sex trade are held in conditions indistinguishable from slavery, according to a U.N. report. Girls and women are locked in brothels and beaten if they resist, fed just enough to be kept alive and often sedated with drugs — to pacify them and often to cultivate addiction. India probably has more modern slaves than any other country." -- Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, "The Women's Crusade"Kristof and WuDunn's book, "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” will be published next month.
These ideas echo what author, mountain climber and humanitarian Greg Mortenson has found to be true in his life of building schools and educational opportunities for girls around the world. If you haven't read it, I would strongly recommend his book "Three Cups of Tea"--and if you liked it, you can now follow Mortenson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gregmortenson.
And to bring it all full-circle, you'll find he recently posted on a little video called... "The Girl Effect."
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