Operation Twisted Traveler is Sending a Message

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tetsumo/ / CC BY 2.0

Three American paedophiles are currently being sent back to the U.S. to face trial for child sex tourism in Cambodia.

It's hard not to become hateful and vindictive when you hear about people from our country paying thousands of dollars to fly across the world and take advantage of the kind of poverty that exists in Cambodia. To take that kind of advantage of little children, for $2 and a bag of rice.

Read more about it here:

• Washington Post
• Associated Press
• FOX News
  

"The appeal of a place like this is that it's very far away and pedophiles feel like they can come here and be anonymous, and be outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement," Carol Rodley, the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, said. "I hope the message that it sends is one of deterrence."

I do believe that some day there will be justice, and for some of those that have preyed on the weakest of the weak, that day starts today.

This Must Change!

Wow, this is equal parts convicting and incredibly inspiring.

Meet Jason. He, along with a large percentage of American citizens, has a goal to lose weight. And he's identified 6 great causes that fight injustices and inequalities around the world--from child sex trafficking with Love146 to Doctors Without Borders and Soles for Souls, an organization that helps people get something as simple as one working pair of shoes--to benefit from his hard work in working out. On his site This Must Change!, Jason asks for people to consider sponsoring each of the pounds he loses to go toward one of these six causes.

I dare you to watch this video and not feel humbled, inspired, encouraged.

And hey Jason...

You can do it, and you rock.

This Must Change! Intro from Project Church on Vimeo.

John Schools

Photo by Lee Carson

Currently reading: "'John Schools' Try to Change Attitudes About Paid Sex."

What do you think?  I think if an estimated 1/3 of the class is deterred because they start to see the darker side of prostitution and its consequences, and it also funds itself, that this is a great idea.

I wonder if a trafficking education portion is or ever will be included in this program.  I would hope demand would drop significantly if a john knew that there was a chance the woman he was paying was not actually there "by her own choice."

Ultimately, I've got to keep thinking that more awareness will have some effect on changing the hearts and minds of the masses, or else we're lost.

09_09_09: A Personal Favor

Something amazing is going to happen on September 9, 2009. We are going to raise almost $100,000 to have a major impact on preventing future children from being trafficked. That's right--you, and me.

My friend Diana Scimone is holding a one day fundraiser on 09-09-09. The goal is to have 9,000 people donate $9 so that we can get the Born2Fly wordless book into the hands of the children who need to see it.

The gist of it:
Most kids are lured into sex slavery because they don’t know the deceptive tactics of traffickers. What if we could warn children and their parents ahead of time? What if we could teach them about the lies traffickers use—and how to stand up against them? The rate of trafficking would drop and millions of kids would never enter the dark world of trafficking.

That’s exactly what the Born2Fly Project is all about: educating kids and their parents about the dangers of trafficking, with the ultimate goal of ending it. The centerpiece of B2F is a wordless book that teaches kids to make wise choices—wordless so we don’t have to translate it into hundreds of languages. A companion curriculum will reinforce the important concepts in the book.

Born to Fly is at the critical moment. The books and curriculum are nearly complete. We need to print these strategic materials and give them to at-risk kids and parents around the world. The 1-day fundraiser will raise money to do that—and prevent millions of kids from being trafficked. Traffickers think kids are commodities. On 9/9/09, tell kids they’re priceless. All it takes is $9.

What you can do:

• Donate: Go to www.born2fly.org and use the Chip-in widget to donate $9--or simply click on the link below.
  
• Email: Tell 9 people about 09-09-09 and send them to www.born2fly.org.
• Social Media: Use Facebook, blogs, and Twitter to tell your friends. Follow @09_09_09, and add a Twibbon after you've donated: http://bit.ly/xml6t
• Check Diana Scimone's blog for the latest, including daily updates on the awesome prizes you could win by being a part of this fundraiser--everything from beauty products to Chris Brogan's new book, "Trust Agents."
  

I'd like to ask you to consider donating $9, either today or on 09-09-09 itself, to make this book happen. Diana is a tireless abolitionist against child trafficking and even sent me a generous check to make sure I was able to go on the Love146 partner trip this year. I would love to repay the favor and have you join with me in blessing Diana and the thousands of children that would benefit from this book. A personal thanks from me to you!

Love,
Emily

An Addendum...

...to my last post.

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."

Something to Think About

Bostonians: Here's Your Chance

A two-part quiz for people local to the greater Boston area:

Are you:

1. Interested in getting involved with the Love146 Boston Task Force?
2. A parent, teacher, social worker, community youth advocate, or concerned community member wanting to a) know more about the problem of commercial sexual exploitation in the greater Boston area and other major U.S. cities and b) increase at-risk high school students' awareness on the issue?

If yes, you might want to be part of this opportunity.

Love146 is partnering with FAIR Fund as an exploratory phase of bringing a "Tell Your Friends" program to Boston. "Tell Your Friends" (TYF) is an awareness and prevention program created by a Washington D.C.-based organization called Fair Fund. The objective of the TYF program is to educate at-risk high school students about the realities of the commercial sex trade in the US - especially in the cities of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York, Miami, and Washington, D.C. 

The "Tell Your Friends" training will be taking place over two workdays near the end of September in the greater Boston area--and not a moment too soon:

• In the United States, an estimated 150,000 youth are at risk toward victimization via commercial sexual exploitation. 
• In 2008, 35 known cases of commercial sexual exploitation of minors was reported by FAIR Fund, the Polaris Project, and other area nonprofits and law enforcement. 
  
• During the pilot year of Tell Your Friends, 450 teens said that they personally knew teens involved in prostitution in D.C. Furthermore, 56 teens disclosed they or a friend were involved in commercial sexual activity.

If you're interested in learning more, leave me a comment or tweet at me (@ebain) and I can provide more details.  

Dispatch on Human Trafficking in the U.S.

Photo by Sanja

The Columbus Dispatch put together some multimedia materials on human trafficking happening in the Ohio area. The headline reads, "New word for prostitute: Victim."

As a country we generally have such a strong reaction toward prostitution. What this article and movies like "Girls Are Not for Sale" encourage is for us to look a few minutes longer at a larger picture. When we're seeing girls who aren't even legal adults yet being pimped and sold, how can we be treating them as though this is a lifestyle choice and then prosecute them as criminals?

On a related note, the Australian Broadcasting Company posted a story on how legalized prostitution is failing sex workers in Australia and that human trafficking for the purpose of illegal brothels is becoming a larger concern. I'm against legalizing prostitution for a number of reasons--most importantly because I think it poses an enormous step backwards in the fight against human trafficking. But I think our automatic criminalization of prostitution in the U.S. is attacking the problem from the wrong angle, as well. It's the two ends of the spectrum and unfortunately, until we can meet somewhere in the middle, we'll continue failing our young girls in the worst way.

Rock It.

What are the best things about summer?  Sunshine.  Happy summer pop songs. Longer days.  Wearing dresses and shorts.  Walking down the street to get an enormous, toppling two scoops of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in a cone.  

Saving children from sexual trafficking and exploitation with an outdoor car wash.

Update on Soft Hands, Kind Hearts

Yesterday the U.S. portion of the Body Shop campaign was announced (mentioned in my last post). Hurray! $6.00 of each hand cream will benefit ECPAT-USA.

I love it when beauty products have an impact that is way more than skin deep!