Diana Scimone

A plea for help from fellow abolitionists

I just got off the phone with my fellow red-headed abolitionist Julie Taylor Shematz, who is head of Beauty From Ashes. When Julie talks about child trafficking, I listen -- because she was trafficked herself.

Today she heads a strategic outreach and counseling program for women and girls all over the country who are trying to break free from the shackles of trafficking.

So here's the challenge that Julie and I discussed...

...and where we need your help:

• Julie was asked to talk to a group of children next month about child trafficking, but the program directors don't want her to mention sex trafficking. Some of the girls are as young as 3, but others are as old as 11.

• Julie met with a group of high school kids who put together a riveting drama about human trafficking--but most high schools won't let them present it because of the topic.

• Meanwhile I can't find a school or community center in the US that will test the Born2Fly Project to stop child trafficking. Schools all over the world are begging for it--but no takers in the US. I suspect it's because (1) they don't think there's a child trafficking problem here and/or (2) they don't want to deal with "offensive" subjects.

Okaaaaay.

So it's okay for kids to watch borderline pornographic dancing on network TV, listen to R-rated music and more...but it's not okay to warn them about sex traffickers recruiting them right now in their middle schools and malls? 

We have a national crisis in the US. The average age of kids entering prostitution in the US is between 11 and 14. That's the average age. Each year 100,000 minors are trafficked in the US--in your towns and ours.

We know that awareness leads to prevention, intervention, and restoration.

So Julie and I decided to throw this open to you.

"We need strategic and creative ideas," Julie explains. "This is a problem that we as abolitionists, especially educators, are facing. We all recognize the need to deliver this message to children and teens, but how do we do this other than the Internet? And how do we do it without sensationalizing or sanitizing it?"

Would you give us your ideas?

1. How can Julie talk to young kids about trafficking without mentioning sex?

2. What should that high school drama group do?

3. How can Born2Fly find schools and groups in the US to test our awareness program?

Tell us what you've done. Share your ideas with us. Or just vent if you want. Let us know in a comment below or here. And thanks.

 

BraveGirl: Standing up to con-artists of the child sex industry

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times:

Most kids get lured into child trafficking because they don't know the lies that traffickers tell. If we educate kids ahead of time, we'll help shut off the supply pipeline.

That's the goal of BraveGirl, a short about-to-be-produced film exploring con-artists of the sex industry in India through the lens of a young Nepali girl named Bumika.

When a man shows up in Bumika's village in Nepal offering to take her to Kathmandu where there is work, her parents give her permission to go. The journey from Bumika's simple home life in a Himalayan mountain village quickly leads not to the capital of Nepal but to the chaos of urban India. She sadly discovers the rules of this world are different than her own--and that she is a pawn in a much greater game.

You may remember my blog post about the photo that changed my life. I took the photo in Mumbai, India, the exact moment I first learned about child trafficking--when my contact showed me cages that hold 5-year-old girls smuggled across the border from Nepal to India.

Girls like Bumika.

The producers of BraveGirl are in the final weeks of raising the funds to make this important film. "This is about the issue of female human trafficking across the Nepal-India border," explains the film's producer, Stephanie Bousley. "We're working with a local Nepali production crew and are currently trying to raise production funds for the project."

The group is trying to raise $30,000 USD and is a little over 60% of the way there. The campaign ends on May 19 at 8:00 am EST (US). "So we have only have a few weeks left to raise the rest of the money or we won't be funded at all," adds Stephanie.

I've donated and you can too by clicking here. You don't need to donate a lot; the starting donation is just $10, and as I know from the Born2Fly Twitterthons, when a lot of people donate a small amount, we can reach seemingly unreachable goals.

You can read more about BraveGirl here:

www.bravegirlmovie.com
www.facebook.com/BraveGirlMovie
Twitter: @BraveGirlMovie

 

 

"Sometimes we must interfere."

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. May we never forget.

Here are the words of survivor Elie Wiesel at his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1986. As you read them, think how they apply to the attrocity of child trafficking. I don't know if the boy he is talking about is himself or another child, but it doesn't matter. Weisel's words are as provoking and moving in 2011 as they were in 1986.

"[The boy] asked his father: 'Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?'

"And now the boy is turning to me. 'Tell me,' he asks, 'what have you done with my future, what have you done with your life?' And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

"And then I explain to him how naïve we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

"Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must--at that moment--become the center of the universe...

"What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs...

"Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately."

Sometimes we must interfere. Child trafficking is a very good place to do that.