Human trafficking is perhaps one of the most unimaginable practices in existence in today’s world. However, it is real and it is happening even outside my very own doorstep in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Just this morning when I picked up the newspaper, I read the startling news that the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul has been ranked the 13th largest center for child prostitution in the country. Thankfully much is being done to combat sex and human trafficking in Minnesota thanks to the newly signed piece of legislation called the Minnesota Safe Harbors Law.* Yet much more needs to be done in this combined metro area of close to 3 million people, and even a larger battle remains on a global scale.
Nearly no place in the world is untouched by human trafficking. Furthermore human trafficking can occur within and outside of international borders occurring in a variety of industries ranging from sex trade, to forced child labor and child soldiers. Oftentimes the victims are kidnapped against their will or inadvertently taken from their families who believe their children are going away to get an eduction where in reality they are being sold into a life of servitude and slavery inside a brothel.
Sunset over West Bay Beach on the island of Roatan is always a magical treat.
Sunday night I arrived home utterly exhausted and unfortunately sick from Honduras. I tend to be prone to stomach bugs when I travel to developing countries and thankfully I always carry an antibiotic which has already began to help. Nevertheless, I lost six pounds in a week and came back to a sick child again as well. We just can’t seem to get healthy in our house.
The tropical island of Roatan. Worlds apart from the mainland of Honduras where 80% of the people live in poverty.
I’ve completed my second day volunteering with the beautiful children at a children’s day care center that assists poor single mothers so they can work. Originally I thought I would be working at an orphanage but that was somehow lost in translation. I’m finding that much for me is lost in translation since I’m only at a very basic Spanish level. But I’ve come to understand with traveling, especially in developing countries, that you must simply go with the flow. Having an open mind and open heart is paramount. Otherwise you’d pack you bags and leave the next day for home!
Honduras is much more basic and rough around the edges than Guatemala. It has truly opened my eyes. Over 80% of the people here live in poverty and it is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti and along with Bolivia. Yet despite the poverty and the dire situations most people live in, people are generally happy and resolved with their lot in life. Especially the children.
Here is a brief look at some of my beautiful new friends I met today at the center. They are so incredibly loving and full of life. They have so little material goods yet their joyous smile tells it all. For them, there is much more to life than having all the latest toys. Their love of life is evident and infectious.
Come, meet a few of my new little friends and see for yourself.
The onset of the Syrian conflict over 21 months ago has been utterly devastating. Thousands of Syrians have been displaced and over 540,000 Syrians are registered refuges in the neighboring countries of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Egypt. Unfortunately the refuge crisis is only getting worse. Bordering countries have seen a huge sudden increase of over 140,000 refuges in just the last six weeks. Furthermore, on Wednesday The UN predicted that if things don’t calm down in Syria and the ugly Civil War does not end soon, the number of Syrian refuges could explode to over 1.1 million by early summer.
As winter blankets Syria and her neighbors, the conditions at the refuge camps are grim. In some camps, women and children represent over 75% of the refugees such as in Zaatari, Jordan, which has 30,000 refugees at the moment. Families are struggling to survive and feed their families, living in tents under the freezing cold conditions with sadly no end of their desperate situation in sight.
Fortunately NGO’s such as World Food Programme (WFP) is there to help. The WFP has worked alongside the UNHCR (The United Nation’s Refugee Arm) to provide a regular supply of food to the families. While UNHCR is distributing such necessary supplies as blankets for fuel and cooking, the WFP has been supplying “dry rations” over the winter months that refugees can cook themselves. The Dry rations include rice, bulgur, wheat, yellow split peas, sugar and salt, which are provided along with a daily allotment of bread.
In the Zaatari refugee camp alone, over 100 communal kitchens have been built that services 30,000 people. The UNHCR is working to build more in order to ensure everyone has access. But the cold, cruel wind of winter is making situations miserable for many.
Meanwhile inside Syria, food insecurity is on the rise due to bread shortages and higher food prices, leaving millions of Syrians in desperate conditions and may lead to more people leaving the country and entering the already over-crowded refuge camps.
It is not a good situation, but you can help. Simply share this video to raise awareness or make a small donation to the World Food Programme that can help feed a family and save a life.
This post was written on behalf of the Global Team of 200. Information above is provided by the WFP as well as research on the web. To learn more about the World Food Programme’s work, click here.
This post is the second piece of a two-part series on the recent Carter Work Project and Habitat for Humanity’s work in Haiti. To read the first post “The Story of How 600 Volunteers Built 100 Homes in a Week” click here.
In lieu of pictures, this video says it all. The commitment, the teamwork, the compassion and the hope that these volunteers have given to people who have lost it all.
Above: “Our Carter Work Project closing ceremonies video celebrates the impact of 100 new homes built in Haiti by more than 600 volunteers alongside families affected by the 2010 earthquake.” Continue reading →
How many times do I have to try to tell you That I’m sorry for the things I’ve done But when I start to try to tell you That’s when you have to tell me Hey, this kind of trouble’s only just begun I tell myself too many times Why don’t you ever learn to keep your big mouth shut That’s why it hurts so bad to hear the words That keep on falling from your mouth Falling from your mouth Falling from your mouth Tell me
Why Why I may be mad I may be blind I may be viciously unkind But I can still read what you’re thinking And I’ve heard it said too many times That you’d be better off Besides
Why can’t you see this boat is sinking Let’s go down to the water’s edge And we can cast away those doubts Some things are better left unsaid
But they still turn me inside out Turning inside out turning inside out Tell me Why Tell me Why This is the book I never read These are the words I never said This is the path I’ll never tread These are the dreams I’ll dream instead This is the joy that’s seldom spread These are the tears
The tears we shed This is the fear This is the dread These are the contents of my head And these are the years that we have spent And this is what they represent And this is how I feel Do you know how I feel? ‘Cause I don’t think you know how I feel I don’t think you know what I feel I don’t think you know what I feel You don’t know what I feel
-Annie Lennox, lyrics “Why”
Residents and members of the media at a vigil in Kauhajoki, Finland, one day after the September 23, 2008 shooting incident. Photo credit: Wikipedia Commons.
Why?
I am utterly heartbroken today by the tragedy that bestowed upon Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. What happened today is unimaginable. It is horrendous. Ugly. Cruel. And uncomprehensible.
As President Obama said holding back tears, there is “not a parent in America who doesn’t feel the overwhelming grief that I do.”
The fact that once again a young man opened fired on children in an elementary school is so sickening that I can hardly hold back my tears.
Can’t our children be safe anymore? Do they have to fear for their lives when they go to the one place they should be safe: School. The movies have already been ruined. The malls as well. Meanwhile schools continue to be hit by the unthinkable.
I don’t understand it.
Our world is becoming so insanely violent, and not only in America. Gratuitous violence is portrayed left and right in movies, on television and 24/7 on CNN. It is spread across the front pages of our newspapers on a daily basis and is found in children’s video games, books and toys. Our children are growing up in an everly increasing violent world, so violent that people are almost becoming immune to violence. It is disheartening and depressing.
You combine our violent world with the fact that in this county any kind of wacko can buy a semiautomatic gun off the internet without skipping a beat, makes my stomach lurch. Gun control is not the only answer but having some legislation in place to slow down the process would certainly help. Why on earth you can easily buy weapons meant to be used in warfare is sick. No one should be able to freely buy these kinds of killing machines.
I worry deeply about a growing problem of hatred and apathy among some young men. The last few mass shootings have all been performed by young, lost souls. The Connecticut school shooter was only 20 years old. The Oregon, shooter a mere 22 years old and described as “numb” before the attack. The Colorado movie theater shooter who was only 25 and clearly a psychopath (how were the red flags in this case ignored?). The Virginia Tech shooter who took out dozens was a college student and then there is Colombine. Sadly, the list continues and never seems to stop. Why these young men kill innocent people and not just kill themselves makes absolutely no rational sense. To kill children, little ones, is even more sickening.
What bothers me immensely is that nothing seems to be getting done to change things and curtail the endless amounts of tragedies. Why aren’t we taking steps to tighten gun control? Why aren’t we putting more functioning systems in place to help deal with mental health issues? And why on earth do we live in a world that celebrates violence in almost everything we do? Why?
Of course I know these are complicated issues and aren’t easily solved. But we can certainly take some steps forward and stop ignoring the issues. It seems like each time a mass shooting happens, it creates a ripple effect on over to the “lunatics” out there who get an “ah ha” moment and copy it. Why not? In their sick heads where violence is glorified and gets plenty of attention (think CNN and Fox News, 24/7 coverage), it just feeds the frenzy.
My heart aches tonight for the parents who lost their young children. I walked into my children’s elementary school this afternoon to pick them up and had to hold back tears. My daughter, so sweet, so precious and innocent is in Kindergarten. Max is in second grade. Even the thought of something this atrocious happening in their school made my stomach ache and my eyes well up with tears. I don’t know how I could ever go on living.
Please say a prayer tonight for the 18 children and the adults who needlessly lost their lives. It is time we did something to end this world of violence.
I’ll leave you with this one quote that I read and it broke my heart. All the kids wanted was to celebrate Christmas. They didn’t want to die.
First grade teacher Kaitlin Roig, 29, locked her 14 students in a class bathroom and listened to “tons of shooting” until police came to help.
“It was horrific,” Roig said. “I thought we were going to die.”
She said that the terrified kids were saying, “I just want Christmas…I don’t want to die. I just want to have Christmas.”
“We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.” – Paulo Coelho
Photo credit: Maternity Worldwide
The figures are startling. Every year around the world 287,000 women die in what should be the most joyous time of life: Having a baby. That means one woman dies every 2 minutes or 800 a day, during pregnancy and childbirth.
As a mother of two children who suffered two high-risk births, I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to be pregnant in a developing nation. It is not surprising that the majority of women (over 56% of the total) who die are in sub-Saharan Africa, a region of the world that is engulfed in extreme poverty. When you compare the mortality rates to women in the Western world, 99% of all deaths take place in the developing world.
In Ethiopia alone, one of the poorest countries in the world, 90% of women give birth at home and for every 100,000 women who give birth in the country, 676 women die from delivery and childbirth complications. Further accentuating the problem in the fact that Ethiopian women, who have little or no access to family planning or contraception, have on average 4.8 babies who survive. These numbers alone put women at high risk of dying and not living to see their babies grow up or raise the others. Continue reading →
I am honored to be writing a two part series on behalf of Habitat for Humanity. Recently 600 volunteers from around the world set off to Haiti as part of the Carter Work Project for the second year in a row with the goal of building 100 homes in a week. Here is their story.
“Men anpil, chay pa lou.”
Many hands [make] the load lighter.
-Haitian proverb
In 1984, President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn created the Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project in response to the basic need of simple, decent and affordable shelter for people around the world. For 29 consecutive Mr. and Mrs. Carter have volunteered with Habitat for Humanity for one week building homes and hope in over 14 countries. Past missions have brought people together to build homes as close as Mexico and Canada and as far away as South Africa and the Philippines. It has been an amazing feat and even more impressive given the fact that Carter and his wife Rosalynn, who are both in their mid-eighties, are right there with the volunteers on the ground, pouring in their heart, sweat and soul, in every project.
This post is part of the Social Good Sunday series in which I highlight different organizations around the world making the world a better place.
Poverty is a tough topic to comprehend. It is tragic, dark, unfair and cruel. A way of life that doesn’t make sense in a world that has so much for some and so little for the rest. If poverty is hard to understand as an adult, imagine how confusing it is to understand such a difficult topic for children.
Many children in my community have everything they need and most likely too much. They generally have all the latest toys, more than enough food on their table, a home to live in and a family to love. However, once you step outside of Southwest Minneapolis, the picture is dramatically different. Children live in poverty, don’t always have enough to eat at night and struggle immensely in school. The inequities are surprising and often astounding.
According to numbers released in September by the U.S. Census, the percentage of children living in poverty in Minnesota continues to grow.
“Now 80,000 more children are living in poverty compared to 2000 (114,000), an increase of about 70 percent. Officially, an estimated 194,000 (15.4 percent) children were living in poverty in Minnesota in 2011, a trend that has continued to increase for more than 10 years. Compared to last year, the number increased only slightly by 2,000 children from 192,000 in 2010”.
I often find that our middle class children live in a bubble and grow up rarely being exposed to what the rest of the world lives like and even more so, what a large percentage of kids in their own city live like. In poverty. If it is hard for adults to understand poverty, it is oftentimes even more challenging for children to understand the full impact of poverty on families and kids themselves.
In honor of the first ever Giving Tuesday, a new day to give back to the community that was launched on November 27th, The Greater Twin Cities United Way* launched a fun, educational online game cleverly called “Pass the Grade“. In “Pass the Grade”, players will experience four challenges that teach about the trials children in poverty have to overcome to succeed in school. What is so impressive about Pass the Grade is that it accomplishes two important goals: First, it educates children about other kids living in poverty in a fun, engaging way. Second, it also raises money for educational programs with each game played.
Here are some details about the fundraising piece of the campaign (all information below provided by Greater Twin Cities United Way):
Campaign was launched on “Giving Tuesday” – November 27, 2012 and runs through December 31 2012.
Ecolab, Inc. is committing a total of $30,000 to the effort on two fronts: For each person who plays the game, found at www.uwpassthegrade.org, Ecolab Inc. will donate $1 to United Way’s Pass the Grade Campaign up to a maximum $10,000. For each person who donates after playing the game, Ecolab will also contribute a dollar-for-dollar match, up to $20,000.
The goal of United Way’s Pass the Grade Campaign is to help 7,500 kids pass the grade in 2013.Here are some examples on how playing this game helps children living in poverty:
$5 provides a hungry child with snacks for a school week.
$22 will help one child receive one-on-one reading help.
$33 provides a child with enriching after-school programs.
5,000 kids will get a healthy snack at school.
1,500 kids will receive one-on-one tutoring and reading help.
1,000 kids will take part in enriching after-school programs.
The game, developed by Space 150 and supported by U.S. Bank, takes players through four unique challenges that test if they have what it takes to pass the third grade. (Students who fall behind by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school.) After each challenge, statistics on childhood poverty are shared. Upon completion of the game, a grade is given to the player. Players are then asked to share their results via social media to encourage additional donations.
“Tackling the challenge of poverty and making a difference in a child’s life can’t be done alone, it must be a community effort,” says Greater Twin Cities United Way Senior Vice President of Marketing Kathy Hollenhorst. She continues, “In playing Pass the Grade, one learns about the impact of poverty on a child’s educational advancement, while at the same time learning about how to make a difference in the community. With our regions’ philanthropic spirit, we at United Way believe that together we can help all children get the quality early education they need to succeed in school – and in life.”
Ok….now I’m going to ask everyone to play the game! I just played the game and I failed! I failed at passing but I sure learned a lot about kids living in my community in poverty. Here is what I learned.
About Greater Twin Cities United Way:
Greater Twin Cities United Way addresses our community’s most critical issues by focusing on three key areas: Basic Needs, Education and Health. We attack poverty on multiple, interconnected fronts to achieve lasting change – through 10 measurable goals – by collaborating with business, government and nonprofit organizations to create solutions and carry out our call to action to LIVE UNITED by encouraging everyone to Give. Advocate. Volunteer. United Way serves people living in or near poverty in nine counties: Anoka, Carver, Chisago, Dakota, Hennepin, Isanti, Ramsey, Scott and western Washington. Join the movement. LIVE UNITED.
As World AIDS Day rapidly approaches (December 1, 2012) it is time to think about the impact that AIDS has on children. Did you know that every single day 900 children are infected with HIV? Furthermore, 90% of child infections of HIV are passed on from mother to child.
“A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people. ” ― Franklin D. Roosevelt
Monsoon clouds over the Arizona forest, much that has sadly burnt down due to wildfires.
Back in July I wrote a post titled “The End of AIDS: We can’t stop funding now”. The post was in response to my visit to our nation’s capital on behalf of my advocacy work with Results, a grassroots organization that works to end global poverty. During this visit, I had to opportunity to visit the Global Village at the XIX International AIDS Conference which was being held in the United States for the first time in many years. It was a symbolic event, clearly highlighting America’s leadership as one of the key funders and advocates in fighting AIDS.
This December 1 is World AIDS Day, a day in which the world brings attention to the devastating fact that this global epidemic still infects 2.7 million new people and claims 2 million lives each year. It is also estimated that nearly 30 million people have died from AIDS-related causes since the beginning of the epidemic (UNAID 2010 report).
Although “these are sobering numbers, this year World AIDS Day comes after a string of stunning scientific advances that has fundamentally altered the possibilities in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The end of the AIDS epidemic is within our grasp” (Results.org).
