Today's donation went to a group called Somaly Mam Foundation. I found them by way of the book Half the Sky, and I decided to donate to them because they are going after a pretty big problem: human trafficking. I had no idea how big of an issue it is in the US. There are no specific figures, since it is so hard to keep tabs on, but in rough numbers: 15,000 women are trafficked in the US every year. There are 1-2 MILLION children sold into prostitution every year. Those are some hefty numbers.
The founder is a pretty amazing woman: Cambodian, born to a poor family, sold into slavery as a a young girl. She was raped, tortured, and forced to watch her captors murder her best friend. It was a family member that sold her into slavery, which is crazy. She then escaped and eventually came to the US. She now fights the practice here in the US as well as in Cambodia.
Anyway, read about her and the charity here: www.somaly.org
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