Skip to main content

Tread on Trafficking

Friends, Romans (ok, maybe not Romans but you get the idea), Countrymen, lend me your ears (read: eyes and minds). It's springtime which means it's time to get outside and run, bike, hike, walk, climb, squeeze in a little more skiing, swim, dive, pogo stick, or pick your poison. Love146 has a unique way of focusing our post-cabin fever energy called Tread on Trafficking. You've heard me raving for about a month now about Love146. I'm Love146's brand new VP of Communications. It's been fun, it's been tough, I've shed tears over commercial sexual exploitation and even a few tears over the challenges of my role itself. But at the end of the day, what Love146 does well is awaken the inner abolitionist in each of us.
For me, the inner abolitionist woke up when I realized some of the Nepali street kids with whom I worked so many years ago were victims of sexual exploitation. I pray that dear Minu avoided that fate and survived the hardship of the streets to create a story of hope. Minu was the original owner of the six silver bangles I've worn on my left wrist for nearly eight years. On my last day in Kathmandu, Minu pulled half of her bangles set off her arm and gave them to me. She gave all she had to give; wearing Minu's bangles is an honor, each clink reminds me there are vulnerable ones on whose behalf we are called to stand and fight.
Part of that fight for me involves my journey here at Love146. Does hearing about commercial sexual exploitation make you really mad? Good! It should! Want to do something about it? Become a Treader yourself and commit to a financial or exercise goal for the months of May and June. If exercise isn't your thing, support me as I tread. I'll be ramping up fundraising efforts over this month but I wanted to get this out there ASAP because it just seems like we need to start doing something, anything to abolish child sex slavery and exploitation.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Rare Disease Day 2024

Today's Rare Disease Day. There's sometimes a particular weightiness to life with a rare disease. All the appointments, emergencies, traumas, doctors, therapists, medicines, opinions, schedules and upset schedules. My touchpoint is being mom to my precious girl with Wiedemann-Steiner Syndrome  (WSS). You'd have to spend a day or week shadowing me to know what it's really like. Doesn't that sound alienating? As though you couldn't possibly imagine if you're not living it? Well, maybe. But think about a time of immense grief you've lived through, or a time when your world seemed to be falling apart around you and it felt like everyone else was completely unaffected. I suppose it's a bit like that. You might have thought that those around you couldn't possibly know how that experience felt to you. A couple weeks ago, I started keeping a list of all the extraordinary things that happened in my life due to my daughter's rare disease. I learned a c

Startup Day 676: MVP coming soon

Hunkering down and revisiting user data consumed much of my last hundred-odd days, resulting in a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Simply built using Softr and Airtable (with tons of gratitude for  INVANTI 's support), I'm testing the willingness of Disability Self-advocates and Caregivers to find and write reviews of providers they recommend. Of the 200+ pain points expressed by Empowered Together's community, 88% can be addressed by the online marketplace simulated in our MVP. Users get to recommend respite providers, social activities, and therapists they love. We're testing a shift from Word of Mouth recommendations to tech-enabled referrals and lead gen, leveraging the collective voice and purchasing power of the disability community. This progress energizes me as a founder. This could be the key to unlock support for families affected by disability. My narrative for a startup bootcamp's application summarizes it best: As Empowered Together’s founder, Sarah has a

Startup Day 703: MVP live...

It's official, you can visit app.empoweredtogether.us  to see what we've been building! It's been a long journey to get here though this is really just the beginning. Yesterday, I reflected on why I'm doing this ( watch here ). I want to dive a bit deeper around the concept of creating the future I want to live in with my kids. I'm building a marketplace to connect families affected by disability with recommended businesses. I hypothesize that this will increase the rate of excellent customer experiences for People with Disabilities (PwD) -- 80% of their customer experiences are currently FAILURES! I also hypothesize that businesses will see the value in welcome PwD and society will slowly become more inclusive and accessible. Big dreams, I know, but that's the future I'm creating. On the personal side, creating that future would be meaningless to me if my kids and I didn't get to enjoy it together. That means it's equally important for me to engage