Justice for all

Happy Friday, everyone! I am most certainly very happy this Friday because I have handed in all my final papers, finished 3 fellowship applications, and am officially DONE with Fall Quarter 2009. Yep, I’m one step closer to graduation (and hopefully one step closer to getting an awesome fellowship/job and not one step closer to living in a cardboard box…)!

Sunitha Krishnan

She is an absolutely amazing, amazing woman. I know this is the week of TED Talks on my blog, but I swear this one is worth it — it’s probably one of the best TED Talks I’ve ever seen. Sunitha Krishnan has started a really wonderful organization called Prajwala which rescues girls from the commercial sex trade in India. Her talk is beautiful, swelling with passion, and absolutely heartbreaking. She herself has gone through a lot and has been beaten up 14 times because of her work - but she is incredibly courageous and singlemindedly pursues her goal of bringing women and children out of the sex trade and into society as thriving, independent and happy individuals. Her main point? That we, as society are her biggest barrier. While we nod our heads and say, oh, it’s so great that you’re helping to end human trafficking, we ourselves don’t accept these girls into our lives, or treat them as full human beings. Society’s discrimination is sad and sadly, it’s a prevalent part of life in many countries. Watch this talk, and by the end you will be angry and fired up and ready to get out there and DO something about it.

The first thing to do is, as she says, to change ourselves. She’s not asking us to be MLK or Gandhi. All she’s asking is for us to change our own conceptions and perceptions. Eradicate any forms of discrimination, whether it is against sex slaves/prostitutes, LGBT people, or people of different races, ethnicities, religions, or socioeconomic classes. Changing ourselves in this way is the first step towards societal transformation.

This week’s links..

And of course, here are some of my favorite links from this week.

• Estimating the cost-effectiveness of the microfinance sector compared to the health sector, by the ever-critical GiveWell
• Susan Rice at the Holocaust Museum elaborates on the US-Sudan Policy
• My awesome Twitter friend @MsAmaka writes on her great new blog (you should subscribe!) about a new Amnesty report regarding shocking levels of police brutality in Nigeria
• Sexual terror in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe - new reports show that Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections featured systematic rape
• These are some steps forward at least, Uganda drops death sentence and life imprisonment from anti-gay bill and also bans FGM
  
• Text of Obama’s Nobel Lecture in Oslo, where he invokes “just war”
• A wonderful post by Nick Kristof about how to get readers to care by learning some lessons from psychology
• Aid Watch on the murky finances of Project Red
• Excellent, excellent post by Texas in Africa about the missing link between conflict and minerals in Congo, and how the argument is too often oversimplified (hint, by The Enough Project)
• I loved this graphic by Mint telling us who cares and who donates in the U.S.

Okay, I think that’s enough for now. I’ll be at home relaxing (aka filling out applications and working on my thesis - not very relaxing) and will have more time to write. I’m excited because I’ll be putting up some more opinion posts up rather than these short pieces. Have a wonderful and warm weekend!

I first heard about Hagar International over a year ago while reading the book “Not for Sale,” about human trafficking. Human trafficking is a tough issue to combat, especially since the solutions aren’t exactly clear, and require investment in long-term assistance and systemic change. But Hagar International has a really innovative and effective model, and is doing great work to attack the roots of human trafficking.

Hagar International is committed to individualized and long-term assistance for its beneficiaries, and they use the social enterprise model as a tool for social rehabilitation and economic empowerment. Hagar works with women and children from devastating backgrounds of violence, abuse and trafficking and supports them in their recovery, rehabilitation, job readiness and ultimately community reintegration.

Hagar International first began working in Cambodia, where about 80% of their beneficiaries have been successfully reintegrated into society. Hagar first provides shelter, accommodation, trauma recovery, therapy, education, literacy classes, and skills-training for women who need it, and then slowly helps them reintegrate into society. And what makes Hagar most unique is their development of social businesses; Hagar has begun several self-sustaining businesses which provide funds for the organization and meaningful employment for women who come from difficult backgrounds. For instance, in Cambodia Hagar runs Hagar Catering and Hydrologic - which provide jobs, the opportunity to learn new skills, and the chance to reintegrate into society for many of the women from Hagar’s programs.

I’d encourage you to visit their website to learn more about the innovative ways they are making a difference and combating human trafficking.

Picture Credit: Hagar Cambodia