From the Founder. Nepal
I guess learning to sew in 4-H when I was 9 years old is paying off even though I haven’t had time to use my own sewing machine for years. I recently spent 2 days in Kathmandu, Nepal sourcing fabric, product ideas and materials for the sewing center we want to establish at one of the safe houses for rescued girls.
My name is Shawna and I’ve been involved with RTM since, well, the beginning.
My college roommate at Abilene Christian University and I recently re-chartered a “social club”(sorority) called Zeta Rho.
We strive to be a serviced based and Christ centered group. We have a bunch of amazing of girls that keep surprising me with their outstanding hearts for God and for people.
We wanted to select a not for profit organization that we could focus on for the semester and, after a unanimous decision, the girls chose to help the Red Thread Movement.
For one of our regular pledging activities this semester, we will be working at the warehouse threading bracelets for the RTM team since we know they can always use the help.
This past Saturday, however, they were waiting on a new shipment so they didn’t have any work for us. Instead, we ended up writing encouraging notes and letters to the Red Thread girls letting them know how much we appreciate them and how big a difference they really are making.
Before we were a social club, we were a service organization. Last February we held our first annual Valentine’s Day Fundraiser; proceeds went towards Love146 and the Red Thread Movement. We’re going to do it again this year and call it “Zeta Roses”. We will be selling roses in the Campus center of ACU for $2.00 and other flowers for $1.00. Those who purchase them will be able to write a message for the recipient and we will attach the message to the flower and deliver it anonymously to their “crush”. All of the proceeds will be going towards RTM.
Towards the end of the semester, we plan on hosting the first annual Red Thread Gala in lieu of a formal. It will be open to the public. Not only will the ticket proceeds go towards the RTM, but awareness of sex trafficking will be spread even further.
As a club we are so excited and blessed to be able to help the oppressed women in Nepal and to work with the wonderful girls who started the movement.
Here are some of his words on the event:
“I will be “abducted” and spend 72 hours in a basement room below a local restaurant. This makes the scenario very real, because a lot of people are actually held in places that are in close proximity to business and public life. During that time I will fast, think, pray and speak about the reality of slavery,” Heredia said.
The abduction is being streamed live at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/artagainstoppression
Contribute to this project at:
http://www.indiegogo.com/Rescue-Series
Here is a post he wrote that describes a little more about his project:
The Rescue Project
According to Love146 (an abolition movement) two children per minute are forced into slavery, 1,048,320 is the yearly result of this atrocity.
“Rescue” is an art project focused on raising awareness about slavery and modern day abolitionists and movements.. This project will focus on raising awareness and funds specifically for the Red Thread Movement for 2012. Visit their website to see the tremendous work they are doing to not only rescue people from human trafficking but also give them a hope for the future.
This series of three 6’ x 6’ concrete cells focuses on the darkness and tragedy of slavery and oppression. The light of hope for freedom that people who refuse to be silent can bring is expressed by an intense light source that will cast a shadow through a window or hole in the wall of the cell (see concept images below). Light exposes acts that are only done in darkness, and while “Rabbit” and “Fly Away” focus on longing for escape, “The Monster” is about the terror that the victims must feel.
Visually these pieces will be grim. My hope is that the concrete medium will invoke a cold and harsh depiction of the desperation these people feel and at the same time a hope for their future. The “cast shadow” aspect of the work is very intriguing to me as an artist and I feel like it will make the work impacting in many ways. The work will be exhibited in various settings with each space venue presenting the work differently. In a gallery I see a fixed presentation, a very reverent hush. The energy and bustle of a city street will have give the pieces a very different vibe when they are exhibited on a street corner or a parking lot and the cast shadow is 40’ tall on the side of a building.
The finished exhibit will be three (3) individual concrete cells. The cells will be approximately 6′ in height and will be lit in such a way that the shadow cast will represent the individual idea from each piece on a nearby wall.
The exhibit will also include individuals actually staying in a cell for a 24 hour period, a “24 Hour Abduction” of artists, pastors, activists or community leaders local to the area of the exhibit.
This work will be instrumental in raising awareness about this very important issue and is too important to not be developed.
This project will be very intensive. I will be constructing the sculpture in Styrofoam and concrete using a modular design that can be disassembled and moved for presentation. The pieces will also be spot lit for impact which, depending on the venue, will necessitate a small generator and spotlight(s). Each place that the works are shown will include literature and contact information for various groups that are focused on making an impact on this important topic.
The funding goal needed is $3,500 to cover the cost of materials and the time needed to focus on creating the pieces. If the entire amount is not raised then I will either scale back in size or develop the small scale pieces and as many of the large scale as possible.
Other Ways You Can Help
Please share this project with your friends, families, colleagues and organizations. Visit http://artagainstoppression.com.
Issue-at-large:
Human Trafficking in the United States
Anti-Trafficking Organizations:
Extras:
Books:
Blogs:
Documentaries:
These are all the employees of the station. The guy pictured is Tyler Lopez, the girl is Mistress Melissa.
The 3 arms belong to the top radio personality Hillary Marek and the DJs, Ryan and Jen, from the AM show.
The baskets are a $250 spa day basket to remind us how good we have it. To win the basket, you had to know facts off of the redthreadmovement.org website. We gave 2 away we are almost sold out of bracelets already. I have about 20bands that want to sign up, so we are getting a lot of attention.
“Great way for your students to get involved in real Kingdom work.” This was what my friend in ministry told me when she first shared with me the Red Thread Movement. So as I began to research and learn more about this ministry, I became more and more aware of how God was at work and present.
However, I didn’t just learn about the movement. I learned about a serious injustice that is happening to young girls all over the world. Girls as young as nine years old are being sold for their bodies and treated like trash. Nine years old! My heart was immediately heavy. Burdened. Even sick. At that moment, I knew God was telling me, “Get involved. It’s simple. Take a step. Just be my voice for those who don’t have one. Shed light onto this dark injustice. Be my voice.”
So I ordered 150 bracelets for my students and their friends—really not knowing what to expect. I had no idea how quickly this would catch on, or even if it would. What I quickly learned is that the bracelet speaks for itself. Within one week, I sold completely out of the bracelets. I had teenagers coming up to me asking for 20-30 more bracelets so they could sell them at school.
Since then, I’ve re-ordered two more times. The word is out. I have tried to tell everyone I know about the Red Thread and the mission behind the organization. The amazing thing is that my teenagers are now the ones who are passionate about it. Whether they are selling them at their schools, or to their extended families, or even to complete strangers, they are being a voice for those who don’t have one. They are making a difference for the Kingdom of God.
I cannot tell you enough how much I believe in this movement. It is giving a voice to the voiceless. It is shedding light into very dark places. It is bringing the Kingdom of God from heaven down to this earth. I’m thankful for the behind-the-scenes work that goes on to make this movement run smoothly. I’m thankful for those who have given their entire lives to fight this injustice. I’m thankful for all those involved in rescuing the girls or counseling them and pouring truth into them. I’m thankful that I have an opportunity to be a part of this movement as well.
One of my summer interns is spending the next three months in India—being open to where God leads her to go. She wrote me an email about visiting the Red District in Pune, India. This is what she writes.
“When you go up into the buildings, there are just a bunch of girls sitting everywhere from ages 13-25ish. The customers are allowed to go talk to them then pick who they want. Just walking through that place you feel overwhelmed with darkness. My eyes filled with tears realizing that everyone else in that area was there for different reasons than I was. Human trafficking is a huge battle to fight here. HUGE. I am so honored to be surrounded by such brave men who choose to fight this battle.”
I echo what Caroline wrote. Red Thread Movement is making a Kingdom-difference. We will continue to be praying—praying protection and rescue over the girls, praying wisdom and counsel for the lawyers and counselors, praying for discernment and leadership for those involved in the movement, and praying that you and I will be bold and courageous to stand up for something and be a voice for those who don’t have one. This is all for the glory of our Father.
Greetings from the Red Thread Movement at Boise State University,
My name is Lance Moore, and I am a Boise State student that has been swept up into the passion of social justice thanks to a belief/drive in one very simple yet complex idea, people. Not just people, but a compassion for those who have gone through circumstances that would make Faith a difficult perception to hold reverence in. However, as all great ideas tend to do, they begin to inspire and spread as if they were a brushfire set ablaze for all the right reasons. This is what the Red Thread Movement has done for me, and it is the reason I have started the Movement here at BSU.
With this is mind, I recently set out to jump through the hoops that come with status as an “official” student organization in the framework of a college institution. I met with the coordinator for Student Organizations at the Student Involvement Leadership Center to see what I would have to do to make Red Thread a part of the culture here at BSU. It started simply enough, I was given document after document, required to write a constitution modeled after the original Red Thread constitution, make official a list of officers, and continue on with the extensive paperwork that threatened to blunt, shall we say, my resolve for the entire thing. Even after I had done all this, I was told that I would have to get permission from multiple heads in this institutional arena in order to get the go ahead to sell the products of Red Thread (i.e. bracelets) to fundraise for the women of Nepal. I was absolutely baffled by the opposition I was receiving.
(Note: This process differs by campus. Some students have established the Red Thread Movement as an official student organization at their university within days. It is a good idea to check with an advisor at your school to learn more about the necessary steps to take at your institution.)
It was at this time that Fate would seem to step in at a beautifully opportune time. During this process of attempting to get Red Thread off the ground here at Boise State, I met an individual who just so happened to be the state of Idaho’s representative for the International Justice Mission (IJM), which is a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation, and other forms of violent oppression. I would soon come to find that this marvelous lady had just gotten IJM through all of these aforementioned hoops that I was having trouble with and was looking in the upcoming semester to hit the ground running. She had established IJM BSU as an official student organization. After some initial emails, we decided to have a meeting to share each other’s strengths and ideas regarding human trafficking and how it has become one of the quintessential evils of our beautiful world and its people.
To make a long story short, after my discussion with IJM BSU, I met with a group of friends who had been battling alongside me to bring Red Thread Movement to the BSU campus, in order to iron out what we needed to do next. We ended up deciding to join forces, as it were, with IJM, therefore becoming a potent and powerful additional arm to the IJM arsenal against human trafficking at BSU. In doing so, we bypassed the university’s standards necessary to make Red Thread an official student organization and guaranteed that we would be able to make a difference quicker than we had originally thought.
Since this time we have had many co-IJM/Red Thread meetings to plan for the upcoming fall semester, and to put it quite mildly, it looks like we are going to be having quite a voice. We have scheduled two major events for this semester in order to get the IJM/Red Thread name out there, before we start really focusing on fundraising and drawing in more attention from outside sources.
Our first event will be taking place in September for a local photography company that is putting on a local fashion show to raise money for those in the Boise Community that have been affected by any and all types of violence. They have asked us, IJM/Red Thread BSU, to give a segment on the human trafficking occurring in Idaho and on an international level. The promotion of awareness in a national and international sense is the primary goal of IJM/ Red Thread BSU. At this event we will be setting up booths with posters, flyers, and bracelets to raise funds for the IJM/Red Thread cause and, most importantly, for the victims themselves.
Our other event will be taking place in October and promises to be something on an even more grandeur stage than our first event. We have rented out the Special Events Center, which holds about 300 people, to have an evening where the human trafficking documentary called “Sex and Money” will be premiered on our campus. It will not only be premiered, but headlined, by the five journalists who made the film itself as well as representatives of state law enforcement and state official that will make up a panel, allowing for our guests to have their questions answered after the documentary is seen. IJM/Red Thread will be co-sponsoring this event and will have quite a spectacle planned for the students of Boise State University.
Obviously with events of this magnitude, we have set aside much time in the promotional aspect of these projects. We have planned to hit every root of the campus, in order to ensure that the issue of human trafficking is heard throughout the student body and, I dare say, our community. We have met with professors who have teamed up with us and will be offering extra credit for any student who decides to attend our events. Also, we will be meeting with other student organizations as well as our on-campus Greek system to support our cause. There will be posters, weekly social media notifications as the events draw nearer and nearer, and a little help from our local news station to bring it to everyone living in our community.
This is how Red Thread has begun at Boise State, although it had its rough bouts and frustrations. More and more now I am consistently seeing the power of cooperation between people and how essential it is in order to make a simple idea a force. I once heard it said that individuals can be great and inspire, but it takes the world itself in order to change something that is in turn wrong with it. I have come to believe this most ardently, and I am eager to see where this goes and what we are capable of doing here at Boise State alongside IJM.
Dear Ashton Kutcher (on the off-chance that you’re ever going to read this),
I don’t fully understand tweeting, #’s, and @’s, but I have never loved Twitter more in my life than I did today! Thank you for retweeting Polaris Project’s Chalk It Up video and for using your influence on social networking to raise awareness about human trafficking.
-B
*The Chalk It Up blog post from a few weeks ago detailed an idea that originated amongst the 2011 Summer Fellows at Polaris Project, including myself. We took to the streets of Washington, DC this summer and filmed our sidewalk art activism. Check out the video link below, recently retweeted by Ashton himself, and replicate it in your community!
For more information about these other great organizations countering human trafficking, click the links below:
Brandon Taylor
Just this past spring, the Minority Organization of Architecture, Art, and Planning (MOAAP) at Cornell University took a grand idea under their wing as they helped launch the first ever Red Thread Benefit Formal.
MOAPP leadership
With help from Cornell’s Big Red Relief, the event informed the Cornell community about how they can make a difference in ending sex trafficking in South East Asia. Throughout the month of April, MOAAP and Big Red Relief took time to sell the Red Thread bracelets made in safe houses in Nepal by rescued victims of sex trafficking.
Students from MOAPP and Big Red Relief
Each bracelet sale went to support efforts in Nepal rescuing up to 200 girls a month from human trafficking; therefore, every Cornell student who helped to support the event made a huge difference in many lives not only through a small donation, but also through learning more about such an important crime that is preventable.
Cornell students at the Formal
The Red Thread Benefit Formal was formatted to educate, entertain, and empower the Cornell community. The evening consisted of dancing and singing ensembles, a catered reception, a keynote address by Brittany Partridge, and a presentation given by Cornell University Professor Andrea Parrot, who is known for her research on women’s health and violence against women around the world.
Brittany Partridge, Red Thread Co-Founder
All in all, the focus of the performances and speakers were to glorify the beautiful power that women hold and refocus that energy to help the many young girls who have lost sight of that. Collectively, the Cornell community raised over $1,100 for the cause and were proud to donate all of those funds to the Red Thread Movement.
Sitara performing at the Formal
In the coming academic year, MOAAP will continue to sell the Red Thread bracelets at Cornell and educate more of the student body on this growing movement. Raising awareness and promoting advocacy non-profit organizations, such as the Red Thread Movement, is the best way to collectively and safely work to put a stop to human trafficking. We stand for those who feel silenced. We wear freedom.
Absolute A Cappella performing at the Formal
Made by Survivors: Fighting Slavery with Education, Empowerment, Employment and Hope
By: Sarah Symons
Made by Survivors, a new partner with the Red Thread Movement, is a nonprofit social enterprise working in Nepal, India, Cambodia, Thailand, Uganda and the US since 2005, helping survivors of trafficking to create bright and slavery-free futures. The mission of Made by Survivors is to ensure permanent freedom for survivors and their children, as well as women and children at extreme risk, by giving them the tools to protect themselves: economic empowerment, awareness of their rights, and education. Through our school sponsorship, job training, and employment programs, as well as construction projects to provide housing, clean energy and safe water to survivors in shelter homes, MBS is changing the lives of over a thousand survivors.
Made By Survivors is excited to partner with the Red Thread Movement because we share the vision that survivors are not defined by the horror and abuse of their past – each woman or girl has her own unique dreams, talents, and potential, and deserves the opportunity to reach her full potential in a healing and nurturing environment. We are amazed by the progress survivors make in the programs: those recently rescued may be angry, withdrawn or severely depressed and traumatized. After six months they are smiling shyly, laughing out loud, and beginning to believe a future is possible for them. After a year or two, they are solving problems, helping others to escape or avoid slavery, speaking out about human rights, and challenging us to match their energy and commitment!
Made By Survivors needs help from students to keep our courageous survivors moving forward. We have recently launched two pioneering programs in South Asia teaching survivors to become artisan goldsmiths – 50 young women in Mumbai and Calcutta are now practicing this highly respected trade with great skill and creativity. Students can help by selling stylish and meaningful jewelry and other products (such as bags or holiday cards) made by our survivors, at Red Thread events on their campuses, in sororities, dorms or student clubs, or just by hosting a social justice holiday party in their dorm rooms.
Student groups can keep a percentage of profits from the sale of MBS products for the group’s activities, or to donate to Red Thread or other charitable purposes. The remaining profits go back into programs helping women and children survivors of slavery to rebuild their lives. Cool and unique products that change lives, raising money for worthy causes – it is truly a win-win situation!
Contact Brittany@RedThreadMovement.org if you would like to get involved with MBS!
For more information: www.MadebySurvivors.com
