The First Step

I have found a topic that I am passionate about. Others get livid over animal rights, for some it's the homeless, and for others it is victims of natural disasters. For me, it is victims of the sex trade. I had heard a little here and there, but nothing jarred me so much as the movie Taken, with Liam Niesen, in which his daughter is abducted on a European vacation and sold into the prostitution underworld. Since that movie, I have been moved to do something, but where to start? And how to help?


Education is always key, so I have started trying to gather all the facts I can, and figure out a way that I can either contribute to a cause already in motion, or make waves myself.  I just finished reading The Road of Lost Innoncence, by Somaly Mam, an amazing woman who has managed to make plenty of waves herself.  She was sold into prostitution in Cambodia, and after managing to free herself, she has been working to free thousands of other girls in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Viet Nam where the sex trade in little girls and young women runs rampant.   Somaly has started a couple of organizations to help girls and young women in these countries not only get out of prostitution, but learn skills to sustain themselves without having to go back to the life they were originally forced into for lack of other options.   The organization here in the U.S. is http://www.somaly.org/  This is just the first step in finding how I can make a difference to these girls all over the world.  The first step of many.

Live a little better

A while ago, a man at the grocery story went out of his way to take my grocery cart to the cart coral for me.  He was going in the opposite direction and it was such a small gesture but it completely brightened up my day.  A day that had been mired in crap from the get go anyway.  He was my knight in shining grocery cart. 
More recently, I suited up to shovel my drive way, only to open the garage door and find my neighbor just finishing up in my driveway with his snowblower!  The snow was thick and heavy and he saved me about 45 minutes to an hour at least.  Just a little extra kindness thrown out there.

Here's my challenge, actually LOOK for ways to brighten someone's day.  Return someone else's grocery cart for them, stick another quarter in the meeter, smile at a stranger.  Do something out of the usual vain of do-good-ness. 
Get into the habit of doing these things and you might surprise yourself, and others.

7 words

I recently gave my creative writing class the assignment to summarize their lives in 7 words, no more, no less.
Here are a couple of my examples:

The world's an oyster, I'm still sand.

The world and I in a tango.

So far, so wonderful, bring it on!