What does it take to make a difference? Ask Sara Dee. After seeing the documentary Call and Response, which illuminates the horrors of the sex trade and has well-known musicians performing in support of the cause, Sara Dee, a twenty-five-year-old musician, was motivated to take action and organize a benefit concert in Redondo Beach, CA, on Valentine’s Day. I sat down with her to discuss the event.

Q: Was there a specific moment in Call and Response that hit you to the core?
A: There was a part in the documentary where these two 8-year-old girls were talking about performing oral sex on a man. It just broke my heart, and I thought, “No 8-year-old kid should have that experience.”  I felt called to do something to help.

Q: Why did you pick Valentine’s Day for the benefit concert?
A:  In Call and Response, they pointed out that last year the US brought in $17 billion on Valentine’s Day, which is three million more than the estimated cost to end human trafficking globally.

Q: Could you describe the steps you took to organize the benefit?
A: I started with deciding on the date, which helped to focus the event.  Then I hand picked artists that would complement each other, both in their style of music and the message they put forth. I did this without knowing what charity I would end up hooking up with.  My friend recommended Nightlight, which is a non-profit organization that helps women escape the sex trade in Thailand through providing shelter and employment.  Once the charity was confirmed, then I secured a location. My friend also suggested that we get alcohol donated and serve a “V-day” drink, the proceeds of which would also go toward Nightlight. The venue was totally cooperative; they not only agreed to allow us to donate the door fee to charity, but they also agreed to let us sell donated alcohol for the night. A group of people helped with marketing and promotions, and a very kind and generous individual stepped forward and donated the alcohol to our event. Overall, it seems like once the event planning was put into motion it took on a life of it’s own as more and more people helped out with marketing it.

Q: How’d it go?
A: It was a huge success. We raised enough money to support Nightlight’s facility for at least four months.

Q: How has putting this benefit together changed or shaped your belief that one person can make a difference?
A:  It helped me realize that any small amount of change is still change. All big things come from a collection of small things and hopefully big change will come from all the small efforts people are putting in everywhere.  That night was proof that very little from one person’s pocket can add up to so much.  We are so excited by the results that we are already planning our next charity event.

There you have it! In order to make a difference, you just need to believe you can. Ultimately, the lives of sex workers in Thailand will be impacted because of one person who stepped forward in belief, without knowing what the results would be, and took the initiative to organize a benefit concert. When asked how she feels about this, Sara just laughs and flashes a big smile saying, “You know, my philosophy is leave the world a better a place and hang out with people who make you laugh.”

image courtesy of sara dee

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IATG contributors Susanna DeSimone and Amanda Montei are playing a major role in organizing the Valentine’s Day Benefit Concert in Redondo Beach, CA to raise money for Nightlight.

Valentine’s Day Nightlight Benefit Concert

“Help Women Escape the Sex Trade!”

What: This Valentine’s Day you can enjoy great music and make a difference by attending a benefit concert where Los Angeles artists: Kevin Blaine, Sara Dee, Allison Sattinger, and Nate Weiner Trio are slated to perform. All proceeds will go toward Nightlight: a non-profit organization, which helps women escape the sex trade in Thailand through providing work and shelter.

Where: Mickie Finnz– Riviera Village, Redondo Beach, CA

$8.00 cover

When: Saturday, February 14 at 8:00pm – 11pm

For more info:  http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=46739164764

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You’ve heard us mention Nightlight before. And if you don’t recall, here’s the opening paragraph to an article written by Susanna DeSimone:

Thailand’s breathtaking beaches make it a popular tourist destination, but behind the gleaming white sand is a dirty secret – the real tourist draw is the cheap sex. The blinking city lights of Bangkok beckon tourists inside the hazy go-go bars where women dance on stage, perform sex acts, and mutilate themselves for entertainment. After the show, the women chat up customers and offer sexual services for moderate fees. Thai women migrate to Bangkok in droves to work in the go-go bars. Nightlight, a non-profit NGO, is working to build relationships with the sex workers and to provide them with a viable employment alternative. But do sex workers want to be in the industry? Nightlight believes that the women, even those who seem to enter the field willingly, have little to no choice in their illustrious careers. KEEP READING

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Thailand’s breathtaking beaches make it a popular tourist destination, but behind the gleaming white sand is a dirty secret – the real tourist draw is the cheap sex. The blinking city lights of Bangkok beckon tourists inside the hazy go-go bars where women dance on stage, perform sex acts, and mutilate themselves for entertainment.  After the show, the women chat up customers and offer sexual services for moderate fees. Thai women migrate to Bangkok in droves to work in the go-go bars. Nightlight, a non-profit NGO, is working to build relationships with the sex workers and to provide them with a viable employment alternative. But do sex workers want to be in the industry? Nightlight believes that the women, even those who seem to enter the field willingly, have little to no choice in their illustrious careers.

Studies show that poverty is the main factor contributing to sex workers’ involvement in prostitution.  The World Health Organization asserts, “The majority of sex workers in Asia are compelled by economic and social inequality and by terribly restricted life chances.”  The need for feasible forms of employment far exceeds the opportunities available for women and “an income from prostitution is generally 25 times greater than an income from any other work in rural areas,” according to Lillian S. Robinson. The high supply of prostitutes in Thai society is also driven by the fact that women are expected to shoulder financial responsibility for their parents. For many uneducated women who are single, divorced, or widowed, the only way to provide for their families is to enter into the sex industry

In order to help these women, a missionary named Annie Dieselberg started Nightlight five years ago. Nightlight is a registered jewelry making business which aims to fight against “sexual exploitation of women and children (Thai and foreign) in the Nana/Sukhumvit area,” a red light district. At Nightlight, workers make jewelry and earn comparable pay to what they made in brothels. The women are also provided with medical benefits and a savings plan. Nightlight’s numbers have doubled every year since its inception. Their facility is currently at max capacity with a waiting list of women who wish to get out of prostitution.

Nightlight focuses on helping women involved in both prostitution and trafficking. According to Charity Marquis, a Nightlight representative, “There’s not much of a difference,” as economic deprivation drives both paths.  On the streets of Bangkok, Marquis has run into women from Europe and Asia who knew they were being trafficked into Thailand to work in the sex industry but had no other way to support their families.

Even after women agree, they often have little understanding what the job entails. Marquis recalls her first time in one of the Bangkok bars. “The girls were dancing in bikini’s on stage, and I saw this young girl who was really frightened.  I couldn’t take my eyes off her.” The girl’s uncle had secured her the “job” and brought her down from Northern Thailand. The young Thai girl was unable to refuse her uncle because he’s her elder and, according to Thai culture, she must obey him.  Marquis could see on the young girl’s face that she had no idea what type of job she had agreed to take.

“Most of these women don’t want to be doing what they’re doing. They just don’t see another choice,” asserts Marquis. “They go to another country to offer up their bodies to support their families, and, if you think about it, that’s actually an honorable thing — to sacrifice yourself for your family.” Nightlight helps women get out of the sex business whether or not they entered the career willingly. The debate concerning sex workers’ choice to be involved in the industry seems frivolous in a country where women face very few alternatives.

If you want to find out how you can purchase jewelry from Nightlight, or how you can get involved, you can visit their website at www.nightlightbangkok.com

Sources:Sex Trade In Asia 6
Lillian S. Robinson, Touring Thailand’s Sex Industry, The Nation, Nov. 1, 1993

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When I was ten, my biggest fear was falling off my bike in front of my crush.  For Cat, a ten-year-old Thai girl, her biggest fear is being sold into prostitution.  Child sex trafficking is a hidden evil exploiting 2 million children worldwide, and Rachel Sparks and Rachel Goble of The SOLD Project are dedicated to eradicating it.

The SOLD Project is a grassroots movement that seeks to expose the truth behind child sex trafficking by telling the victim’s stories and inspiring individuals to make a change.  Originally conceived as a documentary, The SOLD Project has expanded into a nonprofit organization that educates and provides avenues for people to get involved.  I recently sat down with the two Rachels to learn more about Thailand’s red light districts.

IATG: When did you learn about child sex trafficking?  What made you get involved?

RG: When I was pursuing my Masters, one of my first classes was a “Children at Risk” course, and human trafficking was one of the topics.  I spent a lot of time researching the issue, and I found that it was not only something that broke my heart, but there was a part of me that said, “I can’t not act on this; I can’t not do something.”

RS: My pastor in New York did a sermon on the different injustices in the world, and child sex trafficking was the one that stopped me in my tracks.  The more I started researching, the more I felt that this was it – this is my calling, this is my purpose, to do something with children who are stuck in sex trafficking.

IATG: How did The SOLD Project begin?

RS: As an educated woman, I had every reason to know about this issue, but I didn’t.  So, if I didn’t know about this issue, I’m sure there are a lot of people my age who don’t.  My dad is in the film industry, so I grew up with the mentality that to create awareness, you make a documentary.  I called him up in September 2006, got some advice and contacts, and started filming.

RG: I came on board after filming already began to man the nonprofit.  In the film, we look at three main reasons that children are sexually exploited in Thailand.  The first is poverty – what do the impoverished villages look like and why are girls trafficked into cities to work?  The second is street kids – kids who are vulnerable because they don’t have a home structure.  And, the third is undocumented children, most of whom are Burmese.  In regards to these, we want to create a structure where audiences can respond in a tangible way.  We just launched our scholarship program, which is our response to the poor villages.  It’s a dollar a day to sponsor a kid, and it puts them through school for a year.  For street kids and undocumented children, we have partner organizations in Thailand that we help.

IATG: For the documentary, you traveled to Thailand to capture the victims’ stories.  Why Thailand?

RS: There are three types of countries – source countries, transit countries, and destination countries.  Source countries are where these kids are coming from, transit countries are where the kids travel through, and destination countries are where they end up.  Thailand is all three.  Sex tourism is also the third greatest form of income there.  Alongside, Thailand is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, and you would never expect this evil to lie underneath.  I wanted to see the faces behind the statistics and tell these kids’ stories.

IATG: In order to get your stories directly from the victims, you had to enter the brothels.  Do you have any stories that especially touched you?

RG: Oftentimes, there is a strange man who comes to the Burmese villages and offers a factory job in Bangkok to the girls, and these girls are ecstatic because they have no money and they want to support their family.  But what happens is they end up in brothels across the border without any rights because they don’t have citizenship.  This is a classic trafficking story.  One of the days we were filming, we went into the brothels to interview the girls and it was just story after story of these girls being deceived.  They feel that they have no option but to stay since they can’t go to Thailand to work without citizenship and they can’t go back to Burma because they won’t have any money for their families.  Halfway through the interviews, these girls would burst into tears, and Rachel and I would hold their hands and tell them, “We’re sisters, we love you, and we’re going to do everything we can to get you out.”

RS: In the red light districts, we would buy girls out for the evening and just talk to them about life.  They were all sending money back home to their villages and all kinds of cultural stuff play into why they felt like they had to keep working, so I wanted to go to the villages and see what that life was like.  There, I met Cat, a young girl who had all signs pointing to the fact that she was at risk for being trafficked – her father is dead, her mom is scraping by, and all the money she makes goes to Cat’s education.  Her mom is a former sex worker who knows that Cat would be safe if she just gets through middle school.  And so for me, Cat became “that one” – if you’re helping one person, then it’s all worth it.

IATG: After seeing what you’ve seen, how do you emerge with the hope to fight?

RG: I had to allow myself to simplify. I knew that if I could prevent one kid from being forced into this, that’s enough. So the question is, “How do you help the one?” The fact is that there is this evil, and I work in a world where we’re not going to get rid of it.  But we can be humanitarians, and we can help.

RS: I knew that going to Thailand would be a struggle, physically and emotionally.  I was in a foreign country where everything familiar was stripped from me – I had barely any communication with friends and family, I was getting sick over the food and water, and I had to get used to the culture.  But when you’re serving and loving people in a place when you’re the most vulnerable, things start coming out of you that you never knew existed.  You’re being pushed to the limit but you’re loving people and seeing how you’re changing their lives forever.  I just have to do my small part and hopefully that will inspire other people to do theirs.

IATG: How does IATG’s message of redefining female beauty and that “smart is the new sexy” tie into this?

RS: The women who are victims have no ounce of hope left.  Prostitution strips you of your humanity and treats you as a commodity.  Even the girls who have a chance to get out go back because they have to learn that they are worth more than what they earn with their bodies.

RG: Sex is supposed to be beautiful and sexy is supposed to be beautiful.  It’s such a fine line between what makes it beautiful and what perverts it.  The message is about respecting sex and cherishing it.  Particularly with this issue, the good men in the world need to stand up and fight for the purity and innocence of women because women can fight for women, but it’s so much more powerful when men fight for women.

IATG: How can IATG readers get involved?

RG:  Educate yourself and talk about the issue.  I don’t feel like it’s an issue that one type of individual can do.  It’s not all lawyers and it’s not all psychologists.  It’s average people who are giving of their time and resources and who are using what they are passionate about to do something.  We need to realize how powerful our voice is in this world as young women.

RS: Our generation is at a place where we’re either in college or just out of college, trying to figure out what we want to do with our life.  We have the time and skill set to go out and serve.  Because of globalization and technology, our generation is one of the first to really grasp how our daily lives affect everything around us.  I’ve met tons of organizations started by people in their 20s and 30s all focusing on wanting to leave the world a better place.  There are some amazing things that are happening right now and to be a blurb in the midst of this movement is amazing.  Everyone just needs to hold on tight.

Learn more about The Sold Project at www.thesoldproject.com

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