First Annual Bloggers Soiree to Benefit Anti-Sex Trafficking Organization

Source: PRWeb

Bringing blogging and charitable giving to the Lower East Side

I cannot even begin to fathom how hideous the tasks forced upon these women and girls are or how pernicious the world they're enslaved in is.

New York, NY (PRWEB) September 20, 2010

Bloggers and anti-human trafficking advocates will take over the Lower East Side Monday, September 27 at Libation NY for the First Annual Bloggers Soiree hosted by DesireeFrieson.com, RedRoverStyle.com and HerJourneyMag.com. Attendees are guaranteed an evening of encouragement, social networking and entertainment--all while raising awareness about anti-human trafficking efforts in New York City. This gathering of bloggers is not limited to the NY Metro area-- attendees will have the opportunity to mingle with visiting bloggers in town for Web Expo 2.0 and Advertising Week.

25% of proceeds from this event will go to benefit Restore NYC, a non-profit organization providing long-term aftercare services to international sex trafficked victims in the city. Last month, Restore NYC launched their “Brick by Brick” campaign which aims to raise $50,000 to build a safe house in New York City for sex trafficked survivors.

The organization has already raised over $30,000. Organizers of the Bloggers Soiree seek to help Restore NYC meet their fundraising goal through pre-event ticket sales, raffles and online giving during the event. “Social media users are in a perfect position to use the power of their social networks to share messages of goodwill and bring about ACTION...a viral grassroots effort to boost the awareness of notable non-profits,” said Desiree Frieson, event co-organizer and author of DesireeFrieson.com. “At this event, we are encouraging what we like to call ‘Live Socializing.’ Attendees will be asked to actively share messages about Restore NYC and human trafficking as well as provide suggestions for ways others can get involved. Live tweeting. Live blogging. Live video. Live giving.”

Categorized as a non-traditional networking/charity event, attendees will have the opportunity to mix and mingle with bloggers from the worlds of new media, fashion, beauty and style, technology, entertainment and politics; interview special guest speakers and musical guest Alexis Foxe; uncover potential content/advertising partnerships with fellow attendees; gain insight from some the leading minds on timely topics in new media, and much more.

Entertainment will be provided by international singer-songwriter, Alexis Foxe. The Cuban and Colombian singer is set to release her first album in the coming months. She is an advocate for anti-human trafficking efforts and was honored for the chance to lend her vocal talents to the cause.

“My first reaction to any kind of trafficking or slavery is horror at the violence of not having a choice,” said Alexis. “Our freedom must come with the responsibility to liberate those who are wrongfully trapped. I cannot even begin to fathom how hideous the tasks forced upon these women and girls are or how pernicious the world they're enslaved in is. All I can honestly say is that the privilege of our voices brings with it the condition to speak for those who are muted.”

Sponsors include FourBlend, New York American Marketing Association, India Social, LYVA Music, BlogCatalog, Red Rover Public Relations, JJ Eyelashes, SocialGo, Keep It Real Game, Nu Skin, Salon DP LoRana, The Bloggers School, Novo Ink, and EventBrite, official ticket partner. More sponsors TBA.

Additionally, well-known brands such as Benjamin’s Steak House, designer Nicole Miller, and author of “Shaken and Stirred,” Crystal Black Davis, have donated raffle prizes for this event. More raffle prizes TBA.

Pre-registration is required to attend. Tickets are selling for $20.00 and be purchased at http://bloggerssoiree.eventbrite.com.

For sponsorship/in-kind donation inquires please contact Desiree Frieson at FriesoDe@gmail.com. Media persons with official press credentials, please contact Cara Murphy at press@redroverstyle.com. Individuals will be screened and contacted prior to the event.

About DesireeFrieson.com
DesireeFrieson.com is a collection of Desiree Frieson's random musings on all topics social media, television, film, music, books and much more. The main focus of this up and coming online resource is to educate social media beginners on digital marketing best practices and provide solutions to basic online marketing/branding challenges. For more information, visit www.desireefrieson.com.

About RedRoverStyle.com
Red Rover Style is an online lifestyle and charity magazine that exists to bring people together to dialogue, inspire, and network with the rover community. Red Rover Style is an insider’s guide to new and emerging talent while sharing tips on beauty, fashion, NYC hotspots, travel, food, entertainment, current events and more! Red Rover Style is also a channel for people to learn about different charities and learn about philanthropic events. For more information, visit www.redroverstyle.com.

About Her Journey Magazine
Her Journey Magazine is an online presence dually dedicated to travel and women’s empowerment. It is within our mission to expand the reader’s traveling horizon by sharing glimpses of extraordinary travel experiences while also equipping her with tools necessary to discover and fulfill her life’s purpose. What makes us different is that we not only cater to those who love to travel but we also reach out to those who are not yet fully convinced of the benefits of traveling. It is our mission to open their eyes to what the world has to offer. For more information, visit www.herjourneymag.com.

About Restore NYC
Restore NYC is a non-profit organization providing long-term aftercare services to international sex trafficked victims in the city. For more information visit, www.restorenyc.org.

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First Annual Bloggers Soiree to Benefit Anti-Sex Trafficking Organization

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WJI Times Observer - NYC’s faithful give hope to victims of sex slave trade

Image by Vikram Vetrivel via Flickr

By Jonah Taylor

Published: Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Updated: Thursday, May 27, 2010

NYC’s faithful give hope to victims of sex slave trade Main Image

At least 27 million people are enslaved today, more than any other period in history, according to statistics.

Slide Show: NYC’s faithful give hope to victims of sex slave trade


Full story

Christians in New York City are making a stand for freedom. Churches and faith-based organizations all over the city have dedicated themselves to helping victims of sex trafficking, a growing crime wave, in which 700,000 to 2 million people annually are trafficked across international borders worldwide, according to the U.S Government’s “Trafficking in Persons Report” of 2003. Furthermore, 18,000 to 20,000 of those victims, including men, women and children, are trafficked into the U.S., The country is drenched with people who are forced into labor or sexual exploitation, and New York City is no exception.

In a press release issued in early May 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that they arrested a Bronx, New York man on charges of sex trafficking of a 16-year-old girl. The arrest came shortly after 36-year-old Rasheed Davis sold the girl’s services to former New York Giants linebacker and Pro Football Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor, who later admitted to paying the teenager for sex. Court papers said that Davis told Taylor the girl was 19.

It is cases like these that supply Christian New Yorkers with the compassion to reach out to slaves of the sex trade.

“People think of this as being something that’s happening in other parts of the world, and it’s happening in our own backyards,” said Faith Huckel, executive director of the Christian aftercare program Restore NYC. In a video featured on the organization’s website, Huckel said that the need to protect women who escape the brothels is one that has yet to be met in the city.

She went on to say that the program’s goal is to launch a safe house, which she says costs about $200,000 to launch and $600,000 to sustain each year.

“This will bring them one step closer to freedom,” said Huckel. “We do not see our services as being a revolving door system. It’s a holistic response to someone’s recovery.”

Restore began in 2004 when three friends decided to create a way to serve survivors of sex trafficking in New York City. They began training in Canada with Servants Anonymous World Services, a Christian organization that is “initiated at the community level and driven by community involvement,” as described in its mission statement. In February 2009, Restore became officially operational and began welcoming clients.

Restore’s project manager, whose name is confidential, said the organization has one case where a girl was smuggled into the city for $50,000.

“She was told that she could make a lot of money in the U.S. doing restaurant work,” said the project manager. “However, upon arriving in the U.S., she was charged interest on top of her smuggling fee and then forced into prostitution to pay it back.”

She said the girl was assaulted and threatened while her debt was increased due to interest and fees issued by her traffickers.

“Since our client was courageous in sharing her story, she is now able to receive assistance via counseling, case management and legal services,” she said.

One faith-based organization that contributes to the cause recently received a surprising visitor. Leslie McMillan, executive director of the Russian Community Life Center in Brooklyn, New York, said an immigrant man from Kyrgyzstan came into the center confessing to be a former sex trafficker. She said a man named Azim, who had been to the center a few times before, told her his story of “running into” a minister on the street, becoming a Christian and turning from a life of corruption and deception.

“I hadn’t seen him for about a year and a half,” said McMillan. “Azim just came in, out of the blue, and was just telling how his life had changed because he had received Jesus and now he was getting out of his bad life and now he wants to help other people get out of the same bad life.”

McMillan said prior to Azim’s visit, she had been burdened to help a couple of potential trafficking victims who were being pursued by sex traffickers. Two young female students from Russia were taking a bus from Washington D.C. to New York City on some type of travel exchange program sponsored by a Russian travel agency based in New York.

One of the girls’ friends suspected it was a trafficking scam when she told him about the program and how they offered to pay her three grand. He decided to reach out to the Internet community through a query site to spread the word and get help for his friend.

“Someone called me from Russia wanting help,” McMillan explained. “Somebody had to go meet some girls…there was a bunch of people on the Internet trying to stop them before the traffickers got them. It became like a big story on the Internet, and these people finally were able, as an Internet community, to intervene and intercept these girls before the traffickers picked them up at the bus station.”

She said although she was not able to directly help the girls, the situation opened her eyes.

“I was just on the edges of involvement of that, but it caused me to focus again on the knowledge I already have and the concern I already have for these trafficking victims,” she said.

The Russian Community Life Center is a ministry that helps Russian-speaking immigrants adjust to life in America, more so life as a Christian American. McMillan said that Azim coming to her when he did with the desire to help was not a coincidence.

“We’ll find out what God’s way is,” she said. “I don’t know what it is yet, but whatever God puts together we’re willing to do because obviously he’s doing something.”

Other Christian organizations in New York City who are committed to fighting slavery and rescuing the trafficked include Hope For New York, a nonprofit sponsored by Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Sanctuary for Families and The Salvation Army. Visit www.nyc.gov for a full list of advocacy groups within the city and for information on how to help the victims of sex slavery.

WJI Times Observer - NYC’s faithful give hope to victims of sex slave trade

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Modern abolitionism

From Columbia Spectator

By Briana Wong
Published Monday 7 September 2009 07:14pm EST.

“New York Times” journalist Nicholas Kristof deems human trafficking “the big emerging human rights issue for the 21st century.” He also calls it “a convoluted euphemism.” What Kristof is intimating here is that human trafficking—that is, “the use of force, fraud, or coercion to exploit a person for profit,” according to the U.S. State Department’s 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report—cannot rightfully be called anything other than slavery. As the global slave trade reemerges, this time tied with arms dealing as the second largest organized crime pursuit in the world, a budding abolitionist movement is scrambling to muster enough strength to combat it.
When I first heard about the human trafficking problem, I was overwhelmed by the stories of young women sold into prostitution in brothels in Cambodia, families forced into debt bondage in India, and children abducted by rebel armies and forced to fight in the ongoing Ugandan civil war. It was only recently, thanks to Justin Dillon’s new documentary “Call + Response,” that I learned that the United States, and New York City, in particular, is also plagued by this evil that has once again reared its ugly head. Approximately 15,000 to 18,000 people, according to an FBI estimate, are smuggled into the United States every year for forced labor, with John F. Kennedy Airport emerging as a major point of entry.
This summer, I had the opportunity to serve as an intern at Restore NYC, a nonprofit dedicated to the fight against human trafficking in New York. Restore focuses on reintegrating the victims of international sex trafficking into society. The organization currently works through the court systems in New York City to offer counseling services to women enslaved by the sex industry, and it plans, in the next twelve months, to open New York’s first residential facility for internationally trafficked victims of the sex trade.
My internship involved conducting extensive research on human trafficking in the city, searching for grants that will be used to open Restore’s safe house next year, facilitating networking among the various abolitionist groups in New York, and connecting law enforcement with anti-trafficking organizations that help victims get back on their feet.
One of the highlights of the summer was reporting incidents of forced labor in New York using the Slavery Map Web site created by David Batstone, a human rights activist and professor of ethics at the University of San Francisco. Slavery Map allows modern abolitionists to alert society to the cries of the oppressed. It provides a way for the public to gauge the sheer magnitude of this evil that plagues the city and the world. Taking advantage of public information made available by the “New York Times,” the Department of Justice, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, I contributed to the collection of local human trafficking reports stored on the Web site.
Through my research, I learned to recognize the red flags sent up by human trafficking, and I was appalled when I discovered how many there are in New York City. Massage parlors and escort services that offer sexual services, that frequently change names, addresses, or both, that are located in ethnic-specific communities, that advertise as “outcall only,” and that are staffed by recent, possibly undocumented immigrants are often places where desperate women are forced, deceived, or coerced into sex work. Five such establishments were featured in a “Time Out New York” article entitled “Best Happy-Ending Massage Parlors in NYC,” in which one of the magazine’s reporters was paid to seek out the best places to pay for sex (that is, brothels) in the city. My concern upon reading the article did not arise solely from the fact that engaging in sex trafficking is a class B felony in New York State (for which the penalty is a maximum of 25 years in prison), but also from the fact that sex trafficking is a gross injustice committed against voiceless and the powerless people in our society.
My first foray into abolition work gave me a new awareness of the gravity of the issue of human trafficking and the relevance it has to our country and our city. Although my internship with Restore NYC is finished, I plan to commit to the long-term battle against modern slavery. For those of you interested in learning more about human trafficking or in contributing to the fight against it, I recommend reading “Not For Sale” by David Batstone or watching the documentary “Very Young Girls” by Girlss Education and Mentoring Services, an organization that offers relief to trafficked minors in New York. Several campus clubs, such as Amnesty International, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Hillel, the African Students Association, and the Veritas Forum, have hosted events designed to raise awareness about the issue last semester. Furthermore, a series of events about human trafficking will take place at Columbia from Sept. 21-27. The following Web site offers more information about the upcoming events: http://freedomweeknyc.com/calendar.html.
Human trafficking affects every nation, every culture, and every society, including our own. As students of Columbia University, we have both the responsibility and the opportunity to educate ourselves about this infringement on human rights in the city we call home.
The author is a Columbia College sophomore. She is a member of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and co-coordinator of Mentoring Youth in New York City (MyNYC), a Community Impact program. “Modern abolitionism” is an installment of Summer Dispatches, an opinion feature series that seeks to showcase the diverse summer experiences of members of the Columbia community.
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2009/09/07/modern-abolitionism

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