Thursday, June 4, 2009

Children of the Night

Last night Justin and I watched Taken - which is a really good movie. But it got us talking again about one of my favorite causes (although I'm not really sure that favorite is the right word) - and gave me my usual feeling of, "What can I possibly do???" For those of you who haven't seen it, Taken is about two girls in Paris who get kidnapped and forced into a prostitution ring (and one of the girls Dad's is looking for them).
I had read an article about how rampant child prostitution is several years ago and that prompted me to start looking for an organization that I could become involved in that helped to combat it. To my surprise it was really really hard to fine anything. The one program that I did find is called Children of the Night. They are an excellent organization - their financial statements, goals etc can be found at childrenofthenight.org. Justin and I have made donations to them on a regular basis now for almost two years. They work at getting child prostitutes off the streets (it's actually a very lucrative enterprise in our country not just 3rd world countries), the organization also provides: schooling, therapy, and a place to stay as needed.
I don't want to make this sound like I'm a representative of theirs or anything - but I just want to make all you wonderful people aware of a very real and evil problem and encourage you to do something about it. After all we are told to, "be anxiously engaged in a good cause and do many things of our own free will.." They not only need money, but there is also a list of supplies that are needed on their website as well as requests for volunteers (although their screening process is pretty intense).
Now I could go into my conspiracy theories as to why there are not more people/organizations out there that combat this - but I'll save that for another time.
I would love to hear about any organizations that anyone else is involved with - or any other ideas on ways to stop this problem. I was talking to Justin about the possibility of starting our own nonprofit someday but I told him that I'm not sure if I could handle knowing all the facts - I don't know what that says about me:)

1 comment:

Alli E. said...

You are amazing! We just watched that show too and had some good discussions. Thanks for being so proactive and finding those resources!