Michael Colletto

The SOLD Project didn’t win the grant from GOOD Maker, but they’re not giving up on their idea. They need at least 24 people willing to give $16 a month to join their Stand 4 Freedom campaign this week to make their Trafficking Awareness Program a reality this summer. Click here to give.

The best part is, this week only, for every person who joins the Stand 4 Freedom campaign, an anonymous donor will match your pledge with a $50 one-time donation. Just like that, your $16 gift becomes nearly $70! This opportunity ends Monday, May 7 at Midnight PT, so spread the word.

Hundreds and hundreds of you voted; now, if just a fraction of you can give just a small amount each month, your long-term impact will be incredible. Thank you for investing in the lives of these children.

The SOLD Project has a chance to win a $2,500 grant to fund their human trafficking awareness programs in Thailand, and all they need is your vote!

Since 2007, The SOLD Project has been preventing human trafficking and child sexual exploitation in Thailand through education and community development. Part of that prevention work has involved hosting well-received and very impactful human trafficking awareness classes for at-risk Thai nationals.

For this summer’s biannual Parent Meeting, SOLD has a brilliant idea: Hire a local partner organization to train the older girls in their program to lead the awareness courses themselves! If they win this $2,500 grant from GOOD Maker, The SOLD Project will be able to host trafficking awareness events for the entire community, purchase costumes and sound equipment, and train their students to take a peer-to-peer trafficking awareness course on the road to 2 – 5 local Thai schools, reaching hundreds of at-risk children with a message that could change the course of their lives.

Want to do something about human trafficking and child exploitation? This is a great place to start.

Click here to vote.

Japanese Fireflies. Photo by Tsuneaki Hiramatsu, June 6, 2008. Via Wired.com.

So…these exist.

My car’s odometer recently hit 112,012, or 1/1/2012. (Yes, I was really hoping to see this odometer reading a few weeks ago, but couldn’t justify driving 600-odd miles on New Year’s Eve to time it out right. Still…)

Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why, explains how great leaders inspire action in this 2009 TED talk. “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. What you do simply serves as the proof of what you believe.”

The idea is as applicable to selling products as it is to ending child exploitation; in my work for The SOLD Project, I was challenged by that reminder today.

So, why does The SOLD Project exist? Because we believe every child has the right to a childhood. We believe that kids should never be prostitutes, and that, so far as it’s within our power, it’s far, far better to protect a child from ever being exploited in the first place than it is to rescue them. That’s the “why” that drives what we do and how we do it. We’d all love for you to join us. But don’t do it for us. Do it for you—because you, too, believe that this cause is worthwhile.

via GOOD:

“Pop quiz: when you hear the word philanthropist, who comes to mind?

“For most of us, it’s someone like Bill Gates, striding through an African village, smiling at cute kids. Or maybe Bill Clinton sitting on a stage, flanked by a couple of much-celebrated social entrepreneurs.

“In fact, according to a study by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute, the Americans who give away the biggest proportion of their own income are women who make $23,509 or less a year, not ridiculously wealthy white dudes named Bill. Philanthropy isn’t just multimillion-dollar checks and large-scale public health interventions. It’s also small acts of care, creativity, and a dollar donation equivalent to forgoing a fancy lunch. 

“Which brings us to the The GOOD Challenge for December: ‘creative microphilanthropy.’ We’re asking each member of the GOOD community to give away $30 (total for the month, not every single day) in the most creative and inspiring way you can think of. The GOOD staff is all participating, and we invite you to do the same. Try the label of philanthropist on for size. Make giving more creative and personal. It doesn’t have to be $30. It could just be $10. Or even a single dollar. It’s the act of giving–and giving creatively—that counts.”

If this idea inspires you, I’d encourage you to check out Philanthroper.com—they featured The SOLD Project earlier this year and continue to do great work.

Speaking of SOLD, we’re still looking for 150 people to give $4/week to our child prostitution prevention programs in Thailand. Click here to learn more or give.

Philanthroper.com featured my organization, The SOLD Project, on their homepage today, sharing our story and inviting people to participate by simply giving $1 (or up to $10). Why? Because “a little helps a lot.” (I interviewed for the piece.)

If you’re familiar with SOLD, you know $1 does help a lot. One dollar is the cost of one day of public schooling for an at-risk child in Thailand. $1/day changes the whole story for these kids—instead of dropping out of school, they’re receiving an education; instead of falling into exploitation, they’re rising from poverty and pursuing their dreams.

All that to say, it’s been thrilling to watch the donations come in today—as of this moment, 197 donors have given $509 to keep at-risk children in school. So, yeah. It’s been a good day. And there’s still 14 hours left to give.

How pervasive ratings and reviews undermine our ability to think for ourselves:

Our ever more sophisticated arsenal of stars and thumbs will eventually serve to curtail serendipity, adventure, and idiotic floundering. But more immediate is the simple problem of contamination. When the voices of hundreds of strangers, or even just three shrill ones, enter our heads, a tiny but vital part of ourselves is diminished. Suddenly we’re breached, denied the pleasure of articulating our own judgment on this professor, or that meal, or this city… 

Sure, it’s entirely possible to arrive at one’s own opinion amidst a cacophony of others. But it’s also possible to bend, unknowingly and imperceptibly, toward a position not naturally our own. —Chris Colin

Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, writes for Wired about the vulnerabilities of the human mind and how often—and easily—we allow ourselves to be subtly played. Interesting stuff.

constanced:

The State Department’s 2011 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report came out last week. It’s an annual report that assesses and grades countries based not so much on the quantity of trafficking cases, but rather whether the country is meeting the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act. The rankings go Tier 1 (trying at least), Tier 2 (starting to try), Tier 2 Watch List (kind of trying, but let’s keep an eye on them) and Tier 3 (horrible, awful). As could be expected, Thailand is a Tier 2 Watch List. Last year, the US ranked itself for the first time and both this year and last gave itself a Tier 1. Hillary Rodham Clinton oversees the report and made the following comment in her introduction: 

The report itself is a tool, and what we’re most interested in is working with countries around the world and working across our own government to get results. The decade of delivery is upon us.

I hope this is true. I hope more governments, more civil societies and more individuals will take responsibility for trafficked individuals in their home countries. The report is good and some countries are improving, but the number of victims identified and traffickers prosecuted is woefully short of the estimated number of slaves in existence today. In Thailand alone, a mere 381 people were classified as victims of trafficking in 2010. I could point out that many on any given night in Nana. The report includes a highlight of heroes in the last year and survivor stories, so there is work being done. But there’s lots more to do. 

Spectacular stuff. Via Wired.com.