Help Kiva.org win a $1M grant from Sam’s Club

Kiva is the world’s first online micro-lending website to help the world’s working poor help themselves to alleviate poverty. They have been chosen as one of four finalists in the Sam’s Club “Giving Made Simple” competition, for a chance to win a $1 million dollar grant – but can only win with your help and support!  With this grant, Kiva will multiply the impact by 10 by generating approximately $10 million more in loans from the Internet community, to help 25,000 entrepreneurs in the US and around the world.

How is this possible? Kiva historically generates $10 in loans from the Internet community for every $1 they spend building and strengthening the platform. By investing in the dedicated engineering and portfolio staff who make Kiva possible, they can have 10 times the impact of the original grant.

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

–Sam’s Club members can vote DAILY through May 2nd at http://www2.samsclub.com/Giving/About/Kiva.

There are only 24 days left in this campaign, so your daily vote really matters! If you have additional time to volunteer for the campaign, please fill out the following form: http://bit.ly/cEYl0Y.

–If you don’t have a Sam’s Club membership, please spread the word! Send Sam’s Club members you know the link to vote for Kiva: http://www2.samsclub.com/Giving/About/Kiva. Utilize your social media outlets by encouraging others to vote for Kiva on Facebook and Twitter.

a public campaign targeting victims of trafficking

The Seattle Against Slavery coalition has received permission to post these all over Washington state in public areas, particularly in public bathrooms and rest stops.  Join us @ SeattleAgainstSlavery.org!

Join the (growing) abolitionist movement in Seattle

For more information on how to join the abolitionist movement in Seattle, join Seattle Against Slavery on March 15th at a general public meeting.

6 pm Network | 6:30 pm meeting begins ’til 8:30 pm

• SAS Update
  
• “Understanding Youth in Prostitution” by Guest Speaker, Leslie Briner, MSW
• Panel Discussion with Leslie Briner, Sheila Houston (Director of New Horizon Ministries’ Late Night Outreach), Hope Brian (a Seattle public defender), Lisa Etter Carlson (Member of Awake Church)
  
• Legislative Advocacy Training
• SAS Fundraising Plans to introduce SAS’ “Seattle Cares Project” for Dedicated Trafficking Survivors Shelters #1 & 2 Plans

Bonus: first 25 people gets free book of “Renting Lacy” by Linda Smith of Shared Hope International

UW Hillel

4745 17th Ave. NE*

Seattle 98105

*35 parking spaces along alley + back parking lot, otherwise street parking

Register for this meeting here: http://seattleagainstslavery.eventbrite.com/

NO NEED TO PRINT TICKET TO COME TO THIS EVENT/MEETING.

Questions? Email me or SAS at seattleagainstslavery [at] live [dot] com

Send ClimbForCaptives to Higher Peaks with the Gore-Tex “Experience More Challenge”

Climb for Captives has been given an incredible opportunity to take our next climb to a whole new level, but we need your help to make it possible!

Thanks to the Gore-Tex Experience More Challenge, Climb for Captives has been selected as one of 6 finalists where the Grand Prize Winner receives $10,000.  Our dream is to use this prize to fund an epic climb outside the US, elevating our fight against human trafficking to a global scale.  To win, all we need to is to get more votes than the other five finalists… and that is where YOU come in.  If you are willing to vote for us, here’s what you need to do:

Step 1. Join the Gore-Tex Community

The competition is part of an online outdoor community and to be able to vote you have to be a member of the community, which means you have to sign up first.  Membership is FREE and there are no strings attached.

Step 2. Log in to the Experience More Challenge

Once you have created an account and are LOGGED IN, look for the “Experience More Challenge” and click “VOTE NOW”

Step 3. Vote for “Climb for Captives 2009“

That’s all that is needed!  Special thanks to PaulHassell.com for his amazing photography, and thanks to all our supporters and fellow abolitionists who are joining with us.  If you are ready to help us raise $10,000 and take Climb for Captives to a whole new level click HERE to sign up.

Sincere thanks,

The Climb for Captives Team

www.ClimbForCaptives.com

on the ground in Hispaniola

A recent letter from Dave Valle, Founder of Esperanza International, the micro finance bank I’ve worked with in the Dominican Republic and Haiti…

Thank you all for your prayers , thoughts and support of Esperanza’s work in Haiti.  I wanted to give you a quick update on our progress on the ground in Port Au Prince.

All of Esperanza’s staff are safe.  The Esperanza office is located in the Northeast portion of Haiti which did not sustain much damage.  Carlos Pimentel, Esperanza’s  VP of International Operations, is in charge of our Rapid Response Strategy.  He has served in the DR for 20 years on the Dominican Republic’s Disaster Relief and Mitigation team.  His knowledge and contacts on situations like this, are second to none on the island.

We have begun a herculean effort on the ground last week as Esperanza leads a coordinated effort of relief through our large network of partners and churches who, along with Esperanza, have a history of work in the communities.  This is critical in the distribution of aid.  We are known entities,  who have been serving the communities for many years.  This will prevent much of what you are seeing on the news reels…fighting for food and unorganized distribution, chaos.

Esperanza had 12,000 food packs in storage as part of our disaster preparedness plan for the island(tropical storms and hurricanes) that were sent immediately. There is more on the way.  We now have a warehouse on the DR border where we are moving supplies from Santo Domingo (where prices have not risen yet) to the warehouse, then from the warehouse to P AU P for distribution to our network.  As of yesterday, Esperanza opened a new office and distribution center in Port Au Prince  in alliance with one of our partners that will serve as our base of operation.  We have 2 Doctors there also to provide medical care.

There are many people and organizations coming along side Esperanza to provide support.  We will need more.

Pray for Esperanza’s leadership in this huge undertaking.  And Thank You for your support over the last 15 years, helping Esperanza to become an organization that has the capacity to respond in this manner and one that others look to for leadership in a time such as this!

Climb For Captives 2009

Many of you joined me last year in the global fight against Human Trafficking by supporting the 2008 Climb for Captives.  As we continue preparing for the 2009 climb, which will be taking place on August 14-16th, we need your help to launch a global awareness campaign.  For this years climb we will be partnering with the International Justice Mission (www.IJM.org) to raise $40,000 to free slaves in India and we want to spread the word to EVERY corner of the globe!  We will be launching our new website on July 4th,  Independence Day here in the US, to signify our commitment to freedom for ALL, and we need your help to make the launch a success.

HERE is a video with instructions for how you can participate in our I Support Climb for Captives campaign.  Basically, we are trying to get as many of our friends around the globe to take photos of themselves with a sign that says “I Support Climb for Captives” (and has their city/country in parentheses) in front of famous landmarks in their area (i.e. Statue of Liberty, the White House, Mt. Rushmore, the Pyramids, Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall, etc).  We are trying to get photos from every state in the USA and every continent of the world!

We would like to have several pictures on the website by the time we go public on July 4th and that is why we need your help now.  If you could take some time in the next week to take a photo in your area it would be a huge help for us as we try to gain some momentum early in our launch.  You can either email the photos directly to me or send them to the site mentioned in the video.

Thanks again for your support and your friendship.  Stay tuned for other ways you can be involved in the 2009 Climb for Captives!

Conferencing

This past weekend was full of more conferencing than I’ve been involved with in a long time.  The 2009 Pacific Northwest Microfinance Conference was visited by an all star lineup of practitioners from some of the leading microfinance organizations in the world, including Kiva.org, WorldVision, Esperanza International, and Agros.

Just down the street was the Freedom Initiative’s UNBOUND Anti-Human Trafficking Conference, a great breakthrough in unifying Seattle’s many abolitionists in a meaningful weekend spearheaded by the student-led Freedom Initiative.  I was honored to lead a workshop on the topic: Social Entrepreneurship and the Abolitionist Movement, and my presentation is posted online at HERE.

Speaking of which, to present the content for the workshop, I did a last-minute switch from Microsoft PowerPoint to www.Prezi.com, and I must say I have never been more impressed with a free, web-based app than I have with Prezi.  It has completely changed how I will share presentations from now on.  Check it out!

Unbound Conference

On May 8-9 in Seattle, the Freedom Initiative is hosting the 1st Annual Unbound Conference.  It’s been a privilege to work with this alliance of students who are passionate about seeing justice in the streets of Seattle and an end to human trafficking in our own neighborhood.  Register before April 24th and join us as we bring together artists, musicians, non-profit leaders, and experts on modern-day slavery to raise awareness and empower people to become advocates for the victims of human trafficking.

I’ll be leading a conversation about how the injustices of the 21st century call for innovative, community-based solutions that look more like businesses than bureaucracies. Be a part of the conversation on how social entrepreneurs are collaborating to confront human trafficking through community-driven, technology-based innovations that are providing sustainable solutions across the globe.

The cost of registration is $10. All proceeds go to organizations providing services to victims of human trafficking. The $10 registration fee is not tax deductible.

If you have any questions about the conference, please contact registration@freedominitiative.org

the world we now live in

Are you ready for this?

I Will Teach You To Be Rich Scholarship for Social Innovation

Last week, my team was honored to be selected among seven finalists in the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Scholarship for Social Innovation.  Ramit Sethi, author of the wildly popular IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com, inaugurated this contest to empower young people with a scholarship for $2,500 towards developing socially innovative projects.

Our proposal for this scholarship is to radically expanding the boundaries of current microfinance by serving the most marginalized and forgotten people in the world today: former and current slaves in the commercial sex trade. This requires creating viable economic alternatives to prostitution for victims through proven microfinance processes, and then equipping them with the resources, tools, and a support network to empower these aspiring micro‐entrepreneurs to restored self‐worth, dignity, and independence.  The I Will Teach You To Be Rich scholarship would be used in its entirety to provide at least fifteen micro‐loans (of approximately US$150 over a 6 month term) to current or former prostitutes to launch alternative income‐generating micro-enterprises in their communities.
Our initial pilot program would take place through a current and established microfinance institution in the Dominican Republic, Esperanza International.  Esperanza will facilitate and monitor the loan process, while local service providers offer vocational training, medical treatment and education to current or former prostitutes living in impoverished communities of rural Dominican Republic. Through comprehensive research and a candid evaluation of the pilot program, the long term objective is to then develop a transferable concept for rehabilitating and empowering former victims of the commercial sex trade through microfinance opportunities around the world.

I’d like to offer my congratulations to all the other finalists– all impressive in accomplishment and vision, and I trust opportunities such as these will continue the conversation among young people of how we might provide more innovative, radical solutions to the injustices we see in our world.