Two boys, two worlds

MTV Exit paired up with the British band Radiohead to create this music video on child labor. Strikingly simple, "All I need" portrays a day in the life of two boys who occupy very different worlds, comparing them side by side with a split screen. The similarities between them make their radically different circumstances all the more apparent.



"I'm the next act, waiting in the wings
I'm an animal trapped in your hot car
I am holidays that you choose to ignore

You are all I need, you're all I need
I'm in the middle of your picture
Lying in the reeds

I am a moth who just wants to share your light
I'm just an insect trying to get out of the night
I wanna stick with you, because there are no others

You are all I need, you're all I need
I'm in the middle of your picture
Lying in the breeze

It's all wrong, it's all right
It's all wrong, it's all right
It's all wrong, it's all right
It's all wrong, it's all right
It's all wrong, it's all right"

See other MTV Exit videos here and here.

Use GoodSearch to browse and collect $$$ for LO

It just keeps getting easier to earn free money for your favorite charity. (We hope that’s us!) GoodSearch, the Yahoo engine which donates money to the charity of your choice every time you enter a search term, isn’t new. Yet we recently crunched some numbers, and the results have given us a renewed interest in this highly accessible source of money for nothing.

Once you’ve chosen LO as your charity, GoodSearch gives us one penny when you search. That may not sound like a lot, but we know we have a lot of supporters (1,989 people receive our newsletter) and we know most of you are on the web every day. That means if each newsletter subscriber searched five things a day through GoodSearch, LO would earn $99.45 a day! At the end of one year at the same rate, that’s $36,299.25.

That’s enough money to fund our LEARN project for the entire year of 2011!

Get started now. Go to Goodsearch.com, and enter “Lotus Outreach” in the bar that says “enter your favorite charity or school here.” You can then register and GoodSearch to track your earnings for you.

That’s it! Just remember to go to GoodSearch (or set it has your homepage) instead of your usual search engine. We’ll update you on our progress in a few months, so let’s make them count!

India's Supreme Court orders vocational training for sex workers

India was recently ranked fourth of the most dangerous nation in the world to be a woman, one reason being its prolific sex industry which has grown by a factor of 17 in the last 15 years.
There must be a better wayThis summer, India's Supreme Court ordered the government to identify sex workers for vocational training in four major metropolitan areas. "It is only if a sex worker is able to earn a livelihood through technical skills rather than by selling her body that she can live with dignity, and that is why we have requested all the states and the Union of India to submit schemes for giving technical training to these sex workers," it said.

Our director of field operations, Glenn Fawcett, gives us his take on the development from New Delhi:

"When I became aware of the Supreme Court ruling it reminded me of the situation in Cambodia, where government efforts against trafficking have been of questionable value. Too often, they focused on rounding up and confining poor and low tariff sex workers, many of which report being raped and robbed in the process of their "rehabilitation." There are distinct differences, however, and I feel certain this could offer an opportunity to open up the brothels of India. If so, this would increase opportunities to intervene while reducing the numbers of newly occurring trafficking cases. Enhanced monitoring would allow for extensive data collection on the women’s demographics, educational background, and capacities with respect to livelihood training.

In Cambodia, we have a highly effective Non-Formal Education and skills training program for sex workers and vulnerable girls which has shown us that poverty and lack of education is almost always why this population ends up exploited. We do not miss the opportunity to analyze where these women and girls come from, and plan to improve educational and employment opportunities. Moreover, we work to  reduce the dangers of being trafficked in the villages, where the problem begins.

Getting this right in India is a tremendously exciting prospect, as much as losing the opportunity is a cause for grief. The extent to which civil society and its professional development players are empowered to participate in the planning and implementation of these programs will decide its efficacy. Leave it to government and it will be an opportunity to loot. NGOs should be invited to apply for funding to implement related programs vis a vis a transparent process to an independent panel set up by the courts. This will go a long way to ensuring good outcomes that get to the root of problems."

 

Seduced into slavery

Swept off her feetThe second in a series of MTV Exit videos we are sharing on our blog, this piece by Black Iris and Bethany Cosentino conveys a vicious reality with startling accuracy. Hundreds of thousands of women are courted and seduced by traffickers, lured by romance and the intoxicating promise of marriage and a new life of prosperity in a foreign land. Once they arrive, they meet a very different reality.

Every year, 640,000 women and children are tricked into slave labor and prostitution. These stories span the globe; from China, Nepal, South America and Eastern Europe to the UK, US and Canada. They are closer than you think, and crueler than you imagined.



Find out what LO is doing about it and how you can help, and see the other videos here.

Turning the tables on domestic violence

The story of Goong Mouey, a beneficiary of our Consoling Through Counseling project in 2010, highlights just how far a small amount can go to help women suffering from domestic violence.

Mouey may have survived decades of war and genocide in Cambodia, but she didn’t emerge unscathed.  The Khmer Rouge completely shut down the public education system in the late 1970s, and 90 percent of all teachers were summarily executed.  Mouey is a part of an entire generation of women to grow up completely illiterate, and with little to no economic opportunity.

Mouey now holds the purse strings - and the power - in her homeMouey is representative of the roughly 30 percent of Cambodian women that suffer from regular domestic violence.  Escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband and unable to provide for her five young children, she turned the children over to an orphanage for two years.  “This was especially painful for me,” she shares, “but I had run out of options.”

Since coming into contact with the Dining for Women-supported counseling and reintegration program, the tables have turned for Mouey.  After spending some time at a safe shelter, Mouey received $20 in start-up support along with a $120 small business grant and now runs a highly successful vegetable grocery business near Poipet city.  Her business allows her to earn about $50 per day—over 20 times the per capita income in Cambodia—and she has since been able to resume caring for her children.

“I did have a small vegetable stall earlier but it was not enough to live on.  The grant allowed me to offer five times as much variety and volume,” Mouey shares.  “Now I can afford pretty much whatever the children need to be well nourished.”  Mouey’s 16 year-old daughter, Srey Mom, pipes in as well: “Previously I didn’t have the money I needed to pay for school tuition or buy food and medicine, and now we do.”

Divorce carries an onerous social stigma in Cambodian society. When Mouey's husband came skulking back to a vastly improved financial situation, she opted to try again.  This time, however, the physical abuse has ended.  “I control the money in the family now,” Mouey tells us. “Though he is verbally aggressive, he no longer hits me.”  Recognizing the cultural factors working against sufferers of domestic violence in Cambodia, Lotus Outreach hopes to implement men’s anger management courses in the near future to give women who do return to abusive marriages the very best chance at a safe, healthy life.

With a $39,000 grant this year from Dining for Women, Lotus Outreach will help dozens of families like Mouey’s get back on their feet through shelter assistance, start-up financial support, vocational training and small business grants.