Vital Voices USA

October 18, 2016

So, it’s been months since I updated the blog, since I wrote anything at all other than emails. Long emails mostly but not writing for myself. So much has happened and I forgot my ipad at work today so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to write. It’s so cathartic and in the beginning, I wrote every day to process. Eventually, it becomes normal life though and it’s hard to find the joy in the everyday, even though it would be interesting to other people. Plus, there’s just no time. There’s never enough time to finish my to do lists and when I get home I’m just so exhausted I just want to veg out.

This has been a crazy few months though, it warrants a blog post or two. In September, I got to go to this amazing conference called Vital Voices. Boom went two years ago and Mimi went last year. I loved it so much more than I ever expected to. I met some of the coolest and smartest people on the planet and had some of the deepest and most intellectually stimulating conversations of the past 6 years. I also saw a Broadway show and met a famous designer, so it wasn’t all cerebral. People keep asking me what I learned in the States that I can use here, but really all the stuff that I learned that was useful came from the other participants. I already know the laws of the US and it’s not super helpful living in a country where they are years behind those kinds of laws. However, most of the other countries represented were kind of on the same level of governmental beaurocracy as Thailand, so it was interesting to see how they are tackling some of the issues we have.

This team of ours had 22 women from 17 countries. For me the best part was being with people who were close to my age and the same sort of life situation as I am in. That is a huge void in my life in Thailand. Also people who really intellectually challenge me. In ministry, people are so wrapped up in their daily lives and their ministry, there’s just no head space left for brainy conversations. It was so nice to be with people who had the bandwidth to keep talking about all this stuff for hours. And also geek out over books and tv shows. Nobody here cares about that stuff but Mimi. 555 Let me see if I can remember all our countries and names off the top of my head.

Australia: Andrea who is crazy brill and is a lawyer and an advocate and a refugee kid and getting her PhD and wrote laws for Australia and is way smarter than me and has accomplished ten times as much, even though she is younger than me. Yes. I know. I wasted my 20s being friends with movie stars and traveling the world rather than changing it. Move along.
Turkey: Ezgi who is the sweetest and most hilarious! Best line “Eez booooring.” (but you must roll the R). She works with ECPAT Turkey and has worked on a lot of their great successful campaigns and is doing a lot of policy work to improve the lives of children and refugees. She’s amazing (yeah, you’re gonna hear – well, read – that word a lot)
Sri Lanka: Naduni, my little bus buddy. We ended up sitting together a lot and geeking out over books and movies and working with little kids. She is only 22 and getting her law degree and she also works for ECPAT Sri Lanka and has the cutest accent. We got really close during the trip and lots of tears were shed during our goodbye. I was like “STOP CRYING! You’re going to make me cry!” and she was like “I can’t! I have no one in my life at home to talk to like you.” So of course then I was bawling too.
South Africa: Diane and Tirasai
Di is from Jo-burg and Tirasai is from Cape Town. Tirasai is hilarious. Her best line of the whole trip was “Don’t fight the monkeys!” when talking about stupid tourists who get their stuff stolen by monkeys and then try to fight the monkeys to get it back. She works doing training for adults in how to treat children and educating about children’s rights. She has two kids and her daughter is also hilarious and such a badass at age 6. She knows her rights and exercises them, to her mother’s distress. Tirasai turned 30 on this trip so we celebrated her birthday in NYC! Well, we planned to, but she fell asleep first, so some of the rest of us celebrated for her.

Diane and I clicked from day one and haven’t stopped talking since. Modern technology is amazing, isn’t it? She works for the National Freedom Network, connecting different people and organizations and fighting for rights of trafficked people. She literally represents the people of South Africa in all these super cool government meetings and gets to speak truth to power on a daily basis. I would be so freaked out to do that. She’s such a rock star. Also, her kid is named after Lara Croft (sort of.)
Sierra Leone: Rhoda works at a shelter for trafficking victims and does a lot of great work with them. She was constantly solving problems the whole time we were in the states. She taught me a lot about the civil war and child soldiers in Sierra Leone and about the Ebola crisis that recently happened. She’s lived through so much more national tragedy than anyone from white bread suburban America can even comprehend and her faith is still strong and she keeps fighting for those too tired to fight for themselves.
Kenya: Phyllis works for this amazing organization called HAART and is on their programming staff (I think that’s right). She brought some amazing resources to share with us and we are going to be using the framework for the trainings about trafficking we plan to do with Jojo’s Sanctuary in the next year.
Serbia: Jelena is awesome. She basically runs Atina, which is a series of shelters for domestic abuse and trafficking victims. Also, she was one of the brainiacs behind the creation of Serbia’s first bagel shop, which employs a lot of the women from their shelters. She also taught me a lot about what it’s like to grow up in the middle of a civil war. I think Americans have a lot to learn from people who grew up in war about what is really important in life and what is worth fighting for. She is so Balkan and straightforward and has the best dry sense of humor. I swear, I have a quote a day from her. She is hopefully coming to visit me in February!!!!! I cannot wait.
England: Baljeet. Dude. This woman. She is such a cool human being. She is a lawyer and started the first NGO for refugees and migrant rights in England and she GETS. THINGS. DONE. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and she’s so funny too. I think that is one thing we all have in common and something everyone who works in this sort of intense situation needs is a good sense of humor and the ability to laugh even in the face of insurmountable obstacles.
Chile: Carolina: potentially the smartest person I’ve ever met. I wish I could download her brain into mine. I never stopped learning from her. Every word that came out of her mouth was genius. She started a theater troupe with her friends after uni, then worked for the Ministry of interior and created a plan for their country to fight trafficking, then went to study her master’s in England, did a fellowship in DC, started Chile’s first Anti-Trafficking NGO and currently works with the ministry of finance. Oh, did I mention she’s also a lawyer? She’s a year older than me. Yeah, I know. I’m a failure and wasted my 20s. Get in line.
Brazil: Artha works with Rede Nami who do amazing work in the favelas of Rio using graffiti to spread awareness about violence against women. They work in neighborhoods, schools, etc. We got to do an awesome graffiti workshop and spray paint the crap out a wall in a park on the lower east side. (maybe?)
Thailand: me and Pik You already know about me, Pik is our Victim Advocate and represents the family of the victim when they go to court for trafficking or abuse cases. She’s amazing, even if she did complain constantly about the 5 star restaurants and 3 course meals we were forced to eat daily. hahaha
Phillippines: Marie Grace is a Supreme Court Justice in the Philippines. She specializes in child abuse cases so she was excited to learn a lot and we learned a lot from her about the court system there. She went with Pik and I to see Waitress on Broadway.
US: Alisa and Margeaux Alisa works with Organization of Prostituion Survivors in Seattle and is changing the world, yo. She connects all the different aspects of society to shift the focus from the sellers of sex to the buyers. Because of her org, they arrested 250 johns in 2 days. Amazing. Last year was the first year ever for a major metropolitan city to not try a single juvenile for prostitution. Such a win. According to Human Trafficking law, the purchase of sex from an underage person automatically constitutes trafficking, so why should the kids who are being victimized be punished? She’s also been integral in setting up a school for john’s that is so good, some of them choose to go multiple times. It’s one of the first of its kind in the US and is changing lives. Please give them money to keep improving Seattle!

Margeaux is a victim advocate and travels the country doing speaking engagements and sharing her story and how people can get involved in stopping trafficking in the US. She’s super cool and is from Kentucky. I didn’t get to hang out with her as much as I would have liked.
India: Vandana and Priyanka Vandana is a doctor working to change the way doctors treat victims of abuse and trafficking and she runs all these amazing programs across their whole part of Northern India. She’s so awesome and shared so much of her knowledge. She also took care of me when I was sick. J Priyanka was the youngest, at 19, and she founded an all girls magic troupe with the help of Magic Without Borders. They go into school and hospitals and she even did a fun little magic show for us, using more English than we thought she knew! She’s a sweet kid.
Nepal: Neelam works with Free the Slaves in Nepal and had lots of stuff to share about the way they work with people there and different trends they see there. I didn’t get a chance to talk to her at length til one of the last nights, but I learned a lot from what she shared throughout the trip.
Singapore: Peck used to work with an organization that works with migrants and fights for migrant rights and trafficking victims. She was so funny and to the point about everything.
Burma: Ying co-founded SWAN the Shan Women’s Action Network that does a lot of work with Burmese refugees, both in Chiang Mai and along the border of Thailand and Burma.
Cambodia: Sola was the sweetest! She grew up in the wake of the genocide in Cambodia and knew she wanted to devote her life to improving the lives of her fellow countrypeople. She’s only 27 but she has done so much work already with her organization Hope for Justice to start to change the direction of her country.

Our first stop was DC, where we landed on Sept 11, 15 years after the towers fell and 3000 miles from where I was on that day. It was so surreal coming in and seeing the Pentagon and where they had repaired it. It blows my mind that kids are learning to drive who did not exist when that happened.  We were in the same van to the hotel as Sola (Cambodia), Ezgi (Turkey) and Ying (Burma). We chatted a bunch and I was pointing out all these different monuments like a cheesy tour guide.

When we got to the hotel, Pik full on passed out, but I went to meet Alia, who used to work for Vital Voices but got another job and abandoned us before we arrived. Traitor. ;) We walked over to this art festival thing happening and ate some comfort food (grilled cheese!) and then took the metro to the American National Portrait Gallery, which was really cool to see. They have rotating exhibits so even if I had been there before (which I suppose I may have) it would be new stuff now. Since Alia’s family is from Jordan, which has AMAZING food, and she offered to make dinner for me, I demanded Jordanian food and she did not disappoint. By the time we ate it was like 9pm and I was passing out in my food. Hahaha. It was really great to catch up with her and see her cool new house. 

The next morning was day one and most people were still jet lagged from their trips, but not me! I laugh in the face of jet lag. Ha Ha Ha. It was nice to see Cindy again, who is the director of Vital Voices and basically the reason I got to come, and also meet some new people. First off, I met Margeaux from Kentucky and her super sweet guide dog, Junebug, and Alisa from Seattle (what’s up, Washington?!) and Jelena from Serbia. Honestly, there were probably a couple other people too, but I’ve forgotten who else, and let’s be honest, they probably don’t remember meeting me at that exact point either.

Nobody really cares about the minutae of what we learned, so I’ll hit the highlights. We went to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children which I have always been interested in, so that was super cool to see it and hear from their team. Sadly, we were so late because the crazy ass bus driver kept doing these insane U-Turns in the middle of the road in areas where you CANNOT do U-turns! The best of this day was Jelena sitting by me on the bus saying “What is he doing? This is forbidden!” I was like ‘YEP it certainly is.”

Other highlights include visiting Google DC for a panel discussion and dinner (and wine. They had Malbec!), visting the State Department where we had to have special badges and an escort to the room, and a tour I organized for 12 of us who had never been to DC. It was perfect actually, I asked the guy at the concierge about night tours, since were getting a night off after our last meeting ended at 4:30. He said the tour bus goes at night but it’s $42 a person, but the hotel used a van service with a 15 pass van and the guy would do a personal tour for us for only $75 an hour, with a 3 hour minimum. It ended up being $22 a person including tip. It was fun running around the city and making up stories about these monuments like I was a real tour guide. That was a real bonding experience for us. My favorite parts of it were the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial and the Roosevelt memorial because I had never visited those before. People were really impressed with the quotes carved in stone everywhere. They were like “wow, you guys have really good speakers in this country.” Hahaha I was like, “sure, but they all have their flaws. They all cheated on their wives, Jefferson had slaves, etc etc. A good speech doesn’t mean they were perfect.” But, then none of us are, I suppose.

Then we were off to NYC! As we crossed from Jersey to Manhattan, the driver cranked up “Welcome to New York” by Taylor Swift and then “Empire State of Mind” and the whole bus was dancing. It was pretty funny to witness. We raced to check in and change before going to Diane Von Furstenberg studios (to which Baljeet hilariously asked “uh….who is Diane Von Furstenberg?” She’s a clothing designer and model, for those who don’t know). I thought her office and the meeting was pretty cool. Some of us, I won’t name names (coughSAcough) were less than impressed. She swept into the room and immediately asked “Water? Where’s the wine for our guests?” And suddently there was really expensive wine in addition to the Evian and Pellegrino. Now, that’s power! We had a really interesting discussion about what can be done to help in our various parts of the world. It was the first (and I think, only) time that the person we were visiting asked for our input rather than just telling us what they did at their org. Plus, we got gift bags and signed copies of her book! Yay books! She had some really lovely words to say to Alisa and Margeaux and wrote them each a whole page letter in their books. She personalized all the other copies for us too, and took photos with each of us, which was pretty cool, I think.

Other highlights of NYC. DUDE. We stayed at the Midtown Manhattan Hilton. In my entire life I never dreamed that I would be able to stay in the heart of the theater district, across the street from the Radio City Music Hall and 3 blocks from Central Park. It was incredible! Thank you Hilton for sponsoring this program and giving us all the best nights’ sleep we had in forever. The city is so vibrant and thrumming with life. I could have walked all over it, and did.

On Saturday, we saw AHNA!!! And Aaron and baby Egan too, who was learning to walk, but I REALLY missed Ahna. I have not seen her in person since she moved away to get married, and monthly skype calls are just not the same. It was so awesome to spend the whole day with them, and Di came along too because she had nothing else to do, so I forced her. We went to the Strand bookstore, which is the coolest on the East Coast, and then walked all the way to the Staten Island Ferry, stopping off at a random fountain in a park and also at the 9/11 Memorial area on the way. It was so crazy to be there just a few days after the anniversary. It was very sobering. Aaron took lots of pictures and Egan practiced a lot of walking. We took the ferry to Staten Island and back because it’s free! Also it passes the Statue of Liberty with no waiting in lines. Win win. We ended up at Central Park and walked around the park a bit and finally had to say goodbye at 6. Then I went back to my room and showered to go to BROADWAY! I had gotten Pik and I tickets to see Waitress and it was magical. We had center orchestra seats and they were worth every penny. Even though I was sad that I missed Jessie Mueller (Tony Winner) in the starring role, it was made up for by seeing Jenna Ushkowitz (Tina, my favorite character from Glee) in it as Dawn. I loved the show, the songs, the dialogue, how they kept so many of the perfect lines from the movie and turned some of the perfect lines into songs. It was amazing. I never feel more alive than when I go see live theater. It’s like a drug for me. I could mainline it. Even the two bombs that went off 2 miles from our hotel while we were at the theater could not dampen my high. They caught the guy the next day, it was fine.

The next morning, we had off as well, so Diane and I rented Citibikes and rode around Central Park. Both of us were so much more out of shape than we realized. I thought she was gonna pass out. We took the bus back. We were planning to get some more sleep before we were going to meet the bus later but just as I crawled into bed I got a text from Gigi, who works for Vital Voices (well, until she left to work for Hillary Clinton!) I had basically ordered her to come see us in the city since she had a layover on her way back from India. She was like “Well, I’m in Newark but I can’t manage these bags on my own, so I’m just gonna fly home.” I was like “NOPE. Unacceptable. I am literally getting on a subway to come meet you this very instant.” So, I did. It was stressful, I will admit because I did the wrong thing and got a ticket for the wrong train that left too late, so basically I got there and then we had to run with her bags back to the train back to the city. Even with all that, and running up to change into nicer clothes to wear for the photos we were getting taken, I was STILL not the last person to get on the bus. HA! All those years of musical theater quick changes still coming in handy!

We did the graffiti party that day and had a blast painting this wall with a women’s empowerment slogan. It was pretty cool, even though I’m not very good at it. Then, a bunch of us skipped dinner and went to Hillsong church in Times Square! It’s in the theater above The Lion King. Di and I were going to go to Lion King after the service, but on Sundays they play at 6:30 and not 8 so we were just getting out of service when the show was starting. Sad times. But, it all worked out cause we all went to have dinner at Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Shack and it was delicious, even though I ate ribs and not shrimp cause I live in a country with an ocean around it. There were 7 of us that went: Jelena, Andrea, Diane, Phyllis, Rhoda, Vandana, and I. We all split up and did some shopping later and Di and I went to the M&M store which was delicious.

Next morning, we were off to Dallas! Never been before, but it was pretty cool. We had a lot of good barbecue, but not enough mac and cheese, in my opinion. The food at the hotel was amazing. Chicken tortilla soup! My absolute favorite! We visited a couple domestic violence shelters and learned some fundraising strategies and also the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center, which is what our center is modeled after. It was also amazing, and so interesting to talk to the people who work with Multi Disciplinary Teams there and find out that my procedures that I just made up after talking to a couple of psychologists was actually exactly what they do. That was reassuring. We also did some shopping at the thrift store that is the social enterprise of Genesis Shelter. We all made out like bandits. It was good for us but not our wallets!

Our last night was full of laughter and wine. There was always lots of wine. Except that night we had margaritas as big as my head. We dipped our feet in the rooftop pool and talked until the wee hours of night. Then Naduni and I still got up at 7 am to send people off and say some final goodbyes. There were lots of tears. LOTS. Of tears.

Finally, Pik and I got an Uber and went to Jenny and Trey’s house. Jenny is one of my oldest friends (as in I have known her for a long time, not as in she is older than me) and she moved to Dallas a few years ago so I haven’t seen her in a while. It was perfect that we ended in Dallas so I could hang out with her and meet her husband and his family. We also did a lot of shopping to get all the stuff I had to bring back for camp! We even squeezed in a movie: Snowden with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. One day, we did a road trip to Austin and saw the Capitol Building and visited Sydney and Kevin Ling, some of my friends from Africa/Australia who now live in Texas. Crazy world travelers!

We spent the night with Allison and her family and it was so awesome to hang out with Sully and Lucky and Hudson and catch up with Allison and Chad. The only one missing was Sophie, who was in LA. Sully now plays both guitar and saxophone and Lucky is learning bass guitar and trombone. Hudson does clarinet, but he didn’t want to play for me. The other two showed off their mad skills and it was awesome. Sully has this fantastic singing voice too. It’s so cool to see them have developed from little people with cute baby personalities into full grown humans. I also love that I seem to have instilled the love of reading in them during their formative years.

As we were leaving Austin, I stopped to see Jill and Steve, who have tripled their offspring count since I saw them last. It was great to catch up with them and hear about their lives and church and kids and catch them up on all I’ve been doing.

Well, that’s the extremely truncated version of my trip to the US. Hopefully you are still awake by the end of it. Stay tuned later this month for entries about camp, Joy’s unwanted surprise party and more about Jojo’s Sanctuary, which already has a website and ways to donate. (You can find us here: cordmin.com/jojos-sanctuary)

Education Success Story

Nearly six years ago, when I first moved to Thailand, I met a boy named Somchai. He was 12 at the time and was the older brother of one of my kindergarten students that I taught at an after school program. He was living in a Christian children's home since his family was too poor to take care of all their children. I didn't know him well, but over the years, I would chat with him when he came home for school breaks. He studied alternative school at the children's home, meaning he would only have class a couple times a week and would do standardized tests at the end of each semester. When he finished his 9th grade exams, he came home, but he wanted to study more. I was determined that this kid would finish high school.

When he came home and decided to work for a year to wait for his friend to finish her 9th grade exams so they could study together, I was sure it would never happen. But, I kept after him, visited him at work and home and reminded him when the summer break came that we needed to get him a scholarship so he could study. He did all the work himself, finding the school he wanted to attend, finding out when the entrance tests were and letting me know when the parent teacher meeting was, when to pay fees and get uniforms. I met with him last week to check in and see how his first term had gone.

He was in a rush, and wanted to just grab some McDonalds to go so he could get back to studying for his test, but I persuaded him to sit and chat for a few minutes. An hour went by as he told all about his struggles and successes. He said at first it was so difficult to keep up since he had no experience attending regular school and suddenly he had all these classes and homework and tests. He took the initiative to talk to each of his teachers and explain that he really wanted to do well but needed a little extra help in some subjects to keep up. All his teachers but one have been giving him extra tutoring, extra time to do assignments and just generally encouraging him. He said that the friend he waited for to start school dropped out after just two weeks, but he was determined to keep going no matter what. He really values his education and knows that this scholarship is a big opportunity for him.

He has had a lot of struggles with his family since starting school. He is the first person in his family to study past 6th grade. His mom never went to school, his older brother and sister just passed 6th grade and stopped, so the fact that he is on track to finish high school and has dreams of college is a huge deal. It's hard for him because his mom doesn't understand that he has so much homework and tutoring he needs to do with his friends. She thinks he just runs around all the time with his buddies and doesn't contribute to the house. He says when he tries to explain, she just scolds him and it really hurts him. He told me "I have all these dreams that God has put in my heart, and when I try to talk to my family about them, they just laugh and say it will never happen. So I just keep to myself and do my work and share with you." I encouraged him that he is not alone, he has a lot of people supporting him, me, the people who gave him this scholarship, his teachers, and God.

The best part of this story is that before he started at school, he prayed about starting a cell group or Bible study that would be a school club. When he started, he made a new friend who had the same idea, so they went to the main office together to present their idea. The school said they had never had a campus cell group before, but they could certainly do it. They just need 40 members to make it official. Right now, they have 11 members and they meet on Fridays after school in the courtyard to worship, pray and read the Bible together. It's so cool to see how God is using this 18 year old boy to impact his community and that even though he has so many struggles, he is not giving up and not turning his back on God. I look forward to attending his graduation in a couple years, and pray that he can continue on to study university as well.