Girls Are Not For Sale

Last night I had a meeting with an advisor in my program to talk about possible internship placements for next year. She was asking me a lot about my interests and what populations I'd like to work with. She noticed I had put human trafficking down as an interest on my form and asked if that'd be a top priority for me. I said yes, definitely and she said she may know of a place that could be a good fit for me.

GEMS: Girls Educational & Mentoring Services is an organization which works with girls ages 12 - 21 who are survivors of human trafficking, mainly sex trafficking. I'd never heard of GEMS before but it sounded right up my alley so when I got home, I Googled them. Oh wow. I spent at least an hour on their website reading about how they started and what they do. Absolutely fell in love with this organization. Not only do they offer housing and services there but they also do a lot of creative outreach. I had mentioned to the advisor I was thinking about possibly combining my past experience in film with social work and making documentaries about social issues. As I was looking around the GEMS website, I found out they had a hand in making the documentary Very Young Girls.

My advisor said they took an intern last year for the first time but wasn't sure if there would be an opening for next year. She did say she would check into it for me though. I don't want to get my hopes up so I'm not banking on it. We won't really hear anything about next year's internships until April at the earliest. Regardless of what happens there, I think this organization and what it is doing is so crucial and it's important to get the word out about them and educate people about these issues.


The song heard in this video ("This Is To Mother You") is a charity recording for GEMS done by Sinead O'Connor and Mary J. Blige and introducing Martha B.