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Fighting for Girls' Rights |
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By Susan Macaulay
 Betty Makoni was beaten and raped as a child. When she was nine, she saw her father kill her mother.
But she is not a victim. She is a survivor,
activist and leader who turned her devastating childhood experiences
into a force for good in her native country Zimbabwe.
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Sex Slavery Survivor Gives Others Hope |
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 For Somaly Mam, laughter is as strong a weapon in her fight against human trafficking and sexual slavery as her own harrowing tale.
Born into extreme poverty in Cambodia and forced at age 12 to work as a sex slave, Mam has refused to let her horrifying past sour her present, and made it her mission to reach out to young women and girls broken by similar plights.
"Life, you have to laugh," she said Friday after recounting her story to DePaul students and faculty at the school's Lincoln Park campus.
Mam, who will make a commencement speech Saturday at DePaul's School for New Learning, heads an international organization based in Cambodia dedicated to rescuing women held as sex slaves across Southeast Asia. She's also the president of the Somaly Mam Foundation, which raises money to fund her efforts.
Mam claims to have saved about 4,000 young women and girls since starting her agency in 1996. Her work has the attention of actresses Susan Sarandon and Angelina Jolie, and last year, she was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People.
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Homeless, Hungry, Alone, AND College-Bound |
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 Jessica Herrera’s high school resume is as impressive
as any teen in the country, but it’s her experiences outside the
classroom that might set her apart.
The 18-year old recently
graduated from Coral Gables
Senior High School’s prestigious International Baccalaureate program
with a 5.5 GPA. She scored a 1270 on her SAT.
And she’s been homeless much
of the year.
“My senior year was always
the year I looked forward to. But this year, things got really super
hard at home,” Herrera said. “I just didn’t want to give up.”
Because of her perseverance, Herrera was accepted
into Florida
International University and will be attending the school for free
thanks to a few scholarships she was recently awarded. She plans to
major in psychology and wants to work with children.
A short time ago, the dream
of attending college would have been nothing more than that – a dream.
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Mother Of Five No Longer Begs For Work |
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Story & Video by Vicky Collins
 Achan Grace crosses the threshold of the home she built with
her own hands, falls to her knees and wails. Moments later, she
ululates and dances with joy.
It’s a scene that no one, especially Grace herself, would ever have
dreamed possible.
Three years ago, this mother of five begged for work. She feared she
would die from sickness and starvation, leaving her children with
nothing.
Today, she is one of several hundred women who earn an income making
beautiful bead jewelry from recycled magazine paper, and selling it to
eager buyers in North America. Now she makes enough money to feed her
family and send her children to school.
She feels sufficiently wealthy to take in a baby that someone else has
abandoned, even though she already has five children of her own. She has
named the rescued infant “Gift from God.”
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UAE Polar Explorer Elham Al Qasimi One On One With Riz Khan |
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 Susan notes: from sand to snow and back again - an interesting interview with a brave, thoughtful and driven young Emirati woman who has become a heroine to her countrywomen and men in the United Arab Emirates.
I love her quiet determination, her poise, maturity and humility. Clearly this amazing young woman is going to "go far" in more ways than one. So this won't be the last we'll hear from her...
Bravo Elham Al Qasimi and keep up the good work!
Related links:
More on Elham Al Qassimi
Funny She Doesn’t Look Like An Arctic Explorer
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A Guide To Occupied Palestine, With Peace Activist Anna Baltzer |
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Anna Baltzer is a Jewish-American
activist for Palestinian human
rights, author, and public speaker, known for taking positions counter to the
Israeli government regarding the Palestinian territories, including
the wall/fence and checkpoints. Baltzer’s grandparents
survived the Holocaust.
Baltzer first traveled to the Middle
East in 2003 while on a Fulbright grant to teach English in Ankara, Turkey. Since then, she has
traveled to the West Bank as a volunteer for the International Women's Peace
Service to as she describes, document human rights abuses and support nonviolent resistance. Her
publications have documented eight months of human conditions while on
assignment in the West Bank for the International Women’s Peace
Service. [3]
Since the summer of 2005, she has been touring around the United
States and abroad with a presentation and has written a book (Witness in
Palestine) describing her personal experiences, observations, and
photographs from eight months of documenting what she described as human rights violations in
the West Bank.
Here is a three-part video of one of her fascinating, throught-provoking and to some, controversial, presentations. All together, it's about one hour long and SO worth watching. (Thanks to Essential Dissent where it was originally posted):
Part 1
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Smiling Hafeeza: A Simple Yet Inspiring Story Beautifully Told |
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By Sadaf Shah
May 21, 2010
 I met Hafeeza a year and a half ago when she was eight moths pregnant with her third child.
I was desperate to get a massage and found her number from a relative of hers. We set up a time for the next day after I called her on her cell number. She laughingly told me that she was very much pregnant and that I should not worry as she can still do a good massage.
Next day she arrived right on time, my cleaning lady led her by the hand up the stairs and into my bedroom. Hafeeza had a smile on her face she took of her head scarf, put her hand bag in a corner took her cell phone out and put it where she could find it easily in case somebody called.
Later I realized the smile was a permanent feature. I laid out a mattress on the floor and gave her three separate oils one for my hair, one for my face and one for my body. She put them in order and began the most wonderful massage I had ever experienced. On my request she started telling me about herself...
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