RIP Sam Sarpong

It is so sad when someone so young (35 yrs old) and talented/successful ends their life. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends as they deal with this tragic loss.

I am sure that more will come out as they investigate, but suicidal depression is something that can happen to any of us. It is so important that when the dark thoughts come to us that we seek out help. We present these masks to the world that everything is good and fine, but sometimes those masks slip. So if you ever see that someone you know is slipping into this dark despair about life, help them see how wonderful they are, and encourage them to get help.

‎Sex trafficking‬ is the new American Slavery

‪#‎Sex_trafficking‬ is the new American Slavery.

“People who are having sex with children are not johns and tricks. They are child rapists and pedophiles, so we should call them what they are” ‪#‎Jada_Pinkett_Smith‬. We agree. If all men caught with an underage girls were prosecuted, jailed and labeled as sex offenders, it might make a dent in this horrible exploitation.

Finally some good news with the ‪#‎FBI‬ rescuing nearly 150 underage sex trafficking victims on Wednesday. The sting included children in Atlanta (which is known as a hub for human trafficking), Cleveland, Denver and Detroit. According to a 2014 study by Urban Institute, some traffickers in Atlanta make more than $32,000 a week. 

Ben Willans fundraising memorial page

Hearing that your young child has ‪#‎cancer‬ is something that most of us will never hear. Being blindsided with Stage 4 of any kind of cancer is the worst kind of diagnosis.

A parents worst nightmare is happening for this family in England. Judy and Brians 4 yr old boy Ben was just diagnosed 4 weeks ago with Stage 4 ‪#‎Neuroblastoma‬ and is undergoing a very aggressive chemo treatment. The treatment has only a 30% success rate and because the UK doesn’t have protocol treatment for a relapse treatment, the family is raising funds to bring him to the United States.

Two hands working together

Redeeming the world sounds like a pretty humongous goal. We all look for ways to give back to our community, to ‪#‎pay_it_forward‬. Social enterprise is something that we can participate in whether you want to enhance your own business into a social enterprise or spend your consumer dollars supporting the businesses who are a social enterprise.

If you were to make a list of businesses who are looking to redeem our world, who would be on that list? They are known as ‪#‎social_enterprises‬ and some may be well known and others you might not recognize. We encourage you to take a look and consider doing business with these social enterprises, who are working hard to redeem our world. There is a link at the end of the article for the Social Venture Network’s list. I am sure that googling can find even more companies.

More and more businesses and organizations are stepping up to ‪#‎giveback‬ to society. There are two ways they are paying it forward, through contributions to charities and through having a business that doubles as a social enterprise.

‪#‎Charities‬ fill one kind of gap being filled of, “the give the man a fish”. They come to a problem with advocacy and policy changes. There is no money to be made in work of most charitable foundations. When there is a natural disaster, they can mobilize and get working much faster than social enterprise can.

With social enterprises, we have the gap being filled of “teach a man to fish”. They believe that what they create needs to create a deep and lasting impact. They want the beneficiary of their work to benefit long term. It is geared towards delivering long-term sustainable changes. They do this by commercializing the skills that the individual who needs assistance learns. They look at the problem and see how they can fix it at the best possible price, and maybe even get paid for the solution.

What we are advocating is the combination of the two hands working together. The right hand – without passion, without compassion, without drive we can’t create social change. The left – without advocacy, without policy, we can’t create social change. I don’t think the right hand or the left hand is better than the other. Combining them together just makes sense, many hands make short work as the saying goes. Sharing resources, values and working together we will serve the short term assistance that is needed and put things in place to see lasting long term change.

We saw this in our post a few weeks back. A college girl saw a short term need with the homeless in Detroit – it was cold and they needed jackets and sleeping blankets to keep warm. She took her skills and created a sample sleeping blanket that converts into a jacket. She then applied for a grant, which she won. She then taught and employed several homeless women to sew the jacket/sleeping blankets. They then had sponsors with local businesses to purchase the jacket/blankets to provide to those who needed them. The charity got the grant and sponsorship’s and provided the needed jackets/sleeping blankets. The social enterprise was created by her employing the homeless to manufacture the jacket/blankets.

We need to think outside the box of how things have always done. Everyone uses the once a year fundraising format. They have the
charity runs, the silent auctions with dinner, or the annual golf tournament. This just makes raising funds way to hard and too much work.

Instead lets think outside the box and look to innovate to create something new, different, and then apply a business model to it so that the service provided becomes self sustaining.

See more:  http://svn.org/meet-our-members/featured-member-profiles

Cocks Not Glocks

The new mantra at the University of Texas? ‪#‎CocksNotGlocks‬

I can honestly say that if my child was entering college this year, they would not be going to the University of Texas at Austin, Texas.

With all of the college shootings we have had, the tragic loss of life and emotional scars that those that were shot or were those who were standing next to them as the shots were fired – this ruling makes no sense to me.

You can't dream when you are struggling to survive

This one hits home for me. When I was 13 yrs old, my mom left my stepdad for another man. We moved from San Jose where we lived in a three bedroom home and used the garage as a fourth bedroom into a motel room with one bedroom which was my moms. There were seven kids who slept in the living room. All we had was the clothes we could fit into a pillow case.

We were surviving on welfare food, which wasn’t sufficient to last the entire month. Then my mom’s new boyfriend disappeared and we could no longer afford the rent. My mom started bringing back to our place men she picked up in bars in order to pay for the motel room. When that wasn’t enough we moved to a campground. We were homeless for several months while she reconciled with my step father and they saved to get us into a new home.

the STAR program

When you drive down the road and see teenage girls dressed provocatively and selling their bodies, do you think she is a child prostitute or do you see her as a sexually exploited child?

As a society we have been taking damaged young girls and continuing to perpetuate their belief that they don’t matter and are somehow wrong and/or deserve the treatment they have been given in their short lives.

The courts are finally realizing that these teens are not criminals, but commercially sex trafficked children. They don’t need to be arrested, they need help. They have been emotionally and/or sexually abused and this unhealed trauma leads to drug use, makes it difficult for them to stay in school and stay out of trouble.

Grow

What’s helped you grow?

Transform

You have the power to transform yourself.

Healing

The things that we go through in our lives change us forever.

Erasing what we went through would mean that we also erased the lesson we learned as a result of what happened. We don’t want to lose the lesson.

We want to heal the damage, so that the damage doesn’t control our life. We release the Victim or survivor and become the Victor.

Self Love

Winnie Harlow is a true LemonadeMaker. When she was little she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. Her skin pigmentation started changing in patches.

Instead of listening to the bullies who teased her, she says she gets to be both black and white skinned.

She doesn’t hide who she is. She loves her skin just as it is. She is a fashion model. How fantastic is that?

Sky

Are you limiting your potential, or is your “sky” into outer space?