journal entry number two

prompt: what skills, talents and abilities do you think you can bring to the table to help heal and restore victims of trafficking?

i know that i have writing skills.  i know that i have visual skills, with layout and art and design sort of thing.  i know that i have been able to design things that have caught peoples' attentions in the past, i have been able to write things that have inspired people to think more deeply about issues, including human trafficking.

i don't think that i'm called to work directly with victims in offering services.  i think i'm going to be more behind the scenes.

today we talked briefly about how young women, girls who are not even old enough to be able to consent to sex are being arrested and put in juvenile hall for prostitution– does that make sense?  no.  but no one does anything because how many people are even thinking about it?

i believe that i can (with a team of people, with resources) design a campaign that would address that issue and bring awareness of how that occurrence is inconsistent with law and just common sense, really.

we also spoke about pimp culture and how it is "marketed" more or less in our society as something cool and a positive alternative to young men who are very limited in their futures (oftentimes by other inequalities like racism and classism, lack of resources, etc.).

i believe that i can (with a team of people, with resources) design a campaign that would react to that, that would reveal the truth of how uncool pimping is, and direct young men in a different direction.

i am an ideas person.  i think i think i think.  i write my thoughts, i draw my thoughts, i blog my thoughts (clearly).  i know that i can think of an idea that would fit on an 8x11 page; i am also a writer who can write at length.  i can sit down and over the course of a few months, 5-6 months, crank out a pretty decent draft of a novel.  i can write 140+ pages of coherent plot, complex characters, etc.  i've been doing these things for years and i'm confident in these abilities.

so, i believe that i can (with editor(s), with resources, again) create a fiction novel (based on perhaps real stories, interviews, or something along those lines) that would dive into the issue of commercial sexual exploitation, what manipulation, what social issues feed into it, how the media affects it, how people turn a blind eye, how women and girls and boys are mistreated and misidentified as they're run through the system, how demand functions, who is involved, etc., etc.

that being said.  i have absolutely no expectation of any of these options being easy... thinking about it is like this weird mixture of overwhelm-ment and motivation.  like, "i want to, have to do this!" + "oh Lord, how could i ever do this?!"  whiiiiiich pulls me back to my previous journal entry:  "i can't do this Jesus! do it through me!!!!"

um the other thing i'm thinking about is how i plan to speak to students in the high schools about this issue.  that's going to be extremely difficult.  i don't even know where to begin; i think i need so much guidance on what issues are really important and how to say and explain certain aspects and how to keep from overwhelming kids but not just ignoring them like this isn't going on... i don't know if i can do this all in one more year of school like i've been planning!  but at the same time i sort of feel like i can and i will... ugh!  "i can't do this Jesus! do it through me!!!"  haha.

but seriously.
but seriously.