If you are close to me, you will know that I have two beautiful girls (Milan & Savvy) who mean more to me than anything. Since my first daughter was born over 9 years ago, I have become a very emotional person. One of my early memories is when I picked up Milan from her first day at pre-school and seeing her playing all by herself on the lawn while all the other kids were playing hide-n-seek. As a dad, that just about killed me because I thought she would never make any friends. And still today, my daughters and I have a very close relationship – we do everything together … play Wii, PlayStation, board games, sing songs, read books, do homework, watch movies, beat box, tell jokes, go out to eat and play “I spy” and throw the football around. If we are friends on Facebook, you already know this! When I see horrible things happen to children on the news or read about a tragic situation online, it becomes so very personal to me and it affects me emotionally. I could not survive if anything ever happened to either of my little girls. They are the source of my happiness, strength and the sole reason I work as hard as I do. If you are a parent, I am sure you can relate.
For this reason, and this reason only, I have decided to donate 100% of my book royalties to something so much more important than my bank account or social media or social business or Twitter or all these cool things we talk about day in and day out. Truth is, that while we are all tweeting, retweeting and debating about definitions of stuff that doesn’t matter in real life, 2 million children are being bought and sold in the global commercial sex trade. That, my friends is real life. It is a cancer and it is happening all around us, everywhere, in every city, suburb, state and country — where innocence is being taken, exploited and children are being forced to do things that they shouldn’t be doing. It’s called human trafficking and it’s a global problem.
What really hurts me, even as I write these words, is knowing that – right now – little girls as young as my daughters are being forced into prostitution and forced to have sex with dirty strangers who have no regard whatsoever for a child’s innocence. I can’t even begin to imagine the torment, horror and fear that these kids have to live with every single day of their lives. Thinking about it makes me sick, want to vomit and rip something/someone into pieces. It’s hard to comprehend that such evil exists in the world today and I feel like I need to do my part to put a stop to it.
Just yesterday, I made a trip up to Half Moon Bay where I met with some really awesome people (Allison, Mark, Nathan, Gabe and a few more) from the Not For Sale Campaign – which is a “campaign to end slavery in our lifetime.” It was initiated by journalist, social entrepreneur, ethics professor, and warrior for justice, David Batstone and his very passionate, determined and hard working team. I am proud to say that 100% of my book royalties will go to Not For Sale. Here is a quick video of Mr. Batstone discussing how Not For Sale (NFS) came to be.
I realize that there will be skeptics who feel like I am doing this just to promote my book. I understand where you are coming from. I assure you that I will be 100% transparent and open about any and all donations to NFS. In fact, I am working directly with their technical staff to display a “donation widget” on the site which will track all of my contributions (yours too). If this still doesn’t appease the skeptics, I am sorry. There is nothing else I can do but give you my word.
Lastly, if all you have is $20 to your name, please don’t waste your money and buy my book. Shoot me an email (britopian at gmail) and I will send you one free of charge. I would much rather you donate it directly to Not For Sale.
