Events focus on human trafficking
A yearlong project by Dr. Shari Horner's Seminar in Women's Studies class will culminate with a Dec. 3 workshop and screenings of a movie about the child sex trade, The Day My God Died, Dec. 2 and 4.
Horner, English professor and director of Women's Studies, said students in the class chose the cause they wanted to work on and were responsible for planning and organizing the event.
The Day My God Died is a feature-length documentary narrated by actor Tim Robbins that presents stories of young girls whose lives have been shattered after being abducted from their villages and sold into servitude. According to the film, the pipeline for the child sex industry starts in the villages of Nepal and feeds a continuous supply of girls to the urban brothels including those in Bombay, India.
The movie will be screened at 4 p.m. Dec. 2 and 2 p.m. Dec. 4 in the Orndorff Theatre in the Anthony F. Ceddia Union Building.
The Dec. 3 workshop is 2 to 3 p.m. in the Cora I. Grove Spiritual Center. Guest speaker will be Kara Beardsell, a Shippensburg alumna and founder of Be the Change Foundation. The group works to improve living conditions for women and children around the world and to empower those impacted by human trafficking.
Following the workshop, participants will make bracelets to be sent to women in Nepal. For a dollar donation, participants may make two bracelets and keep one of them. Donations will go to help raise awareness on the issues associated with human trafficking. The college class plans to hold another bracelet-making workshop the last week of the semester at Big Spring High School in Newville.
"I think it's a great project," Horner said, not only because it involves Beardsell and her foundation but "also because the film we'll be showing features the rescue home where the women who have been rescued from sex slavery now live, Maiti Nepal. It's the same place that Kara's foundation is helping and the friendship bracelets the students will make here on campus and at Big Spring High School will go directly to women at Maiti, Nepal. So everything is quite amazingly connected."