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Sold into Prostitution

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What would you do if someone you cared about was kidnapped and sold into forced marriage or prostitution? This is the true story of Ben Randall of ‘The Human, Earth Project’ and his fight for justice in the dark and dangerous world of human trafficking.

A few years ago, globetrotter Ben Randall spent a great deal of time in SE Asia, photographing and befriending countless locals. Here are just some of the portraits that you can have in your own home with just a small contribution to the cause.

Meet “M”

While teaching English in northern Vietnam, Ben got to know a 15-year old girl, who we shall call “M”.

After Ben had long left the region, he discovered that M had been taken against her will, kidnapped, and sold across the border into China as a bride or even worse, possibly into the sex trade.

Human Trafficking. Human Slavery. We are apt to feel in our free world that this is history, but sadly it is not. Today alone, more than 20 million victims around the world, primarily women and children, are subject to this brutality.

Ben wanted to do something for his friend M, but what could he do? He was just one person on the other side of the world. He could have just ignored the whole issue and got on with his life, but that would be the cowardly way out.

Ultimately Ben determined that the only course of action was to do something to help find M. Ben created ‘The Human, Earth Project’ to film a feature-length documentary of his search for M and bring awareness to the tragedy of human trafficking affecting millions in 161 countries all over the world.

How You Can Help
Please take a few of minutes now to watch the video and to learn more about the project.

Take a moment to visit crowdfunding page to make a contribution. There are some great rewards including exclusive prints and a chance to have your name in the movie credits.

You can also share the campaign on your favorite social media sites by clicking the buttons below.

Share this Human Trafficking Story on Facebook    Share this Human Trafficking Story on Twitter   Share this Human Trafficking Story onGoogle    Share this Human Trafficking Story on Pinterest

Together we can all help Ben shed light on human trafficking atrocities and help get M home to her loved ones. Even if this protects just a single young boy or girl from falling victim, it will have been worth all the hard work of the countless volunteers and others like you who have contributed along the way.

My Annual Review and Vision for 2014

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I am writing this post on the last day of 2013. Wow. It’s truly hard to believe that tomorrow is the first day of 2014. In some countries, it’s already 2014. When you read this, it will be 2014.

I started writing this post in my journal, which has been with me through 13 countries. My journal has been to more countries than most people. As cool as that sounds though, it’s not the number of countries that’s important. What’s important is experiencing a country and a culture that is completely different from your own. Someone who leaves Canada to live in Indonesia or China or Nicaragua for 1 year will be transformed on a deeper level than someone who visits a new country every two weeks.

Okay, back to the post. The annual review. This is the first true annual review I’ve ever done. I’ve written versions of them before but it wasn’t what a true annual review should be. Personally, an annual review should be a deep and honest look at the last year. A compilation of what went wrong and what went right. A deep reflection into why things went right and why they went wrong. Something that allows you to learn from the mistakes made and then banish them into history. Finally, it should look ahead into the future, not necessarily with goals but with an overall vision of what you would like to see in yourself over the year ahead. It could be a vision of what you hope to achieve in business or more importantly, what you wish to see in yourself. It should be taken very seriously and not just a “dream” that gets tossed in the garbage a week later. Every day is a miracle after all. [Read more…] about My Annual Review and Vision for 2014

Who Said You Couldn’t Become a Married Digital Nomad with a Baby | An Interview with Brad Hussey

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I met Brad for a coffee after exchanging emails a few times. He was living just two hours south of myself and had been reading this blog when it was called A World of Inspiration. Brad is a web designer who became a minimalist and now travels all over the place with his laptop, his wife and his newborn baby.

There are a lot of people who think a baby (and marriage for that matter) are a hindrance to the nomadic lifestyle but Brad is proving them wrong. While the challenges are certainly greater, Brad is a great example of what’s possible when you make your dreams a priority. In this case, Brad and his wife want to see the world and not be chained down to one location. They became minimalists and got rid of most of their stuff, took their jobs on the road and are now living in Newfoundland for the next year.

Meet Brad.

Brad, you recently had a baby girl. How’s the adventure going?

It’s been a totally transforming experience. I never knew, nor expected, what it would be like to have a child. In my experience so far, I’ve realized how much having a child puts your entire existence on this earth into perspective. You have less time to worry about stupid things, because there is somebody, here and now, who needs your immediate attention. I like saying that having a child makes every day an unpredictable adventure — and there’s something exciting about that to me.

[Read more…] about Who Said You Couldn’t Become a Married Digital Nomad with a Baby | An Interview with Brad Hussey

Jumping Out of a Plane Without a Parachute

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Made you look.

What did you think you were going to read? A new form of skydiving? suicide?

You know what I actually think made you click on this post?

Crazy ass risk. A leap. A bold thing to do with ones life.

Let’s face it. Most of us don’t take enough risks. We play it safe. We conform.

Why?

Now, of course, jumping out of a plane without a parachute is stupid. It’s not really a risk in my eyes – it’s just plain suicide and makes no sense at all.

But why don’t we take more liveable risks? Risks that make us live limitless.

Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

Jon Krakauer from Into the Wild.

We only have one life. We don’t get stronger as we age. We’re strong now.

In today’s world with endless opportunities and connections to the entire world, why conform and sit steady as we watch others live remarkable lives… [Read more…] about Jumping Out of a Plane Without a Parachute

How to Create Your Own Burning Man Experience Without Going to Burning Man

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Wow. What can I say.

Burning Man was fantastic. A journey more than an event. Truly a “life” experience.

68,000 people camping in the middle of an inhospitable desert.

Dirty. Excited. Open.

Dressed in costumes, people parade around proudly gifting things to one another and appreciating the generosity of others.

Massive art projects give an impressive life to the playa, mesmerizing people by day and dazzling them with neon lights at night.

Seminars and workshops around everything you can imagine go from dawn til dusk. Sex, spirituality, flexibility, change, dance…you name it.

But not everyone wants to make the journey to Black Rock City. Not everyone wants to live on a desert for a week. Not everyone wants to go without a shower for 7 days or wait in a 12-hour lineup to get in.

If you can’t make it out to one, you could always create your own at home. You’d simply have to…

  • Organize space for a large gathering of open-minded people from all walks of life.
  • Arrange for massive, expensive and extremely detailed art projects to be lined up all over the community. I’m talking about large climbable 30-foot iron statues of wolves, 20-foot tall human hands that can cup you like a baby and big tents with the most insane psychedelic paintings known to man-kind. This is just a start.
  • Find extremely generous people who are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of effort to transform their vehicles into giant mutant flaming octopuses, disco-dance floors and double-decker armadillos.
  • Encourage generosity amongst all participates where people gift everything from hugs, kisses, food, alcohol, and even free plane rides.
  • Organize hundreds of “seminars”, “meet ups” and “talks” around subjects of all kinds. Things like samba dancing, female masturbation classes, yoga, unconditional love, TEDx talks, erotic massage, improv, Michael Jackson Thriller dance sessions and so forth. Yup, anything goes.
  • Set up massive parties all over the place every single night that don’t stop until the sun comes up. Bring in DJ’s from all over the world willing to perform for free.
  • Make a human carcass wash come to life with hundreds of naked people cleaning each other just like a car wash. Pre-soak, soap, rinse and squeegee.
  • Create a safe environment where people can try new things, challenge their boundaries or simply be themselves. This includes walking around completely naked, dressing in ridiculous costumes or anything else that participants feel they need to do.
  • Create a large, impressive structure to go with the events theme. Maybe a UFO that people can walk in and play around with. Build a giant “man” on the top of it. Make it beautiful. Then burn it down. Actually, make it explode after launching an insane amount of fireworks into the sky.
  • Build an absolutely stunning temple for people to visit and feel. Here, people can leave prayers for loved ones who have passed away, write down things they wish to change about themselves, share their love for the event, or anything else they feel compelled to do. They can just sit and think about life or make plans for the future. Anything they want to say, think or pray about. The temple is a peaceful place for all. At the end of the event, burn it down.

I could go on. This is just a start.

Then again, you could just make a trip to Burning Man.

Welcome to the playa.

Have you been? Do you want to go? 

 

 

“The Human, Earth Project” and a Quest to Rescue a Kidnapped Girl | An Interview with Ben Randall

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When I first heard of “The Human, Earth Project”, I was hooked. Such an amazing story and a great adventure to provide people with a good look into the lives of people all across SE Asia. More importantly, it will shed a light on something that shakes me to the bone; Human trafficking. It’s such a massive worldwide problem that most people don’t even know about. Imagine having your son or daughter kidnapped and sold to someone overseas…very sad.

Ben is on a mission to find a young girl he met in Vietnam who was later sold into China. He hopes to bring her back to her family. On top of this, he will try to find 100 of the same people he took photos of five years ago and tell their story to the world.

I asked Ben a few question regarding this project, which he answered below. I hope you enjoy.

Welcome Ben.

What inspired your first trip to Asia five years ago?

When I was 22, I went to Europe for six months, and stayed for almost three years. By the time I finally got back to Australia, I knew that home would never again be big enough for my curiosity.  Asia was so close, but it was worlds away in terms of history, culture and landscapes.

Was this project already planned as of then or did you come up with it after your first trip?

From my first months in Asia, I focused on taking portraits of local people, with the intention of eventually putting together an exhibition. After my first two years of living and travelling in Asia, however, I made the decision to give up photography altogether, as a way of living the moment more fully rather than simply trying to capture it.

I also had the sense that by capturing the physical appearance of these people, I was capturing something very superficial, and was focusing on the differences between us, rather than the things that unite us all as humans: our thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears. So I kept the photos to myself, until I heard of M’s kidnapping, and realized there was a way to use them to help people. That’s when ‘the Human, Earth Project’ was born.

What inspired you to start this project?

In 2010, I spent three months living in the mountains in the far north of Vietnam, and that’s where I met M. I first went to Asia for the culture and landscapes, but it was the people I met there that made it truly memorable, and M was one of those people.

The year after I left Vietnam, M was kidnapped, and is believed to have been sold as a wife or prostitute in China. When I heard about her disappearance, through mutual friends, my first reaction was a sense of shock and helplessness. I didn’t see that there was anything I could do.

That lasted about a year, and might have lasted a lot longer, if not for a series of meetings and experiences that got me thinking in a more practical frame of mind. Rather than seeing M’s disappearance as the end of a tragedy, I began to see it as the beginning of something bigger. It would have been easy to do nothing, but it wouldn’t have been easy to live with myself.

human earth project

How did you find two other people to work with and how are you working together to bring this project to life?

My background is in documentary film-making, and from the very beginning of the project I’d been hoping to find a cameraman to follow me for the six months of my journey, to film it as  a documentary.

I spoke to two travel photographers I knew – I’d shared a house with Patrice in southern Thailand, and met Moreno while travelling in northern India – and they were so enthusiastic about the project that they both decided to join me, which was wonderful.

Unfortunately, Patrice will no longer be able to join us as his father has recently suffered a stroke. Moreno and I will still be producing the documentary, so we can share the sights and sounds of our journey with you all!

Please tell us about M…

Ethnically, M belongs to the Hmong minority. The Hmong tend to live poor and difficult lives in rural villages, and there were many Hmong communities in the mountains around the town where I was living in northern Vietnam.

Many Hmong families would send their daughters into town to sell handicrafts and guided treks to tourists. Sometimes these girls were as young as nine years old; M was fifteen when I met her. The girls learn English from the tourists they speak to.

Of all the Hmong girls I met in Vietnam, M was the most memorable. She has a loud mouth, a quick smile and a sharp sense of humour. It would be incredible if we could bring her home to her family.

How did you find about M? Do you know how widespread human trafficking is in Asia?

I learnt of M’s abduction through mutual friends in Vietnam. Her story, sadly, is only one of many. While I was living in Vietnam, I was oblivious of the traffic in Hmong girls, but I’ve since realized what an enormous issue it is, with girls disappearing frequently.

Because of the Chinese one-child policy and the cultural preference for male children, there aren’t enough women in China, and girls are imported by all means possible. The Hmong, already regarded as second-class citizens in Vietnam, are easy prey for traffickers.

As many as 27 million people are estimated to be victims of human trafficking around the world, a mind-boggling number – more than the entire population of Australia. A very large proportion of those people are in Asia.

Are there many organizations trying to help?

I’ve been in touch with the Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation which is doing some amazing work in Vietnam and, amongst other things, has rescued 297 trafficked children. If we can find M, they can almost certainly help bring her home.

How do you plan on making people aware of human trafficking?

The focus of ‘the Human, Earth Project’ is a six-month, 20,000-kilometre journey from Indonesia to Nepal, to find one hundred of the people I photographed during my first journey through Asia. As we find these people, we’ll be sharing their stories, to see them as human beings, not merely faces or numbers.

The entire journey will be shared online via stories, photos and videos, and after the journey finishes we’ll be releasing the documentary and a book of photographs. It’s our role to make these things as fascinating as possible, to get as much attention as we can for the cause, and to make as many people as possible aware of the human trafficking situation.

How do you plan on finding M?

Finding M will be the most difficult part of the journey and, in truth, we may never find her. If we can help raise awareness of the issue of human trafficking, however, we may be able to stop the same thing happening to other girls like her.

the human earth project

How are you funding your trip?

In March, when ‘the Human, Earth Project’ was first announced, I launched a crowdfunding campaign which raised $3,035. To this I’ll be adding over $15,000 of my own money, which I’ve managed to save over the twelve months.

I’m also selling prints of my portraits through the website, at www.humanearth.net. They’ve been very popular – I’ve had sixty-six of them printed and posted around the world in the past two months!

How can we help?

It’s been amazing to see the way that this project has brought together people around the world; it’s been an incredible journey already. Many people have been contributing their own time and money because they want to see the project succeed. The person who’s helped me the most has been my brother Nick from pinionsystems.com, who has spent many long nights getting ‘the Human, Earth Project’ website up and running.

Friends and strangers around the world have been helping me to translate the website into their own languages; we currently have seventeen translations available, including languages from some of the countries we’ll be passing through, so people there can see what we’re doing. There’s also a worldwide musical collaboration currently contributing music for the documentary.

If you do want to help the project, there are two things you can do. Firstly, you can share it around with your friends and family. The more people see what we’re doing, the more likely we are to make a difference. Secondly, you can buy a portrait print through our website at www.humanearth.net – it’s a great way to help the project, and to have something beautiful to show for it!

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Hope you liked this interview. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments and I’ll have him reply 🙂