According to a recent press release, New York-based human trafficking organization, Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS), will be the recipient of a $250,000 grant, thanks to Demi Moore. Demi Moore beat Kevin Bacon in the Pepsi Refresh Celebrity Challenge using her social media network to gather votes. The money will be donated to GEMS to aid her cause, fighting human trafficking.According to the release, GEMS is "the nation's largest non-profit organization designed to empower American girls and young women, ages 12-21 who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking."
Stated Demi, "The Pepsi Refresh Grant will allow GEMS to train 10 former victims as outreach workers and employ them to go back to their community and refresh the lives of thousands of victimized girls. I believe the work that GEMS is doing is nothing short of heroic!"
The Pepsi Refresh Project will award over $20 million in 2010 in grants for community projects. Individuals with project ideas can apply at http://www.refresheverything.com/ to have their project proposals voted on by the public.
Photo credit: prnewswire.com
Thanks for posing this! I've started a documentary on Human Trafficking her in Silicon Valley/San Francisco Bay Area after going to a panel and discovering it's a big problem in San Francisco.
ReplyDeleteI'm part of Soroptimist International and our two year project internationally is stopping trafficking of women and girls for sex slavery. http://www.soroptimist.org/
Again, I was aware of the problem, but did not realize here in the SF Bay Area it was!
Here is a link to my TV Show info on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/SVTAGS
H.Durham
Executive Producer
Silicon Valley -Technology, Art, Green and Sustainability