We’ve just uploaded some photos from two of our past events - The First Annual Tribeca Rooftop Gala, and the Somaly Mam Foundation Launch at the United Nations. You can check them out on our events page, or with the links below:

Tribeca Rooftop Gala
United Nations Launch

The U.S. State Department Released the 2008 TIP Report today. Somaly Mam Foundation board member, Guy Jacobson, is featured as a hero fighting human trafficking. Click Here to Download the 2008 TIP Report

UNITED NATIONS, June 3 (Xinhua) — The UN General Assembly took up the issue of human trafficking at a thematic debate on Tuesday in an effort to fight a scourge that enslaves more than 2 million people worldwide. Click Here to Read Full Story

A recent report by Save the Children UK has uncovered evidence of UN Peacekeepers involvement in sexual abuse of the children they have been sent to protect. Many of the children are too afraid to come forward, but the report has helped bring attention to this issue with UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon who said that he is “deeply concerned.” Click Here to Read the Full Article

Every year, the U.S. State Department releases an annual Trafficking in Persons Report. The report is a great resource about the human trafficking issue. You can read the last one in its entirety, or just peruse, here:

2007 Trafficking in Persons Report (pdf download)

As you may have noticed, we just launched a new site design. If you have any questions, comments, etc, give me a holler at gopperman|at|gmail|dot|com. Hope you enjoy it!

The Somaly Mam Foundation has partnered with Look2TheFuture to present the Futures ‘09 Somaly Mam Bicycle Challenge:

In March 2009, 30 people will embark on a two-week cycle challenge through the streets of Cambodia. They will be riding to help the millions of innocent children who are forced into sexual slavery every year, a billion dollar industry in SE Asia.

Visit the Futures ‘09 homepage >>

If you’re interested in participating, you can register here. Riders are asked to provide $700 to cover travel expenses, and then raise an additional $6,000 through sponsors, or through our upcoming Futures ‘09 donation page. Registration is limited to the first 30 participants. For more information on what the tour will be like, check out the itinerary.

If you’re simply interested in supporting riders with sponsorship donations, stay tuned: our official sponsorship donation page will launch as soon as we have 30 riders.

Somaly Mam was featured today in the Denver post, in an article entitled Anti-sex slavery activist in Denver tonight.

“Working as a teen-aged sex slave in a Cambodian brothel, Somaly Mam says she served up to 30 clients a night. Some hit her. “I never thought, just lived hour by hour. I played with nothing. In my head: nothing. It was dark, dark, dark. I never trusted people,” Mam said Friday during a visit to Denver.

“I was dead.”

She tried suicide, she said.

Her turning point: the day a brothel pimp fired a bullet through the head of her friend, Srymom, who dared refuse customers - warning other girls to obey. Mam said she then began trying to help a newcomer, a girl with dark skin like her, and eventually used the brothel keys to set her free.

Brothel owners soon released Mam, deeming her too old for Cambodia’s booming sex trade.

Ever since, Mam has been arranging rescues of child sex slaves - more than 4,000 over the past decade. The group she formed - Acting for Women in Distressing Situations - counsels and rehabilitates them at shelters in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

Read the full article here.

Somaly Mam’s continued effort to battle sexual slavery was recently honoured by the World Children’s Prize, decided by a vote of over 6 million children worlwide. From an article in the International Herald Tribune:

“A Cambodian activist who has worked to rescue girls from sexual slavery was named the winner Wednesday of the World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child.

The Swedish prize committee said Somaly Mam was honored for her “dangerous struggle” to save girls sold to brothels in Cambodia. She was selected the winner in a vote by 6.6 million children worldwide.

Mam was herself sold as a sex slave when she was a child and in 2006 her 14-year-old daughter was kidnapped, raped and sold to a brothel, the citation said.

She is now the president of AFESIP, the French acronym for Acting for Women in Distressing Situations, which has helped build safe houses that provide refuge, food, health care and schooling for girls saved from slavery.”

Read the full article here.

New York

Thanks to help and support of supermodel, Petra Nemcova, the Somaly Mam Foundation Benefit Dinner in Manhattan was a success! Major sponsors included Diane von Furstenberg, Glamour Magazine, LexisNexis, Michael Angelo’s Wonderland, and Joseph Abboud. Hosting the event and speakers for the evening included Petra Nemcova; Abigail Disney; Glamour Editor-in-Chief, Cindi Leive, and LexisNexis Global CEO, Andy Prozes.

The evening began with a red carpet entrance where media such as Dateline, People Magazine, OK, US Weekly, and a local New York news channel interviewed the special guests.
Denver

Sponsored by the Hill Foundation the Denver cocktail benefit was held at the elegant and historical Oxford Hotel. Top News Anchor, Bertha Lynn of Channel 7 presented as mistress of ceremonies for the evening. Somaly Mam gave an emotionally powerful speech about her life in Cambodia and her dedication to helping the victims of sex trafficking.

In addition to the cocktail reception, the Denver Chapter of the Somaly Mam Foundation organized 2 sold out screenings of Holly, which included a question and answer session with Somaly Mam and film producer, Guy Jacobson. The evening served as both a fundraiser and opportunity to expose students and Denver community members to the cause. Sponsored by the Denver Film Society, the movie will continue playing through Friday.