Fighting Child Trafficking One Tweet at a Time

Diana Scimone : Oct 5, 2010
Born2Fly.org

Born to Fly International announces 1-day Twitterthon on 10/10/10 to fight child slavery

(Orlando, FL)—A Florida-based journalist-turned-abolitionist who was named by the Huffington Post as one of the "top 10 women warriors of Twitter" has launched 10/10/10—a one-day Twitterthon on October 10, 2010, to raise funds to fight child trafficking.

Diana Scimone, a veteran journalist who for years has chronicled the $34 billion-a-year human trafficking industry, founded the non-profit Born to Fly International to help end child slavery.

Scimone's 10/10/10 Twitterthon goal is for 10,000 people to give $10 each—the $100,000 needed to start printing a new child-trafficking awareness book and curriculum designed to reach kids before the traffickers do.

"Each year millions of kids are lured into sex slavery because they don't know the deceptive tactics of traffickers," Scimone says. "What if we could warn kids and their parents ahead of time? What if we taught them about the lies traffickers use—and how to stand up to them? The rate of trafficking would drop and millions of kids would never be trafficked."

The goal

That's the goal of The B2F Project: to reach kids before the traffickers do. B2F educates at-risk children and their parents about the dangers of trafficking through a strategic 6-week community campaign.

The project's centerpiece is a wordless picture book—wordless so that it doesn't have to be translated into hundreds of languages. It teaches kids to make wise choices and stand up to traffickers. A 70-page companion curriculum teaches the important concepts in the book.

Scimone visited numerous safe houses to write the storyline for the wordless book, which was illustrated by artist Leah Wiedemer, and worked with a team of educators to develop the curriculum. Book and curriculum are being piloted in the Dominican Republic next month. The final version is scheduled for release in early 2011 when Born to Fly will ship materials to a waiting list of schools and community organizations in Ghana, Thailand, Iran, Haiti, Germany, Cambodia, India, Bulgaria, the US, and elsewhere.

"Our goal is to give the materials away without charge, of course," Scimone says. "So we're counting on crowdfunding to help get this done. Enter the 10/10/10 Twitterthon."

The 10/10/10 Twitterthon challenge

Children as young as pre-schoolers are lured into modern-day slavery all over the world, including in the US, where they're raped for profit—night after night. Scimone wants the Twitterverse to get angry about this and then do something about it:

Donate: Go to Born2fly.org and use the orange Chip-in button to donate $10.
Twitter: Tweet about 10/10/10 and ask followers to donate $10.
Email: Tell 10 people about 10/10/10.
Blog: Post about 10/10/10. Include the logo and a link to www.born2fly.org
Facebook: Talk about 10/10/10.
Updates: Check Diana Scimone's blog for the latest: www.dianascimone.com

"Traffickers think kids are commodities," Scimone says. "On 10/10/10, I challenge the Twitterverse to tell kids they're priceless."

For more about The B2F Project, visit www.born2fly.org and www.dianascimone.com.