On January 16, 2014 Chloe, Loveday, Gaia, Sophia R. and I went to Sanctuary for Families. We went to Sanctuary for Families to help them organize and update their store, called the Butterfly Boutique. Before we started to work, we met with the Senior Manager of Volunteer Resources, Emily Lo Bue. We spoke to her about sexual violence, especially commercial sex exploitation. When we spoke to her she told us the same things I wrote about in previous posts, but one despicable thing stood out to me. Emily, began to tell us that pimps, have their brothels in different place. Sometimes they will be in a office buildings or in a store that is disguised as a nail salon or another type of store. Although all these things are bad, the pimps have just come up with a new way to exploit these girls. The pimp gets a private driver or taxi driver to drive each girl or girls to certain locations. Once these girls are taken to the address, they go in the house, to do whatever they are there to do. Once they are done they leave and then they are taken to the next house. When I heard this I was shocked. I found it so horrifying that a person can do that. Who in their right mind would do that to someone else? The other horrific thing is that these girls are taken to thirty or more places a night. I cannot even imagine the amount of trauma these girls and women go through. Although it seems that it is a lost cause, if we all raise awareness and help organizations, like Sanctuary for Families, we can make a change and help lower the chances of this happening to another person.
On that happy note, I also wanted to tell you all about the Butterfly Boutique. Isn’t the Butterfly Boutique an amazing name for a store? We spoke to Emily about it and she explained to us that the butterfly represents freedom and beauty, which is what every girl should have. When we began working we started organizing the boutique. We then started putting clothes on hangers. I helped organize the boutique by putting all the types of clothes in certain places. We were then told about the rules. We were told that each women is allowed to only get one of each type of clothing, and each women can come at anytime of the day. I found this to be an amazing fieldwork because I was able to learn how many small donations of clothes from each person, can make such a big difference. This was an amazing fieldwork and I hope that my social justice group can do the same thing again.
