"It's too late for me," a twenty-something-year-old mother once told me, when I asked her dream.
From what little I've seen, I believe she likely has an extraordinary talent for fashion design. I wonder if her dream lies there. Someday, I hope to offer her the opportunity to build a business, with experts and investors to surround her. And when she is ready, to help her launch independently.
Uncaged Canaries is the second piece of a three-part vision to support and empower efforts to stop all forms of human trafficking and exploitation. The first piece is a non-profit organization, No More Trafficking, founded by Cortney Morgan in 2012.
With the the help of a community building in partnership, when she is ready, there will be a commercial platform waiting for my would-be designer friend, to connect her with customers, and where she and others with similar stories, are the owners. That is the third piece of this vision.
But before my would-be-designer friend will dare to dream again, she has to know her worth. She has to have community. She needs to be inspired by the songs and stories of others whose voices have been silenced but who have overcome. She needs to see that the impossible can be possible. That it has happened before and can happen again.
She needs people who will invest in her, who will help her find her voice, her song, who will water that dream that died inside of her, who will give her the courage to even speak it.
My friend is brilliant and has such a heart for helping others. That's part of what the trafficker preyed upon to lure her in, before he destroyed her sense of self. But, with the help of a community, she can rise again. And her success can inspire and provide opportunity to others.