Just 5 days left - help me as much as I help you waste time with my blog!

Hi Everyone. I know you guys love reading why I love Vietnam but here's a serious one. I love Vietnam because the girls and young women here are brilliant and resilient. I see myself in them. Unfortunately for girls born in the rural border regions can be vulnerable to sexual trafficking. Most of the girls I meet are under 18, some even 13. If you ever stare into the eyes of a child whose hope for the world has been beat out of them you wouldn't be able to look away. It's disheartening.

Do something. Lovely friends please take the same amount of time you take to browse facebook albums to:

1) Create a simple profile here, http://www.changemakers.com/

2) Until July 19 - Discuss, share and like ADAPT into the semi-finals. This means, to like, share on your social networks, and post a comment or question about ADAPT, I or other staff will answer them =). We'll engage with you.


We've got just 5 days left.


If there are at least 15 people who sign up and help me...let me know! (email me: kimhdam@gmail.com). I'll enter you in a RAFFLE to win a beautifully designed photo book of my current art workshop project with trafficking returnees, cây by Donna Choi.

Let your roomies, friends and family know. <3

hugs hugs and more hugs.

Kim

Often times when I am on a caffeine high I wonder what drugs would do for my writing.

However, seeing that I'm rather naive, paranoid about health dangers, scared in general of dying and of taking risks, I will probably never know.

I once hallucinated after taking nyquil when I was 12, that was scary. Try making a planet in order to save a friend. You would think it's scary too.

Lately anything MSG or caffeine or overly sugar related -  I can feel it in my cheeks. It feels a bit heavy.

But caffeine, especially Vietnamese coffee does something very good for my mind. About an hour into drinking the coffee, things seem very clear and happy lasting approximately 2.5 hours. Then afterwards, I am tired and my hands start trembling (if I haven't had breakfast).

She reached over to get the pepper and for a short second he thought about molecules. Not because her skin was soft and smooth despite her disgust of water and her haphazard use of lotion.  He had a chemistry final coming up in 4 weeks. CO2, H2O, H2, HCl, NHCl, and whatever combination of letters least used in society. She was talking but logic wasn't coming out. CO2 definitely was. Did you know that mosquitoes are attracted to the CO2 that we breath? Not because of the smell of your blood, or the perfume you put on. That shit doesn't matter. It's all about the molecules.


He loved her or so he thought. In school he was not taught to recognize love. He can read formulas, molecules, atoms, acidity, ions, salt, elements and predict their reactions. Bonding. Yes I definitely understood bonding. That was simple. Double bonds, triple bonds. 

I definitely don't understand her. He breathed in O2 and let out some CO2. Her face faded into the diner the way red barns do among rustic wheat fields. 

Right now things are very clear and happy.

Certain songs can make me feel that way. Right now the combination of Daft Punk and Vietnamese coffee ain't all that bad. You should try it.

Temporal clarity and elation can exhaust you. Which may be a good metaphor to life anyways...

Can't be fucking happy all the time, you would annoy the fuck out of people, cos we know it isn't real.


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Last night/early in the wee mornings a fellow volunteer and I were staying up late, I was working on a film clip and she was doing an email catch up. We also wanted to keep a certain mouse company. I think he/she was hungry because it was running everywhere. I screamed and jumped on my chair each time I saw it. Hey buddy. It ran around and when it saw me it would screech to a halt, catch itself and run into a different direction. Nhu Tien got a box ready to catch it.

Nhu Tien: Volunteer by day... from Kim Dam on Vimeo.

We never did catch that mouse (and another one!) updated: 5/19/2011


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The sun sets pink over the horizon.

A young girl working right side her family picking these bull horn looking potato tasting snack.

The Mekong Delta snakes through southern Vietnam. Most of the rural families rely on it for fish, food, and other forms of income.

Noodles on the go.

The back of the room where we did anti-human trafficking workshops. This is the hat of a mother, she uses it to cover the hot sun while picking chili peppers.

The mekong delta.

Smart way of rocking the baby and resting.

Preventing human trafficking of girls like her.

Eating pho in rural areas.

Her fingers are not black from dirt. It is the residue from picking chili peppers, they snap it with their fingers because they are not given cutting tools. They are paid 3,000 VND (17 cents) for every kilo of chili peppers they pick. She does this on top of going to school.

I've recently returned from the rural areas after doing anti-human trafficking and the importance of education for our scholarship recipients and their parents. I'm also messign with Adobe Premiere Pro its pretty fun =) more GRE procrastination. Will post the video once its final.

Hey ma, look I'm on tv.

I've made a few cameos on tv since my start here with my work, Pacific Links Foundation with their anti human trafficking project, ADAPT. For those that don't know already we combat human trafficking at the borders of Vietnam through grassroots efforts. This is a different way of learning about what my organization does. See if you can spot me in some.=)

CBS

PBS (Forward to 4:50 to get to my org!)

A video myself and a fellow volunteer put together for SF State. =)

Lastly, my thoughts on women's empowerment and my work. I wrote this in an email to someone today. It may be a bit out of context (you don't need to know), but the ideas that I wrote best summarize my thoughts on why I am here.

For me the work of PALS and ADAPT redefines the definition of women's empowerment to mean much more...

Scholarship, life skills and vocational training dive into the power that all women and girls are born with, the power that they already have in themselves. I think that the word "Empowerment" is a very powerful one, far from being "soft" and "general." One that derives from the idea that girls and women are innately strong and powerful. And while many organizations have maybe used that word, I think our 10 years of work redefines "empowerment" and shows what it's really about. Personally for me, living here for two years, seeing and meeting the faces of young girls and women of our programs I know they are very strong, very resilient. For trafficking returnees our work is more than "freeing themselves" from slavery per say, more so they need help in realizing what has and always been in them. ADAPT does helps girls and women realize the power inside them. We empower them. 

Also the definition of empowerment: "Empowerment is the process of increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes. Central to this process are actions which both build individual and collective assets, and improve the efficiency and fairness of the organizational and institutional context which govern the use of these assets."


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Have you ever met someone who didn't believe in themselves? 
It's a very disheartening experience


Have you ever tried to make someone believe in themselves?
It's a very disheartening experience


Have you ever believed in someone, more so than they believed in themselves?

It's a very disheartening experience

but you can only do what you can
you should say what you can
because you don't know what kind of impact your words can have on a person if at all.
Silence will not, I know that for sure.

Yellow pants make me happy.

Preventing Human Trafficking: Young girls in our scholarship program from rural areas of Vietnam

Part 2 of my search on google for my future. I don't know why I hadn't thought about it before but today I searched for:

"Public health and human trafficking"

Public health tends to keep coming back into my life in different forms - the first time came in the form of me working as an assistant in the payroll office of UC Berkeley's public health department and I ended up majoring in it. When I was little I didn't know a thing about public health, instead I declared in the 2nd grade that I wanted to be a "story writer." Funny how I still do.

I'm going to also use my blog to capture my search for the best public health programs that fit into what I  want to do in the future. How I can gain access, capital, and leverage to catapult this issue into people's agenda's so it's no longer pushed aside as an issue that is not "pressing enough," human trafficking is a public health issue that affects us all whether we want to realize it or not, from the clothing we wear, from the images and notions our society produces about women, to the women in our own lives.

Here is a GREAT ARTICLE (in my book) - "In Fight to Prevent Abuse of Women and Children, Researchers expand focus to Include Human Trafficking" on the work of a Harvard professor and students and how public health interventions and research can be used towards the prevention of human trafficking. It's just beginning I feel it. Please have a go at it.


"The focus has not been on understanding the context, mechanisms, and logistics of sex trafficking, factors relating to people's vulnerability, or on programs to prevent people from being trafficked in the first place."


According to Silverman and Decker, the public health aspects of human trafficking typically are examined through the narrow lens of sex workers and HIV/AIDS transmission. Yet those studies do not capture the experiences of underaged sex "workers" - many of whom are trafficked - because they are not typically included in study samples. Younger girls, Silverman has learned, are typically moved or hidden within brothels to prevent detection and are almost never allowed to seek the types of services or participate in the types of programs from which public health studies are typically conducted. As a result, said Silverman, they have remained invisible to those reading the public health literature. 

And here is a good generalized three part article that was just written in the last few days (good timing!): Human Trafficking as a Public Health Crisis 

"... there are aspects of the [Public Health] model that fit well in this fight.  Public health is a unique field among the health professions.  There is a focus on populations rather than individuals and prevention rather than cure.  It is a scientific, evidence-based endeavor with a firm link to government and politics.  Additionally, outcomes of violence prevention initiatives benefit from a public health model, so it seems reasonable to extend this methodology to human trafficking."
Part 1
Part 2 
Part 3 

Two more to round it off! An article from the American Public Health Association: Health Care and Human Trafficking


Department of Health and Human Services: Common Health Issues seen in Victims of Human Trafficking

On another note, I'm frantically cleaning (and frantically blogging) since when I am stressed I tend to do so, to be more "productive" if you will. I also have yellow pants on that I bought yesterday at Saigon Square in the city, I love these yellow pants, they make me feel so good! It's like replaced coffee for me this morning. I have less than three months to perfect the GRE's (faint).

I get in a lot of thinking on long motorbike rides.

I love old tiles and my leather shoes from my friends over at Retrofit Republic (thank you!)

"Expressive writing occurs on multiple levels - cognitive, emotional, social and biological - making a single explanatory theory unlikely" 

---

I realized my last blog post was well strange seeing that I spent the whole night writing it, and a series of unimaginable events occurred during the time span of me writing - "...I feel really good for some reason" quickly turned into "I feel really shitty for a good reason"

Bats, earthquake in burma, etc.

Anyways, I've been researching my future as of late. To do this I use the wonders of google. I like to ask google a lot of questions.

"What do lawyers do?"
"How do I get off of UC Berkeley's library proxy"
"Reviews - Surge North Face"
"art public health social work"
"Why does my Canon s90 keeps saying Change Battery Pack"
"How do I do make transparent pictures in photoshop"
"Why does my heart beat really fast after I take a 30 minute nap?"
"Air in Vietnam - Pollution"
"Really bad dry cough that won't stop, can't sleep"
"Excessive eye boogers, am I okay?"
"pink eye - am I going to die?"


It works.  My questions and health freak outs are usually assuaged and ameliorated (gre words) by asking google. And then secondly my mama, but sometimes due to time differences I can't call her easily at 2 am in the morning. Thanks google.

My last intense google search has been about the intersections of public health and art. I'm actually really excited since I found this article, The Connection Between Art, Healing, and Public Health"

Stuckley, Heather L, and Jeremy Nobel. "The Connection Between Art, Healing, and Public Health: A Review of Current Literature." American Journal of Public Health (Feb2010): 254-263. Web. 9 Nov 2010.

"Our voices are saturated with who we are, embodied in the rhythms, tonal variations, associations images and other somato-sensory metaphors in addition to the content meaning of the words. Our voices are embodiments of ourselves, whether written or spoken. It is in times of extremity that we long to find words or hear another human voice letting us know we are not alone"

The paper is full of great stuff! I'd recommend googling it where you can find the full text online.

I love it when google finds the exact thing I'm looking for. I'm trying to find a way to productively incorporate art into my life and making sure that it stays there, since I've pushed it away for so long, and it feels like I'm denying a part of myself.

I also really really LOVE linkedin. It's actually one of the most useful things I have discovered in looking at people's professional pathways and how they got there. I have found it really useful in looking into the art therapy field (which I realized I did not want to do after discussions on linkedin) and looking at how difficult it is to be in that field in terms of mental health but I won't dive too much into that. I discovered a woman, with her Master's in Social Work, creating her own organization that focuses on art health workshops in India and parts of Africa - she's based in NY. So its helping me to realize, alright you graduated from this school, but what did it take for you to get there and what did the graduates do afterwards?

I really want to search for a school and degree that will basically give me more access and respect when it comes to the current work I'm doing. I love my work, as intense as it is and tiring, I know that it is something I can essentially do for free (and actually already do). But what kind of degree can I get so that I can not only get paid, but also mobilize people for the cause?

How do I can access to people in power, people with money, to care about trafficking issues in another country? How do I do that?

By meeting them. My role as a development officer has helped me realize the intricate and complex relationships in fighting for an issue. It's not only about the fight. It's never only about the struggle and the fight. If you stay within that framework of approaching an issue, you will probably never see the solution or end to it. You have to engage people. Make it personal. Connect with them. And this is why my job is so damn hard and makes me stressed thinking about the fact that I have to connect with strangers.

This is why I like public health, it has a very holistic view of combating an issue and recognizes the complex solutions it takes to do such.

For example: Human Trafficking. You can't just go into a brothel take the girl out, and expect her to be safe, happy, and normal again. It's not like that. The issue is so complex, varying from each country, from each region, to each case that such a simple solution will only stop the bleeding for a few seconds. It's only a bandaid approach.

I learned from a recent conference I attended that in order to "fight a network, you have to be a network" calling all sectors of anti-trafficking efforts to come together. I know first hand that in order to get somewhere you need a foot in and sometimes it may be knowing this person and knowing the right person to just get your hand in the doorway. That is something I've learned during my time here at an international ngo, its all about connects.

My method of connects is strange. Unforceful and seemingly innate. For some reason, I tend to connect people together who otherwise would not be connected. In a sense this can be said about anyone, every day someone introduces someone to someone for the first time. But I think for me its a bit different. For instance, all my best friends in high school were not best friends with each other but knew each other through me. All my roommates were not really friends but were connected because I brought them together (and that created drama when they each realized that not all three of them could be my roommate). And I think it continues to this day. For some reason my friends are not friends with one another.

I wonder what this says about me, but since I don't really like to analyze myself too much, I will just leave this to be until the revelation comes to me....maybe while I am on a motorbike.


6 months left in Vietnam. I'm missing it already.

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I spoke to my Uncle over skype the other day. He's a great person and very very well traveled, the biggest difference about him and me is that he has a good amount of money as a pharmacist. Our conversation:

"You need to come back and get a job and make money, so you can travel like us..."
"But I've been to like 9 countries in the last two years..."
**light laughter in background**

Haha, I mean well, my uncle and I travel very differently. I do hope one day to be able to travel like him, very freely and worry free. Until know, I can only be grateful for where I've been, what I've seen and what I've accomplished.

This is where my footsteps from last year, up until the end of 2010 until today, 2011. There's a lot to see! So be ready...since facebook won't let me load albums anymore I'll do it here. GO!