Thinking Out Loud with Saminda Dharmapala
Transcript:
When I heard about what the survivors of sex trafficking go through, their hopelessness, their despair, the darkness that surrounds them, and just that yearning to escape so I could feel all of that. And that’s what I felt, stirring in my heart. So what captured me was just a deep appreciation of where God stands in terms of justice, how, um, he cries out and he roars out when there’s injustice, and he compels us to do something about it. Not to sit in the sidelines, but to be aware of what happens and, and for, for us to feel the pain that he’s feeling, as the creator and the one who is in, in contact with the suffering of, everyone that’s in this world. But once you understand what they go through, once you feel and, and you connect with that, there’s no way you can really walk away from that.
When I heard the stories about the survivors and what they have gone through, my mind immediately switched to, you know, how does one recover from that? How does anyone really, get any semblance of a normal life after they’ve gone through this? It seemed a bit, convenient that, once you rescue it’s game over and mission accomplish and everything else will fall into place. I kind of knew instinctively that the rescue was just the first step in that journey and that there are thousands of more steps involved. So I really felt stirred to understand, you know, how does one recover from such trauma? I knew that one of the greatest needs that they would have would be, a stable and well paid job. so something that would provide a decent income. And I had been, toying with the idea of, computer based work for, base of the pyramid populations.
We had been traveling to remote regions in the Philippines and we had been looking at some of the rural communities. And what struck me was that, you know, you had, children who just graduated from high school, eager, enthusiastic and competent, but no job opportunities. And I knew that, given how the world operates, that a job in front of a computer given to a child from this family would make a profound difference to them. So that was the seed that was planted there. And, so I had been thinking about computer based work and also there was also the idea that you could create an environment designed specifically for people that come from challenging backgrounds or poor backgrounds that would enable that transformation, that step up into a digital career. So we provide long-term digital careers for survivors of trafficking and abuse.
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