Project Description

Minga is a youth-run organization dedicated to ending the global sex trade of children. Since it was founded in 2006 by then 14-year old Katie Simon, it has grown into a non-profit organization that involves dozens of youth in its innovative awareness and fundraising campaigns. Minga has raised over $32,000 to build and support a rehabilitation center in the Philippines for recovering girl prostitutes ages 9-18. Minga has also promoted and fundraised for PSA's in Boston public transportation that warn at-risk girls of the reality of "the life" in prostitution, and plans to furnish a new rehabilitation center for trafficked and prostituted young people in Boston. In June 2007 13 Minga youth travelled to Guatemala to volunteer and learn more firsthand about street children there. Minga has also has engaged in a partnership with American Airlines to air a 45-second awareness video about child sex tourism that also warns potential abusers that their actions abroad can be punished by their own governments. Our plans for the future include a research trip to the Philippines and Thailand this summer and to open a store of micro-credit made handicrafts with a local businesswoman from which 1/2 of the profit will go directly to our programs!