Vote for Emerge!

| Betsy

For the past few months, I’ve been volunteering some of my time to a wonderful organization called Emerge Global. This charity was started in 2005 after the founder, Alia Whitney-Johnson, went to Sri Lanka to volunteer after the tsunami. While you can read more about how Emerge started here and what they do here, ultimately it helps Sri Lankan girls aged 8-18 start their own jewelry businesses and savings accounts.

They’ve put together a Bead Program which helps these young girls learn how creativity can be empowering and allows them to start thinking about their futures and believing in themselves, for some, for the very first time.

From the Emerge website, a little bit more about the girls:

“I am from the North” … “I am from the South” … “I was ten when I became pregnant” … “I was sixteen” … “He was my father” … “He was a tourist” … “I was grade 9 when it happened” … “I have never been allowed to go to school” … “My son makes me happy” … “I am ashamed to have a child…”

Despite their diverse backgrounds, the girls of Emerge are bound together by two common denominators: the tremendous strength and perseverance it takes to raise a child despite being children themselves, and the incredible community fostered at Emerge. Emerge aims to help these girls build an even stronger community, to show them their strength and value, and to help them create beauty in their lives and find beauty in themselves. We hope the next lines of their stories will read:

I am valuable. I am beautiful. I am strong.

    The Situation in Sri Lanka:

Due to lack of facilities, many minors are kept in the prison system for their own protection as they testify in court against the man who raped them. Furthermore, according to Save the Children, Sri Lanka, there are no systems and policies whereby children who have broken the law and children who are victims of abuse are differentiated, even by the judicial process. In effect, the systems in Sri Lanka currently offer no support and protection as the abused girls wait for their hearing, which often takes several years to complete.

With this in mind, Emerge is up for a Stay Classy award for Small Charity of the Year! If won, the charity will get $10,000 and a chance to further help these girls empower themselves in Sri Lanka… Some of whom have graduated from the program with enough savings to buy houses for them and their family! So if you have a free 12.5 seconds (I actually timed it!), please consider voting for Emerge and/or passing this notice on to your blogs/friends/social networks.

As there are only 3 days left for voting, I wanted to make a note of this here, as this organization means so much to me. Empowering people with creativity can do so much good in so many ways, please help make that a possibility for more young girls!

6 thoughts on “Vote for Emerge!”

  1. Thanks for sharing Emerge’s great work! I just went to cast my vote! I love that they’re working to empower women through the power of creativity.

  2. Thanks for sharing Emerge’s great work! I just went to cast my vote! I love that they’re working to empower women through the power of creativity.

    1. Thanks so much Laura for casting your vote for Emerge!! We ended up making it through the first round, and are now on our way to the national competition!! Hurray!

  3. Thanks so much Laura for casting your vote for Emerge!! We ended up making it through the first round, and are now on our way to the national competition!! Hurray!

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