Jay is a student at Uppsala universitet and is studying for a masters in business management and leadership. In addition to his studies, he also engages in non profit work and this is what he writes for RealStars about what we all could do to make this world a better place.
Since I was very young, regardless of being told by my parents or not, I always had this sense of righteousness in me. Not only I acted so, but I expected everyone to be “good”. According to the beginning of the Ancient Chinese Three Character Classics – “People at birth, are naturally good”. I truly believed that no matter how people act, deep within there is always something innocent, some sort of goodness. That’s why it was so hard for me to comprehend the world and people when I read about the horrors of sex trafficking at the age of 13 while browsing through National Geographic.
Sex trafficking, a part of human trafficking, accounts for about 12.3 million people on Earth. That’s more than the whole population of Sweden. I can come up with a bunch of more numbers; they are all over the internet. But those numbers are just dead, no matter how hard you stare at them or they stare at you. They don’t mean anything, and they don’t provoke the emotions experiences do. Of course, I haven’t personally experienced sex trafficking, and probably neither have you. But since I am here writing this and you are here reading this, it means that we are aware of this issue.
Sex trafficking has been around for a long, long time. Most people nowadays know about this, but just like any other news about unjust in the world, they choose to ignore. Maybe it’s because they don’t know what to do, or maybe it’s because it’s just too distant from their lives. I felt the same. I knew about this, I felt horrible, but I didn’t know what I could possibly do to make any changes, to make the world a little better. After all, I can only control myself and act within my reach. Then I realized that controlling myself is actually not a bad start. Imagine if people all are doing what’s within their reach, it would mean we are resisting something bad. Much like everything, if we can control ourselves and act within our own reach, we are slowly (but steadily) working towards a common good. So the goal that everyone who wants to stop sex trafficking should be starting with themselves, and approach people within their surroundings to bring up this topic to create awareness. Step by step, we can make this world a better place.
Jay for RealStars