Do It Yourself: Make a Difference

Before Thanksgiving break there was a Uni Period workshop on human trafficking and and a movie--Very Young Girls--later. Unfortunately I was unable to go to the movie night, but I still think this is an important cause. All over the world adults and children are tricked into or are forcibly moved to another location to work. A majority of these trafficked people are forced to be sex workers. The people made to be sex workers are often young girls, starting at age 12. This issue is especially prominent in India where the caste systems keeps women and girls in the lower-caste families where their only source of income will be prostitution. Girls denied education and training are perceived as having no worth, no way to bring income to the family. So, they can be married at age 13 and sold into prostitution by their husbands, or be put into prostitution by their families. Either way, many women don't make it out and remain in sex work for as long as they are "marketable."
But, all is not lost. We can help.

What you'll need:

• The guts to reform yourself and your community
• Cloths
• Resources to stay connected to the movement (provided at the end of this blog post)

Tutorial:

1. First, you need to choose to change. To stop normalizing the sex trade is going to be difficult because it's already so normal to us. 
• Stop jokingly using words like "pimp," "ho," and "whore." Challenge people when they do use this language. 
• Stop jokes that are sexist, racist, or otherwise offensive. 
• ^These two step are probably the most difficult. I realize it's hard to stop a practice ^ you've been doing forever. 
2. Donate clothing to victims of sexual exploitation. Sweat pants and sweat shirts should be donated to rape crisis counseling services. 
3. Fundraising and donating money will always be a help to these volunteer organizations that help victims. It's not important to give a lot, it's important to give what you can.
4. Finally, get involved with organizations that help with these things. Actually working with and volunteering for centers and charities is needed too. 

Resources and organizations:

• The National Human Trafficking Resource Center- a toll free hotline that receives tips and give information about trafficking. The number is 1-888-3737-888.
• ECPAT International and The Body Shop-  "Stop Sex Trafficking of Children & Young People" is aimed at stopping the 1.2 million children domestically trafficked. The website is: ecpat.net/TBS/en/about_campaign.html
• Project Futures- Project from the Somaly Mam Foundation which helps volunteers to fight against slavery. Website: projectfutures.somaly.org
• Say NO- UNiTE to End Violence against Women- launched by UN Women to end violence based on gender. Website: www.saynotoviolence.org

Human trafficking isn't going to go away by itself. If everyone pitches in and does what they can, hopefully forcible sex trade and human labor trafficking will become less normalized and begin to end.

Eggless Cookie Dough

So this week is a really stressful week for a bunch of my friends and I because it's tech week for our show Shakespeare Sings at the Moon Luau (which you should all come to on Thursday or Friday at 7:00 pm)! It is a common practice amongst Uni thespians to bring little noms to eat backstage to loosen up; this is usually Twizzlers or the like, but I brought cookie dough truffles to our first tech practice. They were pretty well received, so I promised everyone a recipe and here it is!

                          What you'll need:

• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup butter (1/2 stick), softened
• 1/4 tsp. vanilla (tsp. means teaspoon if you were unaware)
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 cup flour 
• Pinch of salt (I don't know, just put in about a 1/4 tsp. )
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips (or whatever you feel like putting in, I just kind of eyeball it)
• Mixing bowl or large bowl, spoon, and upper body strength

Let's begin:

1. In bowl, place brown sugar and butter. Mix until smooth.
2. Mix in vanilla extract and milk (it may get a bit soupy here, but never fear flour will save the day)
3. The flour, salt, and chocolate chips finish out this dough. 
4. Chill the cookie dough if you want it to be firmer. If you don't care, it's eating time!

To make chocolate dipped cookie dough:

1. Make sure your cookie dough is really chilled. Like, really really really chilled. (Make sure you cover the container with plastic wrap when you put it in the fridge/freezer. If you don't it will get freezer burned and won't taste good.)
2. While it's chilling in the fridge/freezer, melt your chocolate. This can be done several ways:

• With a double boiler if you have one (water boils in the bottom and melts what's on top)
• A normal pot with a bowl on it (water boils in pot, bowl goes on top, chocolate melts in bowl. Just be careful for the steam, I got burned)
• A mircrowave. Like a sensible human being. (Put the chocolate in a microwaveable dish for 45 seconds at a time stirring between each time. Do no burn the chocolate, it smells bad. If you do burn a bit, get a spoon, scoop out the burned bits and run them under cold water which will make it firm up so it doesn't burn you.
3. Get out a platter and put parchment paper on it. put this near the area you'll be dipping the cookiedough. 
4. When the chocolate is all melty, get out the chilled cookie dough. One at a time, roll a ball of cookie dough and dip the base half of it into the chocolate. Then, put in on the platter. When the platter is full, set it aside and make another if you need to. 
5. Once all the chocolate on the platter is hardened put the cookie dough truffles in a separate container and put it in your freezer for at least 10 minutes. (the cookie dough gets all melty when it's warm.)

Voila! Eggless Cookie Dough completed! Happy eating!

Note: This is eggless so you can't get salmonella, and anytime cookie dough is not in use it should be in the fridge so it doesn't become unworkable, warm, and gooey. 

Note 2: This cookie dough would be awesome between two cookies, just saying. :3