I have two pieces of exciting news to share with you this month…
Blue Dragon schools partnership
I’ve been working informally for eight years with the amazing non-profit Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, which rescues trafficked girls from China.
Recently I’ve done a series of ‘Sisters for Sale’ screenings, both online and in person, alongside Blue Dragon’s schools and partnerships coordinator, the wonderful Kim Miller. In our post-screening discussions, Kim has been able to share an organisational perspective which perfectly complements my own personal experiences.
We’ve now decided to formalise that relationship between Blue Dragon and The Human, Earth Project. Kim and I will be bringing ‘Sisters for Sale’ into high schools to help to explain human trafficking to the younger generation. We’ll also be running workshops to empower students to become active in their own communities.
The program has already had an enthusiastic response from schools, and I look forward to seeing where it leads!
The 2021 Richell Prize
I had some very exciting news earlier this month when I learned that I’d been longlisted for one of Australia’s most prestigious writing prizes. 16 writers have been chosen from over 850 entrants for the 2021 Richell Prize, with the shortlist to be announced in October.
It’s the first major writing prize I’ve entered, and it’s extremely encouraging to receive that level of validation. If you haven’t yet checked out my writing, the first chapters of the ‘Sisters for Sale’ story are now available to read here.
Now available globally on Amazon
While the digital version of the first ‘Sisters for Sale’ book was released two years ago, it has never been available on Amazon until just this week.
Buying directly from our website allows us to retain all of the proceeds and allows us to continue our anti-trafficking work, and it also means you’ll receive the PDF version in addition to the EPUB file – but I felt it was time to make our books more broadly available. All three ‘Sisters for Sale’ books are now globally available here via Amazon.
There has been a lot more happening behind the scenes here which I’m not quite ready to share with you yet – watch this space!
– Ben