“I was trafficked at the age of six. I was sold for the equivalent of ten dollars. This earned me the ordeal of working in about twenty fishing communities along the Volta Lake in the hands of fifteen slave masters.
Since escaping aged 13 I was the first to bring school to my community, the first to start transforming the lives of other children, getting children to high school and college.
With time survivors of trafficking become the solution to the problem. That brings me a lot of hope.”
We’re going to help him do that. Join us?
It costs $1000 (or $83.33 per month) to rescue a child like Ben from slavery on Lake Volta.
Click here to do that or give what you can each month now
The process begins with an investigation in the source community (towns where children are sold or taken from) where our partner investigators piece together who the child is, what they look like, and where they are likely to have been taken to and the situation that led to them being taken in the first place.
The rescue operation is an actual, physical rescue from either one of the towns on the lakeside, or from a boat where our partners’ rescue teams pull up alongside boats and remove boys from slavemasters. It can be dangerous and we always take at least one armed police officer.
It costs an average of $1000 to rescue one child from slavery (based on a rescue operation for 30 children at once)
The rescued boys are taken for a few days to a safe house near the lake for immediate medical and emotional care and food and rest while the rescue team continues to look for the other boys in the operation. When the operation is complete, all the boys are taken to our recovery center where they will live for several months rehabilitation until they are ready to be reintegrated with a safe family member.
This involves healing of the whole child: physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual. The total cost of all care from the point of rescue to the point of reintegration is $4000-8000 depending on how long the child stays with us full time.
In our recovery center children receive literacy and numeracy and I.T. skills to prepare survivors for mainstream education during reintegration. For older youth who find it difficult to join mainstream education, we provide technical vocational training (e.g. sewing, carpentry, breadmaking skills that they can use to get a job)Following reintegration with families, survivors either join mainstream education or technical vocational skills training and we monitor their progress.
We provide encounters with professionals in different careers to widen horizons and elevate ambition help every child see what is possible.
We help open doors for them to get there and to step into what they are capable of.
They learn about their rights and the law and how to identify and prevent abuse and start anti-trafficking clubs in their schools and take action in their communities to protect others.
Youth Empowerment Programme provides both capital and network supports to its graduates. The state programmes provide temporary employment to beneficiaries to provide them with job experience and skills to apply for permanent jobs in the public sector or private sector.
The Family is a global community of givers who subscribe to provide rescue, housing and education for a child every month of the year.
Joining the Family is the highest impact way to support us.
Start your monthly subscription and help rescue and raise more children by being a member of the community we can count on.
We’re able to accept donations in the form of stock, government (including municipal) debt and corporate debt. This can be arranged from most brokerage accounts.
Please contact donations@manyhopes.org for more information on making a stock donation
Senior Vice President Growth, Bionic Solution
A Silicon Valley native, Maxine Gisinger Friedman has over 20 years of leadership experience in strategic consulting, executive coaching, business development, and marketing at consulting, agency, startup, and Fortune 500 companies. Maxine is Principal and Founder of Maxine Ventures and plays an independent C-level growth and transformation partner role working with Chief Innovation, Strategy and R&D Officers of some of the world’s leading brands.
A sought-after thought leader on building growth capability strategies and systems at the enterprise level, Maxine also advises multiple startups and is an active angel investor. Prior, Maxine was on the co-founding leadership team of Bionic, an army of entrepreneurs that installs a Growth Operating System that creates a permanent, always-on capability for organic and inorganic growth. As SVP at Bionic, she built and led the Partner and Services team as well as led enterprise partnerships for brands including P&G, Nike, Anheuser-Busch and TD Ameritrade.
A seasoned entrepreneur, Maxine helped build multiple startups (Contently, Syncapse, Clickable, Brandimensions) and always played an early cofounding leadership team role. Maxine earned dual MBAs from Columbia University and London Business School and B.S. in Journalism from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Maxine and her family are currently based in the Hamptons after 20 years in NYC.
Becky grew up in Texas and graduated from Baylor University with degrees in Economics and Finance in 1990. A former credit analyst and commercial lender at Bank of America, Becky stopped working in order to stay home with children, Richard and Layne. She met her husband, Rick, at Baylor and got married shortly after graduation. The Weldays have lived all over the world including periods in Switzerland, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Saint Louis, and all over Texas.
Her extra time is spent volunteering with churches and other organizations and she enjoys reading, traveling, cooking, and spending time with family and friends.
Liberty Mutual, Director of Financial Analysis
Sue joined the board as clerk after volunteering with the Boston Many Hopes chapter for several years. She studied Business Administration at the University of Vermont and has an MBA from Boston College. She works as a Director of Financial Analysis at Liberty Mutual in Boston. Sue visited Many Hopes in Kenya and was thrilled to meet the girls and see the impact in person.
President, John Hancock Financial Services
CEO, New York Life Retirement Plan Services
Born and raised in Massachusetts, Patrick has spent the past 25 years in the financial services industry helping companies and their employees achieve financial security. He is currently the President of John Hancock Retirement Plan Services. Pat has also spent significant personal time as a coach and mentor, helping young people realize their potential on and off the athletic fields.
He became a believer in the Many Hopes mission after meeting Thomas for lunch in 2012. He was a private donor and helped with fundraising before joining the board.
Global Staffing Lead, Google Search and Assistant
Daniel joined Google in 2015, after a career in recruiting across the non-profit and education industries. At Google, Daniel initially managed five teams of recruiters, primarily supporting Software Engineering hiring in the Bay Area. Daniel then spent a year leading Google Cloud’s Americas Sales recruiting teams in a hyper growth market. For the past two years, Daniel has been the Global Staffing Lead role for Google Search and Assistant, leading all staffing efforts for all global hiring of these technical businesses.
Before Google, Daniel was the Vice President of National Alliances at Teach For America, based in new York City. With his experience serving under-privileged children in South Africa and Namibia, Daniel launched our Many Hopes New York Chapter and served as Regional Director for our first year in NYC. Daniel first visited Mudzini Kwetu in 2009 and fell in love with our vision for long term, transformative change through the lives of the girls he met there.
Columbia Property Trust, President
Nelson has more than 30 years of experience in the real estate investment and financial services industries. He is responsible for overall strategy, operations, and financial performance of Columbia Property Trust, a $6 billion public real estate owner/operator. He also serves as a director on the Columbia Board. Prior to joining Columbia in 2010, he served for five years as the President and Chief Operating Officer of Williams Realty Advisors, LLC, managing and advising a series of real estate investment funds.
Previous roles included CFO of Lend Lease Real Estate Investments and Partner at KPMG LLP. He received a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of Tennessee and an M.B.A. from the University of Georgia. Nelson and his wife, Judy, live adjacent to Madison Square Park in New York City.
(X)form Coaching and Consulting, Founder
Joseph is an Elite-Performance Strategist dedicated to transforming professional lives of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity into realities of clarity, control, calm, and continuous improvement. He previously spent 20 years in the corporate realm, serving as an operating executive in both early-stage startups (including two successful exits) and large global enterprises.
He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his amazing wife and their two incredible children.
Blackstone Credit, Managing Director
Joseph McKnight focuses on mezzanine lending and private equity investments in the energy and power sectors.
Before joining Blackstone Credit, Mr. McKnight served as a Vice President at Goldman Sachs, where he focused on private equity and proprietary direct investments in power generation and renewable energy within the firm’s J. Aron commodity division. He previously worked as an Associate in the Natural Resources private-equity vertical at Apollo Management.
Mr. McKnight received a BA in History from the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in Economics from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with academic honors
