VAWA has fostered coordinated responses to violence against women by bringing together the criminal justice system, social services agencies and private nonprofits that work with survivors. It is responsible for the creation of legal assistance programs for survivors and greater protections for immigrants experiencing domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault or stalking. If passed, the reauthorization will provide for enhanced criminal justice responses to sexual assault, greater prevention of domestic violence homicides and engagement of young people in stopping dating violence before it starts.

Please take action today to ensure that Congress reauthorizes VAWA. Write or call your senators and urge them to become co-sponsors of this vital piece of legislation. You can send the message we drafted or write a letter in your own words, expressing how critical VAWA is in the movement to end violence against women and girls. Calling your senators’ offices will guarantee that your message is heard. Visit our Advocacy Center for contact information and talking points for your letters and/or calls to your senators.

Thank you for your commitment to bringing healing and justice to survivors.

Every year, tens of thousands of individuals report a sexual assault to the police. After an assault, a survivor undergoes an invasive exam that lasts between four and six hours to collect DNA and forensic evidence, which then goes into a “rape kit.”

The federal government estimates that over 200,000 untested kits are currently sitting untouched in storage facilities nationwide. Each untested kit represents a missed opportunity for healing and justice for a survivor. Eliminating the backlog would send a powerful message to survivors that their cases matter and that the criminal justice system has not forgotten them.

Joyful Heart would use the $1 million award to continue and enhance its efforts to end the rape kit backlog in cities across the country. We plan to create replicable victim-centered best practices, which will foster trusting and open relationships between survivors and responders; to completely overhaul endthebacklog.org, the only site dedicated to raising awareness about the backlog; to deepen our partnership with the City of Detroit and other jurisdictions across the U.S. to help end local backlogs; and to use additional funds to test backlogged kits that might otherwise go untested.

Please take a moment to vote for Joyful Heart. $1 million would go a long way in helping us to bring healing and justice to survivors of sexual violence.  To learn more, please visit www.joyfulheartfoundation.org/chase.

You can read more of Linda’s pieces and interviews here on the Backlog Blog.

As most events do, ours had a theme, How Will You Join? (The Joyful Revolution). In 2009, at Joyful Heart’s second Gala, the Joyful Revolution was born: a movement of our collective vision for a community that collaboratively ends the cycle of violence and abuse by turning toward the issues of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse. At last year’s Gala, the Revolution Continued as we honored the 15^th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which changed the way violent crimes against women are prosecuted and prevented.

At this year’s Gala, we asked the question How Will You Join? And it was answered in amazing ways throughout the night.

Letters urging leadership on rape kit reform

We started off with a letter writing campaign to members of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. Each letter asked for their leadership to work to end the rape kit backlog. By the end of the evening, over 400 letters were signed—almost one for each guest in attendance. They’ll arrive by mail this week to the offices of Vice President Biden, Attorney General Holder, the Chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees—Senator Patrick Leahy and Representative Lamar Smith, respectively—and dozens of individual representatives with our message that we support comprehensive, compassionate and victim-centered rape kit reform from the federal government.

By the end of the evening, 409 letters were signed

The literal centerpiece of much of the evening in the area where this letter writing campaign took place was a huge installation—300 rape kits shaped like a heart. It represented the backlog of untested rape kits and our hope and commitment that one day, it won’t be there.

The 9-foot tall heart-shaped structure that was created out of 300 (empty and unused) rape kits

It was quite large, but it was the enormity of its message that was most striking. Seeing 300 kits before them, guests grappled with the enormity of the backlog–experts estimate hundreds of thousands are in police and crime lab storage facilities throughout the country.

As we moved to the next part of the evening, guests were drawn to the stage and dining area by the cacophony of an 8-member drum troop. Each guest had a musical shaker—another way to make noise and join in that night. Eventually we all settled down and news anchor Brian Williams, a devoted friend of Joyful Heart’s founder and president Mariska Hargitay started the evening’s program, a large portion of which was devoted to celebrating the evening’s revolutionary honoree, Dr. Neal Baer.

Dr. Baer is the prolific and visionary executive producer of Law & Order: SVU of 11 years, friend of Mariska for even longer and a founding board member of Joyful Heart. We honored his long career with SVU, his unmatched ability to tell the stories of survivors with compassion and hope and, of course, the result of this work that has shed light into the darkness that surrounds sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse. As Mariska noted in her introduction of Dr. Baer:

When SVU started airing, survivors from across the country began writing to me, disclosing their stories of rape, assault, and abuse. In Detective Olivia Benson they heard an advocate—literally a person calling out on their behalf. And yes, Olivia’s heart is mine, but her words were Neal’s. So many survivors’ journeys of healing have their beginning with you sitting at your desk, writing.

Mariska Hargitay and Dr. Neal Baer at the 2011 Gala

At last year’s Gala, Neal listened as a woman named Helena told her story about her rape kit that had been stuck in Los Angeles’s backlog for over a decade. She had lived in fear that her rapist was still on the streets, able to find her using the driver’s license he had taken during her assault. When her kit was eventually tested, the evidence linked to a serial rapist.

As she told her story, Dr. Baer took notes on his dinner napkin. These notes would become the storyline to SVU Season 12, Episode 3, “Behave” based on Helena’s story, which guest starred Jennifer Love Hewitt and aired September 28, 2010 in over 15 million homes, launching a national dialogue on the backlog of untested rape kits.

Though very few of us are TV producers, it was clear that there are countless ways people can–and have–joined the revolution. As part of the program, person after person, 35 in total, got on stage to share the ways they turned toward the issues of violence and abuse, shed light into the darkness surrounding them, survived themselves or helped someone else survive.

“I talked to my sons about respect.”
“I reported my neighbor to the police after hearing him beat his wife and kids.”
“I asked a co-worker if she felt safe in her home. And then I asked her again.”
“I broke the cycle of abuse in my family.”
“I reported my rape.”
“I had the crazy idea to start a foundation.”

Mariska with all those who shared how they joined the revolution

Of course, no post about our How Will You Join? themed gala would be complete without asking you how you have joined. How have you turned toward these issues, made a change in your community, in your home or in your heart?

I know that by reading this, you already have. And maybe you’ve heard about one of the easier ways to join—voting for Joyful Heart in Chase Community Giving. It’s a simple action you can take right from your Facebook page, but one that would help us win thousands of dollars to go toward our efforts to end the rape kit backlog. This opportunity is taking place on the Chase Community Giving application on Facebook allows people to vote for organizations and ideas that make a difference. We made it through the first round of voting and now we’re in it to win $500,000. With this funding, we would:

• Expand endthebacklog.org, the only site dedicated to raising public awareness about this issue;
• Publish the first-ever detailed account of how one city, LA, responded to its backlog;
• Partner with Detroit to help end their backlog of 10,000+ rape kits; and
• Create victim-centered best practices that can be implemented nationwide

But we need your help. 2 steps–less than two minutes—is all it takes to join our Revolution in a big way.

1. VISIT www.fb.com/ChaseCommunityGiving and click Like
2. BROWSE to www.tinyurl.com/votejoy. VOTE for Joyful Heart by giving access to the Chase Community Giving application and clicking the VOTE NOW button.

We’re so grateful for your support.

A new document produced and distributed by the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence outlines some other costs of sexual violence. The document addresses the economic, health care and systems costs associated with sexual violence. It notes that:

• Each rape costs approximately $151,423;
• In 2008, violence and abuse constituted up to 37.5% of all health care costs, or up to $750 billion total;
• Rape is the most costly of all crimes to its victims, with total estimated costs at $127 billion a year (excluding the cost of child sexual abuse);
• Sexual abuse interferes with women’s ability to work.

While these figures are dispiriting, there are ways to mitigate these costs and other consequences of sexual violence. The article goes on to state:

“A 2006 study found that when victims receive advocate-assisted services following assaults, they receive more helpful information, referrals, and services and experience less secondary trauma or re-victimization by medical and legal systems (Campbell, 2006). Furthermore, the same study found that when advocates are present in the legal and medical proceedings following rape, victims fare better in both the short- and long-term, experiencing less psychological distress, physical health struggles, sexual risk-taking behaviors, self-blame, guilt and depression.”

At Joyful Heart, we know that how a community responds to survivors is crucial to healing. The initial response can support a survivor on her path to recovery or decrease his feelings and of isolation and hopelessness. Sexual assault advocacy services support survivors in reclaiming a positive sense of self, pursuing the justice that makes us all safer and rediscovering the world and their own bodies as caring and loving places. These services are also cost effective, as they can prevent complex, long-term health problems and they also contribute to increased prosecution rates.

This report reminds us that sexual violence costs us all. We are affected in a number of ways–as individuals, families, neighborhoods and communities–but supportive interventions can mitigate the devastating consequences of violence. We all have a role to play in constructing and supporting such interventions by donating to our local rape crisis center, supporting policies and funding that make services available or just being a compassionate friend, family member or colleague.

Please find the entire document with citations here. For a list of crisis and support centers throughout the United States, visit the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

]]> http://endthebacklog.org/blog/?feed=rss2&p=605 3 http://endthebacklog.org/blog/?p=513 http://endthebacklog.org/blog/?p=513#comments Fri, 01 Apr 2011 22:06:20 +0000 Lendon http://endthebacklog.org/blog/?p=513

Our efforts to end the backlog of untested rape kits, the collection of evidence from victims’ bodies that wait to be tested in police and crime lab storage facilities throughout the country, are part of a larger movement to change the response to sexual violence in the United States–one that recognizes the importance of justice and healing and one that demonstrates to survivors that each and every one of their experiences and cases is important.

April 1 marked the beginning of Sexual Assault Awareness Month (#SAAM for our Twitter followers). You can read a message from Joyful Heart’s Executive Director, Maile Zambuto, on the Joyful Heart Blog here and read more about it it on our website.

At the beginning of every week here on the Backlog Blog, we are going to be sharing with you some statistics about the nature of sexual violence and the response to sexual violence. We start today with some commonly cited numbers many of you might already have seen.

• Every 2 minutes, someone is sexually assaulted in the United States. That’s 248,700 victims in a year. (Source: RAINN)
• Only 30% of sexual assaults are ever reported to the police (Source: RAINN). Even so, that means somebody reports a forcible rape every 6 minutes in this country (Source: FBI).
• The majority (73%) of sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone the victims knows or is acquainted with. 40% of sexual assaults take place in the home. (Source: RAINN)

Please share with your community and loved ones and check back here next week for more numbers and some indicators of the response to sexual violence.

Whether they are just embarking on their journalistic pursuits or they are award-winning veterans in the field, journalists are crucial to our efforts to end the backlog. Because only one state (Illinois) requires jurisdictions to track their rape kits at the moment, a lot of investigative work must, and has, been done by the media to uncover the nature of backlogs. One of the most important steps in creating a movement–a revolution, even–is raising awareness. Writing articles is a great way to do this, and there are so many resources that can help.

Brittany was kind enough to send along her completed article published in The Pitchfork’s February 18 issue for us to post here on our blog. We thought we’d share it with you.

Can you describe what happened? Did you get a good look? Could you give us a description? These are the hounding questions asked when one is sexually assaulted. There’s no time to think or process–just questions. And on top of the questions, there’s the evidence collection, a long process in which evidence is collected directly from the crime scene. But in cases of sexual assault, the victim is the crime scene. We see things like this every day on television, but the part most of us don’t realize is that this stuff really happens.

Every year, tens of thousands of people are sexually assaulted or raped. In 2009, there were 88,097 reported rapes in the US, nearly double the number in South Africa, where the second highest number of rapes occur annually. Some frightening statistics: one in six women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime; every two minutes, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted; only an estimated 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in prison; rape has a 24% arrest rate, on average. Fortunately, victims are able to undergo an sexual assault evidence (SAE) examination in order to identify and prosecute their attacker, that is, if their evidence is tested.

During an SAE examination, commonly referred to as a “rape kit exam” the victim is in a room with the examiner for approximately four to six hours. During this time, to collect possible DNA evidence, the examiner swabs the victim and scrapes under the fingernails, pulls hairs and fibers, collects the victim’s clothes, collects blood and urine samples, and takes pictures of any visible wounds. Often times this process is emotionally difficult for the victim to endure, but he/she gets through it because he/she knows it could possibly help law enforcement make a conviction. The only problem is that a large proportion of these rape kits are never tested.

Currently in the U.S., there are an estimated 180,000 to 400,000 untested rape kits sitting on the shelves of police evidence labs across the country, forgotten. In most states, there is a statute of limitations for rape, meaning there’s only a certain time frame in which someone can be brought to trial for a specific crime. If a rape kit is not processed in that allotted time frame, the evidence is useless. The rape kit backlog, as it is commonly known, is an epidemic in our country and needs to end.

The Joyful Heart Foundation (JHF), a non-profit organization whose purpose is to shed light on issues like sexual assault, child abuse and domestic violence, is working with various sources to try to end the backlog in the U.S. Mariska Hargitay of NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU), founder of JHF, testified in front of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security to try to make a stand. This was the first time the House has ever held a hearing specifically about this issue. Hargitay said, “These kits represent human beings who have suffered greatly. Testing their rape kits sends victims the fundamental and crucial message that they and their cases matter. Not testing them sends the opposite message.” Although not much was done by the House due to chaos with other bills such as health care and taxes, Hargitay, Neal Baer (Executive Producer, SVU), NBC, RAINN, Human Rights Watch, state coalitions against sexual assault, Family Violence Prevention Fund, and various experts have joined to end the rape kit backlog and are hoping to make some changes this year in the new congressional session.

JHF Director of Advocacy and Strategic Partnerships, Sarah Tofte, said there’s no way to really know the exact number of untested rape kits in the U.S. because the only state required to track the number is Illinois, but most major jurisdictions have tens of thousands backlogged. She said it’s also difficult to estimate the total number of rapes that occur every year because the FBI is the only organization in charge of tracking them, and they have a very narrow definition of what qualifies something as “rape.” Throughout this movement, JHF and its partners have provided advocacy on state and federal levels to attain comprehensive rape kit reform and are working with the city of Detroit to end the backlog there. Tofte also said, “Rape kit testing can have such a big impact and move a case forward and it sends a message to the perpetrator that they can’t get away with it.” With all the effort being put forth toward this issue, within the next year or two, there will hopefully be substantial progress and the problem will come to an end.

We continue to be impressed by the work young people are doing around the country to bring attention to the backlog. We want to know about your efforts. Please email us at blog@joyfulheartfoundation.org.

Ella and others at the Kentucky Youth Assembly, where they presented mock legislation to eliminate the state's rape kit backlog.

In 2010, the Joyful Heart Foundation‘s second issue of Reunion featured a story of a young girl whose big voice is matched only by her bigger heart. Ella Burnside was given an assignment from her English teacher: write about something in the world you want to change, and then do it. Ella wrote about ending sexual violence and domestic abuse, and then went about raising over $10,000 for Joyful Heart. She was in tenth grade.

This school year, Ella attended a youth government conference in her home state of Kentucky. There, she and several of her classmates presented a bill to the mock legislature calling for the elimination of Kentucky’s backlog of untested rape kits and proposing a timeline to get the kits tested. Several news sources, including CBS and WLKY, have reported on the state crime lab’s backlog of hundreds of kits.

As Ella reported to us, her bill sailed through the mock House and Senate, with approximately 95% of her peers voting for it. “I am confident that they truly understood the importance of eliminating KY’s backlog and that many of them were immensely disturbed by the situation,” Ella told us. “While this was not actually presented to our state government, it was really neat to see that once people hear and understand this problem, most of them are ready to take action to reverse the situation. Hopefully the legislators in my state will react in the same way when they become aware of our backlog.”

At the end of the conference, the bill was ultimately vetoed by the conference’s student governor due to budget constraints, an outcome not unfamiliar to those working to reform rape kit testing across the country. In 2009, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill, AB1017, which would have made his the first state in the nation to collect comprehensive data on the physical evidence collected from rape victims that is sitting in police storage facilities, citing resource constraints. You can read the Huffington Post article that Sarah Tofte, Joyful Heart’s Director of Advocacy & Strategic Partnerships, wrote on his decision here.

Ella’s thoughtful work — and the response of the fellow student leaders in Kentucky — is encouraging news. If you or someone you know is doing something to raise awareness of the rape kit backlog or to contribute to the movement to end sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, we want to know about it!  Send an email to blog@joyfulheartfoundation.org.

Armen Keteyian and Laura Strickler’s five month investigation into untested rape kits nationwide uncovering 20,000 untested rape kits in various cities won the 2010 Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, as well as the 2010 Gracie Award for Best Investigative Program.

Sarah Tofte: How did you get interested in journalism as a career?

Laura Strickler: In 2003, I was working on a masters in public administration, but I dropped out, and started doing a documentary film program and was completely taken with it. It was much more interesting than statistics.

Long story short, I started in public radio, and joined the CBS News investigative unit in 2006.

ST: How did you get interested in the story of the rape kit backlog?

LS: My colleague had just finished a brilliant story that looked at veteran suicides across the country, and it was a large data project that required my colleague to call every single state’s coroner’s office to figure out how many veterans’ deaths were classified as suicides.  It was a very significant story since it was at the beginning of the national discussion about what could be done to prevent military suicides.

So I was looking for some kind of data project, some story that I could tell, in part, by gathering new data and presenting it to the public. My favorite kinds of stories are where you examine data in a new way.

I had heard about the rape kit backlog in Los Angeles, and I thought, ‘Well, if it happened in LA, it might be happening in other cities.’ So I wanted to see what kind of data we could get from other cities, to take a look at the problem on a national scale. Of course, I thought the project would be quick, that it wouldn’t take that long…

ST:  So, where did you begin with your data collection?

LS: The first thing we wanted to find out was the last time there was a national data point for untested rape kits. We realized the last comprehensive study was done ten years ago, and no one had really looked at the problem nationally since then. So, we started calling dozens of experts on sexual violence and rape kits across the country to get their input on what kind of data would be useful to chart the problem, and the best way to get that data. Then we started calling cities to see if we could get information on their rape kit backlog.

What I did not know starting out, until later, is that there are two kinds of untested kits—there are the kits sitting in the police departments and never sent to the crime lab, and there are the kits that made it to the crime lab but have not been tested. I didn’t realize that when we focused on the cities that it meant obtaining two data points per city.

ST: How did the process go of collecting rape kit data? Did anything about the process surprise you?

LS: We had to be much more aggressive than we originally anticipated with some agencies in order to get the data, and there were plenty of jurisdictions that didn’t want to tell us anything. What we found is that often the reason why many police departments were not telling us anything is because they just didn’t know. They had no idea how many kits they had tested or never tested.

Once we figured out what kind of data we wanted to collect, and from which agencies, it was a process of calling and hoping you get to talk with that right person in the department who has the knowledge and information you need.

ST: Were you surprised to find that there were thousands of untested rape kits in police storage facilities?

LS: Well, I think that in this case, like what happens with many stories, is that you get a tip or a lead about a problem, and you start going down the road investigating, and you discover so much more than you had ever imagined.

Whenever we would hear back from a city that they had thousands of untested kits in their facilities, it was shocking. City officials had different reactions to their rape kit backlog. Some would downplay the significance of the untested kits. In one city, they told us that many of their untested kits would not yield results anyway, which is why they were not sent to a crime lab.

Some agencies were very forthcoming with their problems.

For example, the state crime lab in Louisiana was very transparent and they shared with us how long the kits on active cases had been waiting to be tested, including some that had been waiting for eight years to be tested. Even in cities that have big problems, it was commendable that they were open with us about the nature and extent of their problem, and their need for help.

One of the things I found most surprising is that there was no uniformity between jurisdictions with how rape kits are handled and that every jurisdiction had a different way of recording their rape kit data, or simply had no system at all for how to keep track of these things.

ST: Was there an interaction with a city the outcome of which surprised you the most?

LS: Cleveland. When we first called Cleveland to see if they had any untested kits, they were not open to giving us information. Months later, we did a story about a serial killer who allegedly killed 11 women and sexually assaulted numerous others in the Cleveland area. One reason he was able to get away with his crimes is that the rape complaints against him were not followed up on by the police. Cleveland has the highest rate of rape in the country. Now Cleveland just announced that they are going to count their rape kits and test all rape kits going forward. Based on my first interactions with them, it never occurred to me things would change so much.

I do want to add that in the process of this investigation, we spoke to so many prosecutors and police detectives who are very, very dedicated to helping rape victims find justice and some resolution. What I saw, though, was very real differences in how different law enforcement departments handle rape cases.

ST: A great strength of your reporting was the data you collected. Another strong element was the human element of the work, the interviews with survivors of sexual assault whose rape kits were or are in backlogs. How did you find the survivors you spoke with in the piece?

LS: We did a lot of outreach to victims’ groups across the country, and they put us in touch with Valerie Neumann, the first person we profiled in the story, a woman whose rape kit was never fully tested before her case was closed. The first time she called me, she just had a way of…she had a very strong and powerful story, she was so organized she had every single police record and email communication that happened between her and the police department. And it was vey easy to tell her story, because she had all the evidence with her about what had happened to her rape kit.

The second victim that we profiled was a long, long, process to get the interview, involving multiple trips to Oklahoma, and multiple phone conversations, and many arranged meetings that would fall through at the last minute. She was afraid to talk which I can understand. Finally, on one of my last days in Oklahoma, I was about to give up, when she called and agreed to meet me, and she decided she wanted to share her story.

We spoke with a lot of victims as part of our research for the story, and the most common refrain I heard was that, for so many of them, rape kit testing was a way to get closure, or at least a way to know that someone was listening to them, and that their case mattered to the police.

ST: What allowed you to dedicate so much of your time and energy to this story?

LS: I think it was when my boss here at CBS, said to me about two months into my investigation of the story, ‘I think you should just devote all your time to this story,’ and I just felt incredibly, incredibly lucky that I work at a place like CBS where they would be able to see that was necessary. From then on, it was much easier to make progress, because once I was no longer distracted by other stories, I could really dig in.

Any of these stories that can get at some kind of final, definitive justice, are incredibly compelling, human stories. It’s a tool that can provide peace of mind, and I think it’s certainly worthy of coverage and a lot of follow-up. At CBS, I got a lot of support on this story, and the way this business works, you could never, ever do this kind of thing without this kind of support.

ST: Describe the moment you heard your name called out as the winner of an Emmy for the report.

LS: It was incredibly rewarding. This story was a team effort with my correspondent Armen Keteyian and my senior producer Keith Summa and our team of interns. Almost immediately I thought about how grateful I was that the rape victims told their stories to us, and how grateful we are to them that they were willing to tell their stories. It takes so much guts and I am so humbled by their courage.

To learn more about Laura and her reporting on the rape kit backlog, be sure to visit the CBS News website.

Photo courtesy of Asa Frye

I am Christine Vargo, Manager of Programs for the Joyful Heart Foundation’s New York office and I am also a skater for the Gotham Girls Roller Derby’s Bronx Gridlock.

The season championship game on October 30^th, between the Bronx Gridlock and the Queens of Pain began with an awareness effort for www.endthebacklog.org. Joyful Heart’s communications and advocacy teams worked in collaboration with the members of the league’s community outreach committee by providing the two competing teams with t-shirts, which displayed the website address for www.endthebacklog.org, to wear during warm-ups before the final match. Tip cards, which provide detailed information about what the rape kit backlog is and offers resources to survivors, were also included in the bout program for the 2000 fans arriving to support their favorite team.

GGRD was 100% behind the idea of wearing the shirts and promoting the website when I first introduced it to them. As a member of this group of 60+ women, I bear witness to the tremendous strength and confidence each skater possesses, both on and off the track on a regular basis. The unfortunate reality, however, is that there are survivors of sexual violence among us, which is cause enough for us to have an invested interest in shedding light on the issue of the rape kit backlog.

Photo courtesy of Asa Frye

As one teammate shared with me in preparation of the Championship bout, “There is still so much shame and stigma around the issue of rape and sexual violence, just knowing that there can be a backlog of untested rape kits is deplorable! It is such a traumatizing experience to come forward, to go to a hospital, sit through that exam and then to have the evidence collected not go anywhere is just gross.”

I couldn’t agree more, which is why this initiative is so important for so many survivors across the country. And that’s one reason why I am so proud to be a part of an organization that is working to ensure healing and justice for survivors of sexual violence. Having GGRD sign-on in support of the cause has given me the opportunity to bring my two worlds together and I hope our efforts inspire many more to help shine a light on this important issue.