I would very much appreciate being included as an ad hoc delegate to the UN CSW 57. I am an educator and activist. I work locally on many issues effecting women and children and I am eager to network with other women who are of the same mind. I believe I can contribute to the conversations, but I am especially interested in learning from the successes and failures of other women’s organizations.

As the chair of the Women’s & Gender Studies (WAGS) minor at Washburn University, I host educational events for the campus. The events include activities such as V-Day and Week Without Violence. I am faculty advisor for several student organizations, notably, The Social Justice League, Students Together Advocating Non-violent Dating and a student chapter of International Justice Mission. I teach the Introduction to Women’s Studies, Images of Women and Popular Culture, and Human Trafficking for the WAGS minor. Activism is required in each course.

I have been working with sexual and domestic violence organizations for nearly twenty years. I am active with the local YWCA Center for Safety and Empowerment (CSE) which provides services for victim/survivors of sexual and domestic violence in Topeka and the surrounding areas. Several of the current employees are former students. This year we are celebrating the tenth year of our Concealed Revealed Art Auction. This auction originally began as a Women’s Studies class project. Ten years later, we regularly raise $10,000 for the YWCA CSE. I help organize the event and I donate art.

I have focused my research on Human Trafficking for approximately eight years. Three years ago I was finally able to get a HT course added to the curriculum. It is cross-listed in WAGS, Criminal Justice and Human Services. I sought these affiliations with Criminal Justice and Human Services to reach out to students most likely to encounter slavery in their jobs. The course has been very well received and continues to get full enrollment.

Last year I cofounded a new community based organization to address HT in our community. The Stop Trafficking and Reject Slavery (STARS) advisory board includes law enforcement (both the Sheriff and the Chief of Police attend and bring officers), mental health advocates, homeless advocates, members from the Topeka Center for Peace and Justice Board, local women’s organizations, educators and other interested community members. We are focusing our efforts this year on education. Our goal is to tell 2014 people about HT by the year 2014. To that end, in September we trained twenty people to give presentations. We are working with the School Resource Officers to create a presentation for middle school children to prevent their being trafficked. I hope that program will begin in the fall. We have already scheduled presentations for the school district, faith communities and the mental health facility, among others.

I also work with incarcerated women at Topeka Correctional Facility (TCF), the only women’s prison in Kansas. In addition to my Women’s Studies courses, I also serve as an Associate Professor of Theatre. It was through that connection that I was invited to TCF to attend a play written by one of the women. I was so impressed with the enthusiasm of the women and overwhelmed by the miasma of despair, I wanted to do something. The first year I directed a play by Eve Ensler, Any One Of Us. The women loved it because the play tells stories written by other incarcerated women and they asked me if they could write their own play. I organized a creative writing group last year, with another woman, called Sisters of Survival. The Sisters found writing to be liberating and healing. They write every week; I read their work and write back to each of them. I crafted the play from their writing; naming it Tomorrow My Name is Freedom from a line in one of the writers’ poems. I also applied for and received a grant to print a small chapbook of their work. The unmitigated success of both the book and the play was very empowering to the women that participated. When we announced we were starting a new group in the fall, over 40 women wanted to be involved. I’m currently trying to get more writing facilitators to start additional groups in an attempt to meet the need.

The above is an indication of my commitment to addressing violence against women in all forms. I would very much like to connect with other women who are doing the same work I am doing. Topeka, Kansas can be very isolating and new ideas are most welcome.

On a personal note, knowing you are interested in the environment and ecofeminism, my partner and I are organic gardeners and use only heirloom seeds. We also raise heritage chickens and ducks. I believe the destruction of the earth echoes the status of women in our culture, and we try to be good stewards of the land.