who we are.
HISTORY
Minga was founded in August 2006, when a group of 14-year-olds learned that in the United States, the average age of entry into prostitution is just thirteen. Shocked that an estimated two million kids are sold for sex each year, these high school students were inspired to act.
Our first fundraising goal was $5,000, and we had decided holding a yardsale was a great way to reach that goal. It soon became clear, from the looks we got from our parents, that $5,000 from a single yard sale was an extremely ambitious goal. Instead of slowing us down, this realization just pushed us to think ever bigger than before. We collected items to sell from our families, friends, and neighbors. By the time the weekend of the yard sale rolled around, we had collected so much junk that it was literally difficult to open the door to the house we had flooded with stuff. What had started in a spare office had spread to the living room, dining room, family room and even front hallway. But our plan worked. We were outside selling all sorts of things for a full weekend and by the end we had proved any naysayers wrong. We had raised over $6,500 on our very first try.
As we continued to fundraise for the next few years, we kept the same can-do attitude in everything that we did. Through several more community events, we raised $35,000 to help fund a rehabilitation center for sexually exploited youth in the Philippines.
We then realized that many organizations in our space were better suited to fundraise and to provide rehabilitative services to child survivors in Southeast Asia. We had never heard of an organization working to prevent youth in our nation from becoming involved in the trade as victims or abusers. As teens, we knew we had the unique ability to reach our peers in a meaningful way. We decided to shift our mission. We became the first and only youth-run organization working to combat the global child sex trade by harnessing the power of teens.
In the summer of 2009, Minga’s leaders traveled over 4,000 miles across the United States and Canada to deliver speeches and empower teens to take action against the global child sex trade. We worked with more than 400 teens (in small workshop settings) in ten cities over the course of just four weeks. Four sixteen-year-olds (only one had a license) drove a minivan we had painted ourselves and named Barnabus.
At Minga, we are powered by the passion, energy, and creativity of both the teens we aim to inspire, and by our young and dynamic staff. The Minga leaders are a team of high school and college students who are passionate about ending the global child sex trade and empowering other teens to do the same. We believe in the power of teens to create powerful and lasting change in the world and we see our generation as the driving force behind the Minga movement.
