Me

lasting way. Ultimately, my presence on this earth will only last a short time (relatively speaking), and the desire to leave a mark is a very natural thing.
    For a long time I thought my way of contributing to the world, of showing gratitude for all the miracles and favors received, was through music. When I get up to sing onstage in front of thousands of people, I feel a very human and powerful vibration. Music allows me to connect with the audience at a visceral level, and through music I feel that I transmit my entire essence, my very being. It is a unique privilege to be able to feel what I feel when I’m up there, and this sentiment has always made me believe that this was my mission: to convey joy, rhythm, and movement to others.
    But after my last trip to India I began to realize performing onstage was simply not enough. Even though being onstage gave me immense satisfaction, it is a satisfaction that only really serves me. The three girls, and my experiences in their country, made me realize what I was really missing.

FINDING MY CAUSE
    I WAS AT a point in my life when I was questioning everything. The feeling of helping these girls had been so powerful that I no longer knew if music was really my mission, or if it had simply been a tool that helped me find the path to philanthropy and helping the most defenseless among us. I came back from India thinking deeply about what my friend told me, and how those three girls could have easily fallen into human trafficking. When I returned home, I spent three days sleeping because of how drained I felt after everything I had seen. The experience with the three girls shook me so profoundly, and I was still not sure how I was going to fit this newly gained awareness into the rest of my life. I knew I didn’t want to go on with my life as before, and that I had to do something; I just didn’t know what it was.
    When I finally got out of bed, after resting for what felt like an eternity, I began to investigate. I went online and started to read everything I could about human trafficking. I realized that this was not only a problem in India, and that it is actually an epidemic that affects the whole world. I realized that in reality it isn’t necessarily a question of wealth or poverty, but that it is actually an issue of values, of human rights—which makes it all the more tragic. As long as there are people who want to continue believing that boys or girls should be exploited for the simple reason that they are young and defenseless, this type of crime will continue to exist.
    My reading awoke a lot of rage, anger, and frustration within me. I learned that each year more than 1 million children become victims of trafficking. Do you know what that means, more than 1 million children every year? That means that every day, almost three thousand kids are kidnapped, sold, abused, and God knows what else. And most are girls. There are men who are willing to pay $15,000 for the virginity of an eight-year-old girl. The fact that there are men out there who think this way is incomprehensible, and in my opinion anyone who allows this to happen and to keep happening deserves to be imprisoned.
    After doing all this research, realizing everything that was at stake, and seeing what can be done, I went to Washington, D.C., and met people who to this day are my mentors in the fight against human trafficking. They taught me everything I needed to know to help me further this fight in a tangible way, and have guided me so that I could help in the most effective way possible.
    And that’s how I began working for the cause. I think there was a bit of selfishness in my desire to help, because I did it in large part to relieve myself of the pain I felt upon witnessing such a tragedy. I needed a form of catharsis, a way to do away with all the anguish, the rage, and the frustration I felt upon seeing what could have happened to my three girls and to the millions of children who suffer each day at the hands of abusive adults. It is an infuriating situation, because it somehow feels like you’re swimming against the current. There is so much work to be done that anything I did wouldn’t be more than a drop in the ocean. You might be able to rescue one child, but every day there are thousands more who continue to be forced into prostitution or to become sex slaves—this is the reality of modern slavery, and the saddest part about it is that it happens in cities all over the world.
    So,