Risa Mednick and Olinka Briceño are the co-founders and co-directors of VOX Project. Here's how to contact them:

Olinka Briceño is co-founder and co-director of VOX Project. She was the first director of A Way Back, Boston's only outreach and intervention program exclusively for sexually exploited girls. Olinka was instrumental in facilitating an interdisciplinary dialogue on prostitution among Boston-area service providers to improve housing and care options. She is a consultant to community organizations and a frequent speaker on the issue of youth prostitution and domestic trafficking. She also works as a child advocate in the Boston Public School System. A skilled crisis counselor, Olinka has been commended for her work by Northeastern University's Institute on Race and Justice. Born in Venezuela and educated in France and the US, Olinka brings a wealth of intercultural understanding to her work gained through her experiences living in South America, the Middle East and Europe.

Why she does what she does...

"I've been working with children labeled "at-risk" my whole career. I see through the bravado so many young people wear like armor. I know that there's much more inside: a scared kid trying to make it on his or her own as well as a young person with inner strengths that need nurturing. Sexually exploited and prostituted kids are deeply traumatized, they need special kinds of healing options and specially trained people to work with them. The scope of this problem is enormous, but because the sex trade operates below the radar of mainstream culture, it is difficult to recognize and document. I'm committed to creating cultural and structural change so that all kids will have better opportunities to lead healthy lives, free from abuse and trauma. It's not a matter of adapting the programs and policies we already have, it's time to build new models. And to do that we have to get the American public thinking and acting."

Risa Mednick is co-founder and co-director of VOX Project. For the past decade Risa has advised progressive nongovernmental organizations and socially responsible businesses on organizational development, strategic planning, branding and messaging. She has helped launch organizations addressing human trafficking, environmental education, and fair trade. She has been the communications director of nonprofit organizations promoting women's rights, reproductive health, and economic development. Risa has created and facilitated training workshops for youth and adults on a range of topics including sexual exploitation and prostitution and is a frequent speaker on these issues. She has lived in Costa Rica and traveled in Latin America, Europe and India.

Why she does what she does...

"Four years ago I volunteered to teach a life skills class to teen girls living in a foster care group home in suburban Boston. Although we never talked about it openly with the kids, I learned from other staff that all the girls were routinely approached by male and female pimps and their recruiters. Some were completely seduced and enticed to leave their tenuous ties to case workers and school. As care providers, we didn't think we had the skills to address the issue without denying the kids agency over their lives. We didn't understand the heavy trauma most of these kids had accumulated in their short lives and how it limited their hopes and expectations for their futures. I will never forget watching one girl cram her backpack with clothes the morning of her eighteenth birthday. She was slow to leave the house that day and said she wasn't going to school anymore. She was in eleventh grade and could barely read but loved to draw. Her new "boyfriend" was waiting outside in the car. Other staff and I tried to offer her reasons to stay—a roof over her head, people who care, finishing high school, help getting a job so she could support herself. She seemed torn. Then her cell phone rang. A minute later, with tears running down her cheeks and ours, she quietly gave us each a hug and walked out the door. Six weeks later she stopped by to say hello. She was hungry and tired, her small body gaunt and bruised. But nothing any of us "helping professionals" offered could keep her from going back to situations most people cannot begin to imagine.

Too many kids are vulnerable to exploitation—abandoned by their families and by our social systems, swept up in the pop culture that glamorizes prostitution and normalizes violence. Desperate for affection and kindness, to have someone say they "I love you, you are special" (no matter how empty the words) is all they need to make the transition from lost child, foster kid or lonely runaway to stripper, escort or prostitute. They are society's throw-aways, marginal and uncounted on the one hand, valuable commodities in an underground economy on the other. Trafficking children is big business in the US. Adults are buying sex from boys and girls in every community coast to coast. We created VOX Project because the American public needs to know these stories from the perspective of the young people themselves, so we can change the way we care for kids in our culture."