Pick a fight

poverty • child soldiering • hunger • human trafficking • child slavery

“Once you see the vision, you want to join the movement, and once you join the movement, the struggle becomes personal.”

— Jesse Murphy, Founder, MyFight.org

FIGHT

A Montana-grown movement takes Third World oppression personally

networking from his Harvard computer, Jesse Murphy, a small-town Montana boy, was switching channels on his television and by chance watched a riveting PBS documentary about the realities of child slavery in developing countries. From that moment on, Murphy dreamed of rescuing these enslaved children on continents half a world away from his family’s Dillon, Mont., farm.

From Massachusetts to Montana, both young men’s dreams of changing the world came true.

The thought that a child slave in Cambodia and the Sudan could be bought for $50 burned in Murphy’s conscience throughout high school. His frustration came from not knowing what he possibly could do about it.

BY SHELLEY VAN ATTA

Opposite page photos one and two: Jesse Murphy with the Atsbeha Family. Third photo: Honduran lady in a “borrowing” store. Photo top: Honduran brother and sister.

Above: Honduran village woman. Photos courtesy of Jesse Murphy/ MyFight.org.

sudan • honduras • ethiopia • cambodia • thailand

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In 2004, the year Mark Zuckerberg dreamed of changing the face of social

“I was coming from the cowboy background of: Get off your high perch and get to work.

Go do something. There are people dying!”

Murphy entered Rocky Mountain College and made a conscious decision to devote three years to researching the problem: “I studied it in the context of system’s theory, asking the question, ‘How can there be child slavery in this day and age?’” The fundamental answer, of course, is extreme poverty. “It’s a capsule of vulnerability.” from this micro-enterprise, He learned that the Milla was able to bring 300,000 child soldiers, electricity into her home, such as those recruited by about which she cheerfully Libya’s former dictator recounts: “I bought all the Muammar Gaddafi, were wire and everything to get not necessarily fighting electricity in my house, so for a cause or a regime, now when I turn on the but to make money to lights, it’s a reminder of the feed themselves and their loans.” families. “Guns and bread.

It’s their best chance of survival,” Murphy said.

Spreading the The horrifying reality, mission he found, was that the In another part of the vast majority of these world, microloans are Not having a physical office, Jesse Murphy conducts business at various coffee children are not captured helping children earn a shops in town. Photo by Casey Page. into slavery. Bereft of livable wage. Sammy, a alternatives—especially man who has become a when the alternative is starvation—they choose enslavement. good friend of Murphy’s, as well as his regional partner in Ethiopia, “But that also provides hope. If it’s just a situation where slavery grew up “in the trenches and full grip of poverty” and now has a is their best choice, then that’s something we should be able to passion “to revenge poverty through business,” he said. He used change,” he enthused. “We should be able to give a different choice his first microloan to create a furniture manufacturing business to these kids; a different choice to little girls other than prostituting which he began by hiring five “street children” and setting up themselves; and a different choice to moms from selling their kids shop under a homemade tent in a vacant lot. Rather than simply to provide a better future.” giving people money that once it is used, is gone, Sammy said it is It was during an honors project at Rocky that Murphy began more important to empower people to be able to escape poverty to formulate rescue plans for enslaved children. In a paper he by investing in their business, which generates and regenerates wrote titled, “A Farewell to One-Night Stand Humanitarianism,” money, providing them with a continual source of revenue and a Murphy postulated that rather than try to change a country’s permanent escape from poverty. “If you eat all of your seed, you’ll internal policies which leads to dead ends, frustration and a have nothing to plant next year,” he said. By planting his seed cessation of efforts to solve the problem, it makes better sense to money, he gets to watch it grow year after year. effect long-term systemic change by empowering the people who have the most to gain.

Selling T-shirts, providing hope “We empower them to succeed,” he said, “by investing in their Murphy gets the T-shirts at a greatly reduced price, adds a dreams.” custom MyFight logo, and then sells them from his website. The With encouragement and mentoring by his Rocky professors, profit goes into an account from which money is loaned to those Murphy developed and honed a plan to create a web-based suffering the most abject poverty, mostly women in developing microfinancing organization. The idea is to provide small-sized countries. Once the loans are repaid (they have not yet had a loan loans as seed capital to people in third world countries to start a default, he said), the money is re-lent, “bringing the power of freebusiness. Money for the loans comes from the sale of “MyFight is market ingenuity to the efforts of humanitarianism.”

Slavery” T-shirts.

Today, Murphy said he is proud to find that “MyFight is Ethiopia,” “MyFight is Honduras,” and other MyFight T-shirts are being worn by supporters throughout the world. He got a call from Meet Brenda Lizeeth Oliva Milla Murphy cited an example of a borrower from Honduras, Brenda a friend recently who spotted a MyFight T-shirt in Pennsylvania.

Lizeeth Oliva Milla, to show how the process of microfinancing “We have turned the most ubiquitous item of this generation—Tchanged her life. Milla used a $150 loan to start a food business, shirts—into microloans to end poverty and slavery.”

Because MyFight is a web-based business, conducted on selling popular meals such as fish platters and beef tripe soup (called Mondongo in Honduras). With the income she earned Murphy’s computer in his favorite coffee shops, he happily points

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out that there is little overhead, allowing more money to be loaned.

“When somebody wears a MyFight T-shirt,” he passionately asserts, “I want them to declare that they are fighting for enslaved children; they are fighting for a woman in Ethiopia who had to sell her 5-year-old daughter; they are fighting for somebody or something. I want it to be their anthem.”

Fueled by faith In spite of initial setbacks and very little up-front operating capital, Murphy, a young man of immense faith, watched “successive doors of opportunity unhinge,” allowing him to attract those who supported his vision. “We took a leap of faith,” he said, citing as an example Eric Finstad, with AD Creative, whose advertising agency created the MyFight.org website, pro bono. Lawyers, accountants and other professionals also volunteered to be part of the fight. “What seemed in stark contrast to initially hitting concrete walls, doors began opening. Like a zipper, everything came together.”

MyFight’s noble mission to abolish child slavery by easing extreme poverty has captured the hearts and imaginations of people throughout the world who have joined Murphy in his realization that through global web networking—including Zuckerberg’s Facebook—one person truly can make a difference.

Many of Murphy’s good friends have joined him in the MyFight cause by spreading the message during speaking opportunities in coffee shops, summer festivals and at colleges and universities across the country. The reception they have received in all these venues, he said, has been warm, enthusiastic and has exceeded their expectations.

What really is gratifying, Murphy said, are the calls he has received from It is estimated that up to 27 million young people who heard him speak and people in developing countries, were inspired to start their own social most of them women and business. “I love being a part of changing children, are slaves because the conversation and shaping the way my of the abject poverty they generation is doing social benefit work.” suffer. With the alternative being starvation, many choose And the good word seems to be slavery. MyFight.org is fighting, one microloan spreading. at a time, to change that.

“I’m convinced that the world is not the worst it’s ever been; it’s not the best it’s ever MyFight T-shirts can be ordered through the been, but there’s a whole lot we can do about MyFight.org website. it. There still are good people who want to change it.”

To join the gathering force of MyFight.org, follow Jesse Murphy’s vision is working. In its progress on Facebook and Twitter.

November and December 2010, MyFight. org sold only 50 T-shirts. In November and MyFight.org Core Values: December 2011, they sold 800.

• Life can be better.

• Dreams can become reality.

“The passion to empower • Freedom and justice are good. families to escape the prison of • Oppression and exploitation are poverty is infectious because wrong. people want a real way to help,” • We exist to serve others. said Murphy. “Once you see • We aim to do well at doing good. the vision, you want to join • We focus on possibilities, the movement, and once not problems. you join the movement, • We work in our the struggle becomes strengths, not personal.” starvation, weaknesses. many choose slavery.

• We pursue systemic and sustainable MyFight.org is fighting, change. one microloan at a time, • In all things, to change that. humility, integrity, and above all, love.

Mimi Atsebha wearing a MyFight T-shirt.

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