Me (21 page)

“No, I won’t be able to save them all,” said the first man. And as he hurled one of the fish into the water, he said: “But this one, I can save.”

The moral of the story is obvious: Every step taken is important. Every effort makes a difference, no matter how small it might be.

For me this means dedicating even more time to my work as a spokesperson, helping to raise awareness about what is happening. On a personal level, I think I would rather be in the streets fighting in the trenches and saving children every single day. But I know I give more strength to the movement, to the cause, and to the activism if I put on a suit and tie and speak directly to the United States Congress about the horrors that go on. This is why I must speak with the lobbyists, with congressmen, and with all the influential people who can in some way contribute to this cause I have dedicated myself to, because laws must be created and then strictly upheld.

Sometimes it seems very difficult to me, because I didn’t get into philanthropy to walk around in a suit and tie talking to others wearing a suit and tie. I got into philanthropy because my first contact was directly with those children. It was through this contact with them that I understood the urgency of the situation; seeing the smile of happiness on the face of a child who has been through such horrors is one of life’s most beautiful gifts. But part of what I have learned along the way is that everyone has to help with the tools that have been given to him. So although I could easily spend my days walking through the streets of Calcutta looking for girls to rescue, the fact of my being a person in the public eye creates a whole other dimension of work I can do to help, which isn’t something everyone is able to do.

GENERALLY SPEAKING, I have always tried to live my life as low-key as possible; when I am offstage, I don’t like to be the center of attention. In fact, when I started the foundation, I wanted to do it anonymously, because I was doing it from a personal desire to help children, not to show the world what I do in order to look good. Many people encouraged me to announce what I was doing, but the last thing I wanted was for people to think I was doing any of it to get attention or publicity. What mattered to me was helping the children in the best way possible, not for people to find out that “Ricky Martin does this” or “Ricky Martin does that.” But some of the human trafficking activists I worked with a few years ago made me see I was wrong.

“What do you mean, you don’t want people to know?” they said. “That’s nonsense! We need your voice. We have spent years and years doing this, and most people ignore us. But if someone like you, an artist who is well known and respected by the public, starts to scream our message out to the world, don’t you think there will be a difference? People will pay attention to you. Maybe they won’t do what you say, but at least they will pay attention, and that alone is progress.”

The fact that as an artist I can have the power to convince and create some type of awareness is amazing. Desmond Child once said to me, “Ricky, don’t be ashamed of having that power. Use it! Not everyone has it. Everyone comes to the world with a mission, and that’s why Mahatma Gandhi was and continues to be Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., was Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dalai Lama is the Dalai Lama. I am not saying that you have to be like them, but man, when you talk, people listen.”

People who do it to achieve media attention should not bother doing it at all. They should do it only if it comes directly from their heart. However, I cannot blame the person who doesn’t do it. Perhaps some of my colleagues have not lent their voices to any cause because they have not yet found the one that moves and motivates them. It might be that until now they have not found themselves face-to-face with the problem that will force them to stand up and say, “Enough already!” I worked like crazy for thirteen years before having this awakening. And although it is tempting to think about everything I could have done if I had started earlier, the truth is that I wouldn’t have been able to do it. Remember: In life, everything arrives in its moment, and not before or after. I met those girls at the exact moment I needed to meet them, because that was when I was ready to give more. I worked hard ever since I was a little boy toward something I adored, music. And I did it because I wanted to do it, not because I was forced to. My childhood was amazing and unique. If I chose this cause it is because it appeared on my path and touched me deeply. It moved me. And I feel that if I see something I don’t agree with, and don’t do anything about it, then I am somehow allowing it to happen; it’s like I am an accomplice. If we, who are all here together on this earth, don’t take care of one another, then who else will? It is our duty. All of us have some responsibility on the spiritual path. It could be fighting against human trafficking; helping the elderly; assisting the helpless; fighting for the rights of the LGBT community (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender); or feeding the hungry—but we all have the obligation to stand up for what we believe in and help the less fortunate and take care of the neediest.

So we started to make some noise. I began to do more and more because I wanted to create a consciousness: I wanted the whole world to listen to what I have to say, and to believe that together we can fight against this epidemic. And it seemed that making noise worked, because after a very short time, many well-known and credible organizations took interest in forming alliances with the Ricky Martin Foundation. These alliances were very important, because I knew there wasn’t a whole lot I could do on my own. In the world of nonprofits, alliances are crucial. Even though I may have a very clear idea of what I want to do, it doesn’t mean I necessarily know how to do it. It’s one thing to say, “I want to help the girls,” and it’s something entirely different to go out into the field and help them. That’s why I had to find other organizations that had experience working for the causes that most mattered to me. From that point on, we began to work with such institutions as the Inter-American Development Bank, UNICEF, Save the Children, ATEST (Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking), Johns Hopkins University, the International Organization for Migration, the University of Puerto Rico, the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking, and even Microsoft.

One of the programs we developed with Microsoft was aimed at a specific problem. Unfortunately, one of the easiest ways to traffic children is through the Internet. Traffickers make their way into chat forums and the children begin chatting with them and making friends, of course without knowing they are chatting with an adult. And while the parents think their kids are chatting with their friends, they are really talking with a trafficker right from the living room of their own home. It’s completely terrifying. To raise awareness about this problem, we joined forces with Microsoft to create a program called
Navega Protegido
(Navigate Safely), with the purpose of protecting children in cyberspace.
Navega Protegido
is a campaign that educates parents and teachers alike, regarding all the risks that exist for a child when they are surfing the Web.

Even though we cannot completely prevent this type of thing from happening, at least we can raise awareness. We placed ads in public transportation systems that said: “Do you know who is chatting with your daughter?” And in airports, where kidnapped children are boarded on planes to other countries, we placed ads that say: “Do you know where you are traveling to? Did you meet this person on the Internet?”

After that, we launched a project called
Llama y Vive
(Call and Live), a toll-free hotline where victims of human trafficking can call for help. We conducted media campaigns to promote the phone numbers and received an amazing response. One day, a woman arrived at one of the radio stations on which the numbers had been advertised, and said: “Hi, I heard about your
Llama y Vive
campaign, and I don’t have a phone. But I am a victim.” Of course, the radio station personnel called the authorities right away, who in turn got in touch with us to help this woman with her rehabilitation. And just like that, we saved one more. Every single life matters.

The efforts of the Ricky Martin Foundation continue to expand, and we’re always looking for new ways to fight human trafficking. At the beginning of 2010, in collaboration with the financial corporation Doral, we launched a new community program to mobilize social consciousness. I am convinced that this is a problem we can solve. No matter how massive it is, no matter how rampant it may be in countries all over the world, I know we have been able to create more of a consciousness; and maybe if people see the dangers faced by the world’s children with their own eyes, we can make a difference.

ONE OF THE things very few people know about human trafficking is that traffickers often take advantage of extreme situations, such as earthquakes, floods, or wars, to abduct the children who are most vulnerable. Some of the most intense experiences I’ve lived through since I began fighting human trafficking have been when I have visited places affected by natural disasters, such as the tsunami of 2004 and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. I will never in my life be able to erase those images from my mind, and the truth is that I don’t want to: I don’t want to forget about all the destruction, the pain, and the desolation I saw because I don’t want to forget that each day I must continue fighting for my cause.

The tsunami unfurled at 9:33 a.m. on December 26, 2004, on the beaches of Patong, Thailand. According to witnesses, the first wave measured some thirty feet in height. It destroyed everything in its path. It overturned cars, crumbled buildings, knocked trees over, crushing the debris with its turbulent waters. The waves caused massive damage and thousands of deaths in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Somalia, and the Maldives. In its wake, it left a death toll of more than 287,000, and more than 50,000 missing people. A third of the dead were children.

Even though the news traveled through all the media, I didn’t find out until several days later. I was on a private island in Puerto Rico celebrating my birthday with a group of friends. Even though the island had every form of communication, I wanted to remain disconnected, and a whole week went by without my looking at my cell phone once. I didn’t know what was going on in Puerto Rico, never mind on the other side of the world. I was just having a good time, swimming in the ocean, relaxing on the sand, singing and playing music.

So it was not until January 3 or 4, when I returned to San Juan, that I found out about the tsunami. My first reaction was of complete anguish. I thought that if the tsunami had been in the Atlantic instead of on the other side of the world, I would have probably disappeared off the face of the earth, because I was on such a flat island that there was nowhere to run. I think that because I had just come back from so many days relaxing by the ocean, it hit me even harder to think that on the other side of the planet the ocean had actually turned into a monster.

I was completely and utterly jolted. I watched the chaos on television, all the devastation, heard the reports of the thousands of dead and still missing, and the children who were lost and in search of their parents, who by this point could be God only knows where. And suddenly I realized this was a perfect scenario for traffickers: There were thousands of traumatized kids, orphans, lost and helpless, who were willing to take help from anyone who was willing to give it. Once this way of thinking crossed my mind, there was no way to erase it. I knew these children were at risk and I had to do something about it. And fast.

I called the executive director of the foundation and I said to him, “We have to go to Thailand right away.”

“Okay,” he said, “and what are we going to do there?”

“I don’t know!” I replied. “I just know that we have to go and we have to make noise so that people will pay attention to what is happening.”

I knew it was one of those moments when it would be critical to utilize my power of conviction. I was ready to stand on any rooftop of any building and scream out, “Heads up! Children might be trafficked right now. They might be getting abducted as we speak!”

And that is more or less what we did. We invited a Puerto Rican writer who had traveled with us a lot. Every time we would go on a mission to Jordan or Calcutta, she would join us to document everything that happened on the trips. As we got ready to depart, we received a call from a producer of the
Oprah Winfrey Show
to ask if we were going to do something. So we invited her to join us as well, and that’s how we ended up accompanied by cameramen from one of the most-watched television shows in the world. It was hard to imagine a more perfect alliance. We had not yet arrived, but we knew we were definitely going to make some noise!

We departed on a plane from San Juan to New York, to then fly from New York to London, and onward from London to Bangkok. While we were on the flight from New York to London, with the press and cameras on the plane with us, we still had no itinerary. The trip came to be so suddenly that we didn’t even have time to plan what we were going to do. The way things were going, we were going to land in Bangkok and have to tell everyone, “Please just wait here while we rent a car....” I talk about it now and it makes me laugh, but at that moment our minds were racing because we had no detailed plan of what we were going to do, which isn’t at all how I was used to working, and surely Oprah’s team wasn’t, either. But this was a mission that came directly from the heart, and in the midst of the chaos I constantly kept repeating, in the form of a mantra, “Everything will be okay. Everything will be okay.”

While we were in New York, the executive director of the foundation had been on the phone with the Thai embassy in Washington, D.C., telling them that Ricky Martin was en route to their country and wanted to help in whatever way possible. I was taking the activists’ advice to not be afraid to use my name for a cause I believed in.