Excerpt of University of Miami Communications publication

Two weeks after the quake struck Haiti, Sandra Kirkpatrick, Executive Director of Artists United for Social Justice, www.ausj.org, teamed up with UM to provide medical supplies, and teddy bears, while helping at the UM field hospital in Port au Prince. Teddy bears may seem like a strange relief cargo, but after viewing images of kids in makeshift clinics with nothing but the clothes on their backs, Sandra decided the kids needed something to hang on to. "I wanted to put something soft and cuddly into those tiny hands so they could curl up with some sense of comfort. When I was giving out the bears about half the parents in the pediatric hospital wanted bears too. So I gave them bears also. The next day when I was going to go to some orphanages to distribute bears, I was sorry I gave bears to the parents as there weren't so many left to give to the orphans. One of the nurses overheard me expressing that thought and told me, 'Those parents are just as attached to those bears as the kids are!' So I knew I had done the right thing after all."
Through AUSJ Sandra is also working with UNICEF to stop child trafficking in Haiti. AUSJ's focus is on preventing child trafficking through investigating and exposing trafficking, and changing laws and attitudes that have allowed human trafficking to grow. Sandy noted "Working with UNICEF allows us to have input at the top level of government to shape policy and programs impacting the trafficking issue in Haiti, but the thrust of our work is prevention through media." AUSJ has produced 2 films, Svetlana's Journey, which won the 2005 Hollywood Film Festival, and Cargo: Innocence Lost. The films have been shown internationally and Svetlana's Journey was viewed by over 2 million people in Bulgaria alone. It was also honored at the Cairo Film Festival and is used as part of the curriculum in universities. AUSJ also produced 5 public service announcements at the request of the National Foundation of Women Legislators for national TV spots.
"We've chosen to work through media to combat human trafficking because there are over 27 million people enslaved worldwide and the problem is growing. Only mass media can reach the numbers necessary and turn the tide by causing people to make a conscious decision to not tolerate slavery in any form. Slavery has to become socially unacceptable; it has to be as much of a taboo as cannibalism so that people simply do not do it, regardless of whatever laws there are." AUSJ is working on a third film about human trafficking in the USA, and new PSAs geared to the audience targeted by traffickers, namely youth.