Ind. Firefighter Takes Aim at Ending Human Trafficking

In the United States, being a firefighter is looked on with a good deal of reverence. The men and women who chose to risk serious injury and often their lives to protect people and property from fires and other threats and disasters are often seen as heroes.

North Metro Fire Rescue District Lt. Mark Sherman, through the efforts of Goodness To Go, LLC, the social enterprise he and his wife, Dr. Fran Hamilton, founded in 2008, has decided to do something heroic outside of his duties with the fire department. He is working to stop the human trafficking of girls and young women in India by raising money to help create better educational opportunities, leading to better physical health and life skills that offer women a fighting chance to break the cycle of poverty that allows human trafficking to continue.

Sherman has been with North Metro for 31 years and through three district name changes. The lieutenant works 48-hour shifts commanding North Metro's Station 64 located at 13515 Lowell Blvd., and is passionate about his work.

Feb. 3-28, however Sherman was in Calcutta, India, following his other passion: Stopping human trafficking. The primary mission of Sherman's visit, his third to Calcutta since 2009, was to strengthen a relationship with the Indian non-governmental organization, the Child in Need Institute. CINI is a 35-year-old organization with 500 employees set up by Indian pediatrician Dr. Samir Chaudhuri dedicated to eliminating poverty and providing adequate health care to Indian women.

"I went to (Calcutta to)

set up the partnership, which really is just viewing the programs they have that focus on helping at-risk girls and young women," Sherman said, referring to women at risk of being trafficked for purposes of sexual and/or labor exploitation. "If you're going to get ahead of the curve on trafficking, the best place to go is the source, which is the girls who are uneducated and poor."

Sherman and his wife, a family physician working out of Boulder Community Hospital, were driven to do their part to help improve the lives of young women in India by their daughter, Grace, who they adopted from a Calcutta orphanage 11 years ago. Goodness To Go, the family's social enterprise -- or private business that dedicates it profits to charitable causes -- is still in its early stages, Sherman said, but is dedicated to raising money for CINI and other organizations and programs dedicated to education and ending sexual exploitation in the region. Goodness To Go's income is generated by the sale of its book, "Goodness to Go: A Handbook for Humanitarians," penned by Hamilton.

" ... You don't have to have a lot of money to do good," Sherman said of the point of his organization's book, meant to motivate others.

CINI has more than 150 educational programs, most of them dedicated to young girls who are often discriminated against in India's education system, Sherman said, in efforts to help them build life skills they can use to make money for themselves and avoid becoming targets of traffickers.

"CINI's philosophy is to start at the grassroots level," Sherman said, noting societal norms make India's basic educational standards drastically different from our own. "You start with (teaching) things that you would not even think about here. You know, like how to test your child for developmental disabilities. It's teaching a mother how to cook food and what types of food she should be cooking (for her children.)"

During his visit to Calcutta last month, where he met with CINI's Chaudhuri to cement their partnership and pick his brain about ways to affect change in the area, Sherman also put his firefighter skills to use performing some impromptu fire inspections at five CINI buildings. The country's safety standards are vastly different from those in the United States, Sherman said, as demonstrated by the fact he did not see a single fire hydrant during his stay. He said rampant theft means nearly every building in Calcutta has ornate bars over the windows, and metal barricades at most doorways, measures that would violate fire codes in the United States. While there was little he could do to address these larger issues, he said he offered the best advice he could to his charitable allies on how to make their facilities as safe as possible.

"What I saw my purpose as then was mostly fire extinguishers," Sherman said. "Were they located in the right place? Were they of the right type? They tend to put them very high. If you want to encourage anyone and everyone to use it, you want to put it where everyone can get to it. Make it easy for anyone and everyone."

While his efforts are not affiliated with North Metro, spokeswoman Stacey Mulligan said she respects the Sherman-Hamilton family mission with Goodness To Go and was happy to hear Sherman's knowledge benefited charities in Calcutta.

"Our firefighters here at North Metro do fire inspections as part of their daily jobs," Mulligan said "So, it's kind of a neat way to use those skills and at least help the greater good."

Sherman is back with his family at home in Boulder now, working his regular shifts at Station 64. He knows that Goodness To Go's impact on the human trafficking situation in India might be small at this point, but he hopes people will buy and read the organization's handbook, because philanthropy doesn't have to be huge to be successful.

"It doesn't have to be money. Time is maybe even the biggest thing," Sherman said.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service