The Southern California native and co-founder of the nonprofit International Sanctuary has a passion for helping people across the world.
Stephanie Pollaro lives in two worlds. At the Irvine office of International Sanctuary, the nonprofit Pollaro and friend Wendy Hicks started in 2007, she speaks passionately about Mumbai, India, her home for most of the year, as if that is where her heart really is.
She tells story after story of the girls she works with. She misses them when she’s here, just like she misses here when she’s there. But she doesn’t regret one second of it.
Pollaro and Hicks’s nonprofit, known as iSanctuary, helps girls, usually minors, who have been rescued from human trafficking. They teach jewelry-making skills, help market and sell the wares, and get the girls on the path to economic freedom. iSanctuary has worked with about 75 girls in aftercare homes, and the number is constantly growing. In March 2010, iSanctuary opened their first dedicated space in India, which will house additional jewelry-making space and offer support services.
“[The girls] need economic freedom. We free them, but they don’t have that hope or future that’s based on being able to provide for yourself,” Pollaro explains. “One of the key components we feel to be reintegrated as a citizen of a community is being able to earn your own income and have the things that you need. It really gives a lot to a person in the way of dignity.”
A Passion Ignited
Pollaro’s story starts not far from here. The Orange County native knew early on that she wanted to attend Golden West College. After transferring and completing her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Pollaro was a health professions counselor at California State University, Long Beach, until she was laid off in 2003. It was during that period of unemployment that human trafficking first entered her lexicon.
The magazine was Marie Claire and the story was about Anu, a woman who runs an aftercare home in Nepal. It is estimated that up to 4 million people are trafficked each year, mostly women, both within and across national borders. Up to 50 percent of these victims are minors.
Pollaro was especially touched by the stories from India. Most girls there had been sold by their families, those they trusted the most. She went on a two-week trip to India to help however she could; it was on another similar trip that she met Hicks, a fellow Californian who shared her passion. They quickly partnered and began searching for a way to help. Pollaro had hoped to open an aftercare home of her own, but when she arrived in rural South India, the building was not ready. Her plans were postponed, but her passion burned on.
After she returned, Pollaro began seeking out organizations that worked to rescue victims of human trafficking. A common challenge they expressed was that rescued girls often ran away and returned to their families or pimps; more needed to be done to ensure the girls had the ability and motivation to be independent. Pollaro and Hicks decided that’s what they would do: give the girls skills to empower them to make their own income and sustain their independence.
“We tried lots of different things: sewing (clothes, apparel), candles,” says Pollaro, “but jewelry was the one thing that really stuck. Me being just one person, we had to focus, and we did.”
iSanctuary’s operations are simple and effective. Pollaro carries her supplies to aftercare homes all over the city teaching jewelry-making. Each season, Pollaro designs a few new pieces, and she assigns the girls more challenging projects as their skills grow. The girls make the jewelry during the week as “homework,” which Pollaro collects when she visits. The jewelry is sent back to iSanctuary’s offices in Irvine to be sold online or at home parties. The girls are compensated based on pieces produced regardless of whether they’re sold, and paid double the fair trade wage in their area. On average, a girl working outside the aftercare home can expect to earn 2,500 rupees, or the equivalent of $50 USD, a week for 72 hours of work, while with iSanctuary a girl can easily earn 5,000 rupees a week for about 10 hours of work.
A World Away
Starting a nonprofit in a foreign country is not an easy task. Pollaro and Hicks have faced obstacles ranging from language barriers to government restrictions. Some of those things have gotten easier—she now has ongoing relationships with vendors for supplies, enabling her to plan jewelry lines in advance. Others, such as governmental regulations and paperwork, are an ongoing battle.
In addition to operational challenges, Pollaro had to learn an entirely new way of life. Back in Orange County, she lived in her parents’ two-story house, complete with pool. Now she lives in a small flat that has air conditioning in only one room, occasionally wears a sari, and is learning Hindi, slowly but surely. She easily works over 60 hours each week. Many of the necessities she used to take for granted in the United States are limited in India.
“I get water one hour a day,” she says. “It comes at 5:30, and it fills my tank, and I only have that much water to use. And I’m very lucky, because there are a lot of people that don’t have tanks that live right around me.”
Despite their short existence thus far, iSanctuary has already seen progress in their work. They are adding a new aftercare home to their schedule this year, looking for opportunities for girls to get academic tutoring near their center, and working with a women’s federation in hopes that giving impoverished women a path to economic freedom will prevent families from selling their children.
The Community Continues
Pollaro returns to the United States twice a year to visit family and work on fundraising activities for iSanctuary. Their largest event so far, held last fall in Laguna Beach, was staffed by over 70 volunteers, drew nearly 500 attendees, and raised approximately $20,000. She also speaks at Golden West College, which has become more than just an alma mater, but a Pollaro family affair.
“I have a great network just because I went [to GWC]. My sister went there. My brother went there. My mom works there,” says Pollaro. “It’s a community of people that I know that support me and now support iSanctuary.”
Stateside, iSanctuary is seeing growth as well. Not only are sales steady and growing (over 7,000 pieces of jewelry were sold last year), but Pollaro and Hicks are working with local organizations to serve former human trafficking victims in the United States, most of whom were brought into the country from abroad. In the next few years, iSanctuary also plans on expanding into another developing country where human trafficking is a large problem, such as Cambodia.
Over a decade removed and thousands of miles away, Pollaro still keeps in touch with some of her professors from her time at GWC, including now-president Wes Bryan, and credits the college for giving her the opportunity to receive an affordable education, graduate with no debt, and have the freedom to make the choices she has made in life.
“[Going to GWC] really set me up very well because it gave me the freedom to search and figure out what I wanted to do,” Pollaro states. “It was like a stepping stone to a journey, but certainly it was one of the first ones so it set me off on the right path.”
And with the opportunity GWC gave her, she is now giving opportunity to girls who have the odds stacked against them.