I Know CoMo » Blog Archive » Mimi Chakarova and Making a Difference

Posted on 01 March, 2010 | No Comments

By Samantha Liss
A woman on a crusade made Memorial Union her pulpit by teaching students and community members the hidden truths about sex trafficking around the globe.

Even though she spoke with an accent from a distant place, it was impossible to miss the conviction in her voice, as she spoke during the 2010 Stop Traffic Now Conference at the University of Missouri this past weekend.

Exposing sex trafficking across the world has become more of a duty and responsibility for photojournalist Mimi Chakarova than a job.

“One reason why this is a very personal project and I’ve stuck with it for this duration is because I owed it to my generation of women to do the story, and to do it in an honest and compassionate way,” said Chakarova.

Chakarova grew up in a Bulgarian village before moving to the United States as a teenager. After the fall of communism, Chakarova says people began looking abroad for ways to make a decent living. Yet, few young women knew that these aspirations would make them the perfect prey for pimps and organized crime.

“None of us when we are little girls dream of being prostitutes one day,” said Chakarova.

Often times these women are offered jobs abroad by people they know. But when they arrive in the new country their passports are taken. When they see an exchange of money, they realize they’ve been deceived. After being forced into this dangerous under world, they most likely will never escape.

“This is a story that’s not only dangerous to do because you’re dealing with mafia, you’re dealing with criminal networks. As a female in order for me to get into some of these places, to get in this world, I cannot go in posing that I’m a client because the clientele is not female it’s male. So, as a female I’ve had to go undercover on many occasions where I had to become a part of that scene and experience and hear things and see things with my eyes that are incredibly disturbing,” said Chakarova.

It’s obvious that Chakarova is haunted by what she has seen. But this has become her mission for the past seven years. The situations she has put herself in to tell this story are unimaginable. But Chakarova does it for all the right reasons, to expose an injustice hoping that one day it will change.

For more information about Chakarova’s work visit her site here.
To read more from Samantha Liss, visit her blog here