I am just thrilled to tell you about this! We are making our membership opportunities even better and would love to hear from you what you would like to see happen at JANERA (& when you let us know, you’ll get an awesome gift…read on!)

Please take a minute to complete our membership survey. Just by taking the 5 minutes to fill this out, you will get free admission to our second annual Dance For Freedom party (scheduled for mid-June).

Last year’s party was held at the Chelsea Art Museum with journalist Benjamin Skinner, musician Peter Buffett, DJ Fabian Alsultany, awesome drummers, and an open bar sponsored by Diageo and Brooklyn Brewery. 300 of us danced late into the night. This year’s dance party, which will again shine a spotlight on modern-day slavery, will be even better, with celebrity speakers, gift bags, and a silent auction.

We are very excited to be building a platform where we not only discuss the world’s most important issues but also where we create space for interesting people to meet in fabulous locations. As a JANERA member you’ll be part of this close-knit global community of gamechangers and influencers—people who, like you, operate at the forefront of their game, be it social or professional.

With your feedback we will amp up the membership a few notches and make it truly sparkle.

Tell us: which perks would you like to see included? What kind of events are important to you? Would you be interested in taking concrete action to help solve the issues on which we shed light (like human trafficking, education for girls, climate change)? How important is meeting new people? How important is accessing the speakers?

Please fill out our survey and express yourself!

2009 has been intense for us here at JANERA. We talked to established world leaders, provocative thinkers, and bold innovators, all of whom are tackling the biggest issues of our time. See below an overview of our 2009 events, and read what’s next on our agenda for 2010.

Global Religion in February with leading Buddhist thinker Sharon Salzburg and five other leading religious figures;

Modern-day Slavery in March with Peter Buffett and Dayton Literary Peace Prize winning author Benjamin Skinner;

Global Capitalism in March with Professor Jeffrey Sachs and the New York Bureau Chief of The Economist Matthew Bishop;

Green Transportation in May with Robin Chase one of Time Magazine‘s most influential people in 2009 and Vijay Vaitheeswaran award-winning correspondent for The Economist;

Iranian Elections in June with journalist and author Hooman Madj and Nisid Hajari, Newsweek’s Foreign Editor;

Empowering Women & Girls in September with Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Sheryl WuDunn and Camfed’s Executive Director, Ann Cotton.

Climate Change Debate in November with NRDC’s Ralph Cavanagh, Duke University’s Eric Roston, AEI’s Steven Hawyard, Reason Magazine’s Ronald Bailey, moderated by CNBC’s Dennis Kneale;

Giving Holiday Party in December with Philanthrocapitalism‘s Matthew Bishop talking to FEEDProject‘s Lauren Bush, DonorsChoose‘s Charles Best, and Chartity: Water‘s Scott Harrison;

Screening for Camfed of Where the Water Meets the Sky on World Aids Day, December 1st.

We undertook a complete redesign of our Web site and switched from being “the voice of global nomads” to “curating global conversations.” We now integrate video into the site more and think this better reflects our mission of making international affairs accessible and attractive.

And we launched a brand-new membership program with exciting benefits! We not only serve individuals with discounts to our events at our Nomad level, but we can also help causes spread the word at the GameChanger level, or even co-host events with authors, advocates and concerned citizens at the Leaders level. And this is just the beginning. Click on our Membership page and find out which level fits you best, and sign up today!

2010 promises to be amazing. We are taking the conversation to the next level by partnering with fabulous companies and individuals, and are expanding beyond New York. If you’re interested in bringing our events to your city, email us to set it up.

THANK YOU for being with us along this roller-coaster ride and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The drinks were nicely chilled. Guests mingled, speaking in clusters. Music thrummed through the Chelsea Art Museum. But this was an altogether different night in New York. A young Cambodian girl peered from a huge photograph, perched on a table, the detritus of the street floating by behind her. A woman could be seen in a second photograph, light hitting her face as if piercing a deep well. Testimonials about human trafficking splashed across a wall from a projector. The evening was a speaking, thinking, sipping and—ultimately—dancing benefit in support of the Somaly Mam Foundation.

Ben Skinner, author of the book A Crime So Monstrous, held a nearly empty drink and stood to the side with singer Peter Buffet and writer Hannah Wallace. “Defining what slavery is first, that’s the biggest challenge,” Skinner said. “Language and terminology are incredibly important to get right, not only in the way the laws are written but in our daily conversations and the way we frame this issue.”

Buffet, who runs the organization and Web site www.istheresomethingicando.com to highlight human trafficking and social justice issues, nodded. “Sex slavery is not a women’s rights issue, it’s a human rights issue,” he said. “It’s important for men to stand shoulder to shoulder on this.”

Although the evening was to benefit Somaly Mam’s efforts to address sex slavery, Skinner was quick to point out that “fifteen out of sixteen slaves in the world are not held in commercial sex slavery.” He cited figures from a recently updated International Labor Organization (ILO) report.

Janera Soerel, one of the hosts of the evening, took the microphone and called the evening to order. “Twenty seven to twenty nine million people are enslaved today,” she said. Clearly the numbers and definitions can become an overwhelming aspect of the struggle to understand, and fight, modern human trafficking. Photographer Jennifer MacFarlane spoke next to explain her photos from the brothels of Cambodia and to remind the guests that all money raised over the evening would go to build additional shelters and help to rescue more girls. Peter Buffet spoke next, reiterating his commitment to the cause and his efforts to marry his creative energies with raising awareness about humanitarian issues.

But it was Benjamin Skinner, currently serving as a fellow at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights, who spoke the longest and offered, perhaps, the most vivid details of what it is to be in the back streets, alleys and quarries of human trafficking.

“There are more slaves in the world today than at any point in human history,” he said. But its in the details that the sweeping statements gain traction. In India, Skinner met a man whose family, due to a debt of 62 cents, was forced to work in a quarry pounding stones into sand. “There’s only one way you can turn a profit off handmade sand,” Skinner said. “And that’s with slaves.

In the U.S. alone, Skinner added, between fourteen and seventeen thousand people are trafficked into slavery each year. “Put it this way,” he continued. “In the next half hour, one more person will be trafficked into slavery on U.S. soil.”

“It’s everywhere and nowhere,” he continued. “From right here, where we’re standing in Chelsea, we are five hours from being able to buy a healthy boy or girl.” Skinner used that fact as an entry point to discuss his travels and experience in Haiti, where there are an estimated 300,000 child slaves. In his effort to get behind the closed doors and shadowed spaces of human trafficking, Skinner posed as a buyer in Port au Prince, where he was offered to purchase a ten-year-old girl for both domestic work and sex slavery. “The price started at one hundred dollars,” Skinner said. “But after two minutes of bargaining it quickly fell to fifty.”

Skinner highlighted that the purchase of human life to free that little boy or girl will only give rise to further human misery. “If we all did that, next year there would be 600,000 child slaves in Haiti, not 300,000,” he said. Finding the best way to halt this vicious trade invites contemplation of what Skinner described as “enormously daunting issues.” Still, in the research he conducted for his book, Skinner in one case made the decision to “cross that line,” as he stated. He helped to free a little girl bound for a lifetime of slavery.

“I don’t feel bad about it,” he said, his voice full of the kind of rare conviction heard in people who have grappled with our most challenging moral issues and made a decision that, while never easy (what about the remaining 299,999 Haitian child slaves?) is one made with pride. “Former slaves can be tremendous agents of freedom,” Skinner said. In December of that year, after he had left Haiti with assurance the little girl would enroll in school and have at least one hot meal per day, he received an email from Haiti. He was in India at the time, at a “grindingly slow internet café.” The message took fifteen minutes to download. But it contained some of the first words the little girl had ever written, a message to Benjamin thanking him.

“It was the only Christmas present I received that year,” Skinner said. “It was the only one I needed.”

Skinner finished with a point on what we can do, right now, about all of this. “Write to Kerry, Lugar and the other members of the U.S. Foreign Relations Committee and urge a swift confirmation of Lou de Baca, just nominated by Obama as Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the State Department,” Skinner said. De Baca has been a powerful voice against human trafficking and deserves, Skinner concluded, our strongest support.

With the last of the remarks made, the evening evolved into a rambunctious dance party as John Amira led the Afro-Caribbean drumming accompanied by singers Regina Iyaleio and Jose Genua together with a host of additional drummers and bell-players. Soon Globesonic DJ Fabian Alsultany seamlessly took over.

The museum rang with beats and, as guests continued to mingle and dance, the evening’s dark focus acquired a lighter turn. Entrepreneur Guilherme Cunha stood against a far wall, taking it all in.

“We have a responsibility,” he said. “If you’re able to help, you have to.”