With a film career and lifestyle site on top of a new baby, Blake Lively has a busy life. However, when a worthy cause requires her, she’s there—which is why Lively appeared on the PBS series A Path Appears this week.
In the series (you can watch the first episode it here through Feb.
14), she joins author and journalist Nicholas Kristof for a visit to the organization My Life My Choice to meet with victims of sex trafficking. The Boston organization’s goal is to “prevent the commercial sexual exploitation of adolescents” in the United States.Returning to the city of Boston (where she has filmed movies and was first spotted on dates with now-husband Ryan Reynolds) for this purpose struck a chord for Lively. “I thought of sex trafficking as something that happened elsewhere,” she says in the clip below. “To see it happening in the United States, it seems sort of impossible. … You can’t fathom that this is sort of a prevalent issue, because where are these girls coming from?”
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Lively listens to stories from the young women, including group leader Audrey Morrisey, who managed to escape their horrible situations. “The most powerful thing is for women not just to be the beneficiaries of the change, but to be agents of it,” Lively explains. “My Life My Choice is such a powerful organization because it utilizes survivors.”
The actress also shared a picture on Instagram earlier this week of herself with Morrisey and girls from My Life My Choice.
“Send some love to our girls in Boston tonight at My Life My Choice. They are the face of empowerment,” she wrote in the photo’s caption. “I promise the stories from these girls will change your lives like they did mine.”Based on Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s book A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity, the three-part PBS series airs over the next two weeks and features celebrity activists (such as Ashley Judd and Mia Farrow) traveling around the world to look at the damaging aftereffects of gender inequality.
Find out more about A Path Appears on pbs.org.
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