The Cause
We believe in Love. We believe amidst all the hate and pain and chaos, you must love.
My name is Dilia Jelen. I am an artist, an activist and honored to be a Feminine Weapon. I also am a philanthropist who works with over 12,000 children in 27 Countries of The Orphaned Starfish Foundation and Founder of ARTEAMOR, an organization that brings the arts to these same children to help them heal and express themselves, also giving them skills for future employment.
The Orphaned Starfish Foundation brings technology based education to children and adolescents who would otherwise receive little to no education. We provide over 57 computer centers around the world.
Each year I visit these children and being a singer by trade, I sing them love songs. I make sure I look in each and everyone of their eyes and make a connection so that they know they are loved. I hold their faces in my hands so that they may know a loving touch. I give them all the validation I can in my moments with them.
Most of these children have suffered unimaginable abuse. All live below the poverty line. Many are orphans. Many are abandoned. Several are survivors of human trafficking. Several are adolescent mothers, pregnant from rape. Some, even live in a cemetery.
I have seen toddler aged girls arrive at an orphanage unable to speak because their entire lives they were treated like animals as they were sold to a different man everyday from birth. I have seen a sex trafficked girl who escaped shot in the face with half her jaw missing from her captors trying to murder her as she ran, her closest friend shot dead right by her side. I have told an 8 year old girl to be brave and to trust the doctors that were about to reconstruct her vagina after years of being forced to have sex with her father. I have seen children so weak from lack of food that there are no tears left to cry from lack of water in their body. I have seen teenaged sisters both pregnant by their father. These are only a few stories but I have to share that everyone of these children has hope in their eyes. No matter how hard others tried to take away their joy, they have never lost hope.
My life’s mission is to make sure I support, educate and love as many children as humanly possible in my lifetime. I hope to create an army of compassion with all of them to flip our Earth’s hurt into beauty. These children, who did not choose to be born into the families they were born into, deserve to have opportunity. To have education. To have a home. To have food. To feel pure love without anyone wanting something back from them.
I feel it is our duty as human beings to do for others, at least change one human life in a positive way. Empowering our youth is the best way to ensure innovation and safety in our world. I am a part of teaching thousands of future leaders who will in turn have the power to impact millions for the better.
One thing I know for sure after everything I have seen is that we need each other. Together we truly can move mountains. Together we can change the world one child at a time.