Jayme Luzzi & Her Mission
I love creating positive memories for individuals through event planning. I strive to provide only the best for my clients. In 2020, when the pandemic occurred, my husband, Jeffrey A. Skiendziul Esq., decided to transition into consulting since both their careers were placed on hold due to the shutdown. As the world began to reopen, I was asked by people to begin catering meals for their events. This was something I had done sparingly prior, as an event designer, when the needs of the events I was planning required my detailed attention during food services. This was how Food, Love, and Hope Catering was born. Food is love, and feeding people has always been a way for me to express my care and concern for others. However, there has always been a greater purpose and ideal that I have wanted to achieve. I need to become, nay I am becoming the hero I never had as a child. In the upcoming year, Jeffrey and I hope to develop a non-profit organization called Arming the Impacted. The goal of AtI will be to provide victims of domestic violence with tools and resources to heal, grow, and move forward in life unfettered from the abuse they once endured.
The Vision
A world where people no longer have to live in fear. A world where the greatest commodity is valued above all else: Our children.
The Mission
To make a difference in society with respect to stopping domestic violence and sex trafficking to hinder terrorism nationally and globally.
My Journey
If you have followed my social media posts over the past few years, you know that I have been attending college to pursue various degrees. While completing my BA in Hospitality and Tourism in 2019-2020, it became glaringly apparent that my industry was neglectful in mitigating losses during emergencies and that we were largely unaware of many facets that allowed our policies, procedures, and processes to enable a myriad of criminal activities within our industry.
The hospitality industry has been involved in numerous significant life losses in the US alone. From the Titanic to 9-11, from the Atlanta Olympic bombing to the Boston City Marathon. From the MGM Grand Concert in 2017 to Astro World in 2021. There are aspects of how hospitality workers could have done their jobs differently that would have saved lives. As an event planner for almost a decade, I aim to lead my industry and challenge the notion that emergencies are solely for first responders to handle immediately and for insurance companies to deal with on the back end, because that is the attitude of the hospitality industry.
Don’t believe me? Remind yourself of how far we have come in terms of technology, and remember that the only safety measures a hotel or resort provides to help you escape an emergency are a plastic sign on the back of your room door with a safety route marked out. One poignant example of many I could make about how my industry has access to advancements in safety but fails to utilize them due to cost and lack of concern, but I digress.
It was for this reason that I decided to get a master’s degree in administrative sciences with a specialized certificate in global emergency management administration after completing my bachelor’s program. I know it sounds fancy, but it essentially provided me with the knowledge to develop safety plans for events, companies, and communities. A large portion of my learning experience within that program was studying terrorism. I was tasked with taking a course specifically on school terrorism.
This, my friends, is where the rubber, as they say, meets the road. During my education process, I learned a few things. The first is that, according to the FBI, 68% of active shooters have an affiliation with domestic violence. That means they have committed an act of domestic violence or grew up in a home with domestic violence. Being a survivor of it myself, I can tell you that if you are prone to commit an act of domestic violence, it is almost 100% certain that you grew up in an environment with domestic violence. Domestic Violence is a learned behavior that is embedded in the culture of a family. With each passing generation, the volume grows as more children are exposed to these behaviors, and then they grow into adults who exhibit them with their children and partners. This means that Domestic Violence is a large part of the root cause of the mass shootings we are witnessing in our society.
The second statistic, which includes a form of Domestic Violence, comes from the United Nations. They account that the 2nd most significant contributor to foreign terrorism is human trafficking. Sex trafficking, which makes up 79% of human trafficking, is part of the Domestic Violence wheel of abuse. 42% of sex trafficking victims are recruited by a loved one or caregiver, and an intimate partner recruits 39% of victims. This means that 71% of trafficking victims come from domestic violence situations. 5% or 40 million people are trafficked daily, globally.
Many of you are not aware that I am also a survivor of sex trafficking. It has taken me almost four decades to begin discussing it publicly. The core of my story is essential to everyone. In the US, we have a perception that domestic violence looks a certain way in a family. We have also been bathed in the misconception that sex trafficking only happens to foreigners, homeless people, and other outcasts in our society.
From the outside, my family looked perfect. Dad was a midlevel union executive for a prominent company, earning a 6-figure income. Mom stayed home, baked cookies, and was the president of the PTA. We had the dog, the yard, and the fence, but we also had a rather large secret. I am going to share with you the roots of the secret, as it is essential to discuss it for the sake of education and understanding. As a nation, we must examine how deeply these issues have become ingrained in our society.
My father developed a drug and alcohol problem early in life. When he was drunk and high or coming off a binge, he was physically, emotionally, psychologically, and verbally abusive, primarily toward my mom, but also to myself and my siblings. This decimated my mother’s ability to function as a human being mentally and emotionally. This made her unable to recognize that there was a predator in our family, my aunt’s boyfriend. He not only molested my cousins, my siblings, and me, but on two separate occasions, he took one of my cousins and me out to be sold for sex. I was 8 years old at the time. My trafficking experience looked like a sleepover at my aunt’s house and a trip to the zoo. It did not come in the form that the media has told us to view sex trafficking in.
Additionally, it is essential to know that the reason my father developed a drinking and drug problem starting at the age of 12 was because he had witnessed that sister, my aunt being raped by their uncle when he was a boy. Not that it excuses his addictions, but it explains the cycle. When I finally came forward at the age of 14 after a suicide attempt, and we informed my grandmother, who was the mother of both my father and aunt, about what happened, her reply was astounding. She said this happens in all families; you have to learn to deal with it and move on. Now if you are counting that means that the rape of minor female children was commonplace in at least 4 generations of my family if that was her perception. It means it most likely happened to her or a sibling, and when she voiced a complaint, or her siblings did, that was their parental response.
I know it’s a lot to take in. I know it’s hard to digest and discuss. However, it is the silence and the lack of vision that our society provides for these problems that allow them to exist and flourish. I need people to talk about them and acknowledge them. As a society, we need to recognize and address these issues.
Due to my past experiences and discoveries during my educational process, my path is clear. I am currently obtaining my master’s degree in hospitality and tourism management. After that, I will be pursuing doctoral degrees in both emergency management and hospitality management with the goal being to write policy both public for the government as well as for private industry that allows us as a society to diminish and hopefully eliminate domestic violence as well as the portions of it that allow for both foreign and domestic terrorism to blossom.
I need you to share this because, upon completing my education, I want society to be aware, educated, and on board so that we can all be part of the solutions to these issues. Politicians typically vote for legislation that is important to their constituents, and industries only respond to changes when their bottom line is negatively impacted. Help me start that process now. I was hoping you could help me and our society to become aware, educated, and active.
A safer world for all our children to live in is the outcome I am seeking. I thank you for taking the time to read this.
God Bless Us All.