Stopping Child Trafficking in the US

Please join me in signing up to walk for an end to child trafficking in the US by going to www.stopchildtraffickingnow.org and signing up to walk in their first ever fund raiser. Stopchildtraffickingnow is a unique organization with a workable approach to making a real dent in trafficking in children in the US by going after the buyers and traffickers.

An interesting idea

I went to a meeting this evening at Kings Park Church in Durham. It was an information meeting about a new organization called Stop Child Trafficking Now. It is an interesting concept to create a private nonprofit organization to fund putting together cases against the men/women on the demand side of child trafficking by using retired special ops guys from the Navy Seals, Marines and Army Special Forces to build cases concentrating in the US but also internationally.

Most of the organizations out there are battling child trafficking by rescuing the children and then providing care and training. As good and necessary as this is it rarely deals with the customers who create the demand. The statistics on child trafficking relate that many of these children are required to "service" between 25 to 50 men a night. That is 25 to 50 men who will go on to molest and rape (let's call is what it really is) on average over 200 children in their lifetime. Remember that the average age of girls being trafficked for the first time is 13.

If you'd like more information about the Stop Child Trafficking Now campaign they have created a very well done web site www.sctnow.org.

Thoughts on Consumerism and Trafficking

I've never been big on spending a lot of money for something if I could get it (or something approximating it) somewhere else either used or new for less money. I've had to be this way to raise ten children and pay for all of their clothes, schooling (we homeschool), food, etc. Now we just have five at home and things have loosened up a bit - but just a bit and I am still really good at sniffing out bargains on all kinds of things, but my way of thinking about spending money is changing. I've been thinking a lot more over the last few years about how my purchases effect others - including whether I am supporting trafficking and forced labor with the choices I make as a consumer. I've come to believe that if we are really serious about wanting to end slavery we need to be willing to "vote" with our dollars. If we were to live more simply - buying good quality items and paying fairly for everything we buy and insisting that the goods we buy are slavery free we could end slavery in some sectors. I've actually done a fair amount of research although I'm still not satisfied with all the answers I have gotten. Below is a list of goods and what I've found out through research.

Coffee - buy organic, fair trade seal or a product that says it is fairly traded. My personal favorite is Larry's Beans www.larrysbeans.com. We owned a coffee shop for a time and I'm very particular about my coffee - no over roasted bitterness for me.

Sugar - buy fair trade. Whole Foods has a fair trade sugar that is great for every day use.

Tea - Tea can be found with a fair trade seal and also from companies that say they have a relationship with the farmers or a co-op.

Chocolate - more and more options are available. There are companies that use fair trade certification and companies that say they are use fairly traded beans. Buying South American single origin chocolate usually means that the company is buying from the farmers directly. For more on Chocolate check out my former post on chocolate. There is a list of companies and links at the end of that blog entry.

Citrus products - buying organic or from small groves usually means that labor is checked more closely. Citrus growers are becoming more aware of the problem of forced labor and some are moving to do something about contractors who run labor gangs.

Tomatoes - Same as citrus. Buy locally from small farmers when possible.

Buying locally produced produce of all kinds supports smaller farmers who are more likely to know who picks the fruit and vegetables that they produce - many times it's the farmer and their families. I could go on about other virtues of locally produced food but here's a resource that you can looks at to tell you more. www.localharvest.org

Clothing
This is a hard one. Some of the cotton produced by India, Pakistan and Indonesia is produced using slave labor. Clothing from companies that are very careful about the source of their cotton is very expensive - way to expensive for my budget. Another consideration is whether a company that produces the clothing has good labor practices and insists that the workers making their goods are paid a fair wage. I've started checking out corporate statements on web sites and also looking at companies I'm interested in - sometimes you can tell they have put thought and care into crafting a labor policy. Emailing your favorite companies and asking the source of their cotton and whether their clothing is produced in factories using good labor practices is another way to get info and also to make a point. I'm hoping that sometime soon we will have a guide of products that are produced slavery, forced and child labor free to check out on the web before we buy. As I've tooled around the web over the last few years doing research I've found people talking about it. It would be wonderful to actually see one up and going.
I have found a wonderful alternative for children's clothing - buying most of it from thrift and consignment shops. You can easily find clothing that is barely worn, sometimes at a tenth of the price of the full retail. I regularly find very nice clothing for my teens and grandchildren this way. I've also shopped for adult clothing in consignment and thrift stores.

Carpet - make sure any wool or cotton imported carpets you buy have a label on them that certify they were not produced using child and child slave labor.

Diamonds - Ask about the source of your diamonds, conflict or blood free diamonds are available.

Making a Difference

I've been thinking lately about how many times we discount our ability to make a difference in the world. Somehow we think it takes some kind of special person (which we have disqualified ourselves as being) to make a difference.

There are many "ordinary" people making an impact on trafficking. There are the people who have decided to spend a bit more and buy products they know are fairly traded even if it means cutting their budgets in other places, there are others who have given money to support ministries and organizations that rescue and aid victims of trafficking, there are staff members in the US Department of Justice and law enforcement agencies who have worked for years now preparing reports and doing the background work essential to understanding the issue of trafficking in the US and finding the victims, there are those who recognise that something is not right and make a decision to report something that might be trafficking. And somewhere there are people with a passion to pray diligently that God will bring justice to those who are caught in injustice.

I was looking around on the Internet for some stories of ordinary people making a difference and came across the following report on the US Department of Justice web site titled TIP Report (2008) Heroes. The TIP is the trafficking in persons report that the Justice Department puts out annually. Enjoy.

http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2008/105382.htm

  

Free Book Opportunity - Just a Few More Days!

The book Not For Sale by David Batstone is available to download for free right now (the month of February) from the web site http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/ . The download also comes with a free Bible study guide. I've read the book and recommend it as a good resourse for anyone 17 and over who is interested in the issue of trafficking.

The REAL cost of your Valentines Day Chocolate

For the last few years around Valentines Day there has been a concerted effort by organizations and some in the media to educate consumers about chocolate and how it is a crop that is notoriously harvested by child labor as well as child slave labor. 

Over 40 % of all chocolate produced in  the world is grown in one country - the Ivory Coast and 70% is grown in West Africa. The cocoa bean is actually enclosed in a large pod with a sweet pulp. The pod grows on trees and is harvested by whacking the trees with machetes. The pod is then opened with a machete and the beans are separated from the pod and dried before bagging. Child labor is used to harvest and open the pods, spread the beans out to dry and bagging the beans. Children involved in the harvesting of the pods are often injured by the machetes that they use.  Most cocoa is produced on small plantations who then sell their beans to a middle man that collects the beans and carries them to large companies. They then ship the beans to their chocolate factories in the US and Europe. These large companies know that the beans are produced by forced and slave labor, but claim that they are not responsible. Under public outcry they have in the past come up with plans to try to decrease child labor violations, but have not done the one thing that would allow farmers to prosper which is to pay more for the crop. 

When you buy chocolate from a company that is not involved in buying fairly traded cocoa there is a good chance that a portion of it was produced by child slave labor. Below are some companies that produce fairly traded chocolate - Most can be found at Whole Foods or other Health Food stores. Trader Joe's also carries their own fairly traded chocolate bars.

Equal Exchange - http://www.equalexchange.coop/

Sweet Earth - http://www.sweetearthchocolates.com/

Devine - http://www.divinechocolateusa.com/

Green and Black's Maya Gold Chocolate bars are made from fairly traded cocoa beans. Every time you buy a fairly traded chocolate bar you are voting with your dollars for just and good labor practices.

For more information on the problem of slave labor and trafficking among cocoa producers please check out the following web sites;

http://vision.ucsd.edu/~kbranson/stopchocolateslavery/main.html

http://www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/chocolates1.htm

http://www.laborrights.org/files/ChocolateScorecard09.pdf

Sex Trafficking - Part 2

The group from Grace Church that went to India this last week have returned and hopefully will be posting some of their thought over the next few weeks for now here are some excerpts from  Arielle's emails home.

" We just got back from touring the brothel district in Mumbai. Let me just say, everything you have heard from Debbie Walker from Freedom Firm or Linda Smith from Shared Hope International... it's all true. Stall after stall line the filthy roads and everywhere there are girls... young girls... lining the streets, waiting for customers. It is insane to think that this is allowed and even condoned by many in this day and age, but it is deplorable when you see it for yourself. Praise God for groups like the Freedom Firm who are risking everything to give some of these girls a better future."

"Please be praying for the Freedom Firm team tonight. The undercover operatives are going out tonight to conduct a raid. They received word a few days ago that there are 4 or more new minor girls located in a brothel in Pune, India (the city we are in). They are on their way to meet the police and hopefully get these girls out tonight. Physical

protection and the cooperation of the local authorities are a must for this to work. There are 3 under cover operatives, a director, and 2 female social workers on the team. Please pray it will be successful!"

Sadly, the raid was not successful, the brothel operators hurried the girl that was there out the back and will have trafficked her to another city. I wish someone would make a movie about the men and women who risk a lot to enter brothels and try to remove these girls right of the hell that is their life as a sex slave. Of course the ending might not be as neat as a scriptwriter would like. Rescue is great but the girls face the painful reality that their lives are irreparably changed and most can not go back to their families, villages or even have an expectation of marriage.