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.