Pastor Sarah Buteux wrote this children’s sermon as a means of introducing children to the need to support slave-free chocolate. I think it’s a fantastic resource for helping teach justice and love to children.
Children’s Sermon: Giving Away Your Money to the Poor
Props: Two bowls of chocolate on a table, one full of fair trade chocolate, one full of regular chocolate, both covered with a cloth. I picked up small $.25 candy bars and a bag of gold coins at Ten Thousand villages, but you can go on-line to www.serrv.org …

Tens of Thousands of Schoolchildren Nationwide Will Protest Poverty and Child Labor-Tainted Cocoa during Third Annual Reverse Trick-or-Treating this Halloween
Kids across all 50 US States and Canada will urge nearly a quarter million households to shift purchasing to Fair Trade certified chocolate, coffee, etc by handing Fair Trade chocolate to adults.
A pleasant surprise will greet nearly a quarter million people distributing candy at their door, when youth reverse the Halloween tradition to hand adults a sample of vegan-friendly, Fair Trade dark chocolate.
The chocolate will be accompanied by a card informing …

from The Nation –
Over the years, The Nation and I have closely tracked the heroic work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) as they have fought to protect agriculture workers in the fields of Florida from exploitation. CIW has exposed cases of slavery and worked with the Department of Justice to successfully prosecute them. It has carried out a Campaign for Fair Food to raise wages and improve working conditions. In short, it has led a movement that recognizes the dignity of the people who harvest the food …

So I find myself wondering what to do about Halloween this year. No, not the typical Christian “should I celebrate it or not?” dilemma (more on this on a couple of weeks), but more of a quandary as to what sort of candy to hand out. Unless you are an evil grinch (or a fundamentalist Christian) you give out candy at Halloween. It’s the one night of the year when you are guaranteed to actually meet your neighbors as people get pulled out of the safety of …

via Reuters –
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Rather than throwing that bag or hosepipe into the recycle bin, how about turning it into a belt or a shower curtain, joining a growing band of upcyclers?
Upcycling refers to reusing an object in a new way without degrading the material it is made from, as opposed to recycling which generally involves breaking down the original material and making it into something else, using more energy.
Supporters of the environmentally friendly practice of upcycling say people in developing countries have effectively been upcycling for years, …

The United Nations has designated the first Monday each October as World Habitat Day.
This year on Oct. 5 in Washington, D.C. and around the world, please join Habitat for Humanity in support of this global observance as we come together and declare that the lack of decent, affordable housing is unacceptable.
According to the United Nations, more than 100 million people in the world today are homeless. Millions more face a severe housing problem living without adequate sanitation, with irregular or no electricity supply and without adequate security.
Worldwide, more than 2 …

from BBC World News –
An oil trading firm has agreed to pay more than $46m (£28m) compensation to people in Ivory Coast who say they were made ill by dumped waste in 2006.
Trafigura, with offices in London, Amsterdam and Geneva, said 30,000 people will each receive $1,546 (£950).
The money is in addition to the nearly $200m that the company paid the Ivorian government in 2007.
Trafigura and the plaintiffs’ lawyers agreed that a link between the dumped waste and deaths had not been proved.
A joint statement by the company and …

from the BBC -
Havana is hosting the biggest open-air concert since the 1959 revolution, featuring some 15 top Latin American, Spanish and Cuban performers.
Hundreds of thousands of people – many wearing white – are attending the free event in Revolution Square, Havana.
Colombian singer Juanes, who organised the “Peace without Borders” concert, has received death threats from Miami-based critics of the Cuban regime.
But he has won support from 20 high-profile jailed dissidents inside Cuba.
The BBC’s Michael Voss at the concert says there is a mood of excitement, as many residents of …

My church recently hosted a screening of the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell. I knew little about the film before attending the event, but what I encountered was a powerful story of women making a difference in their world. As the film description reads,
Pray the Devil Back to Hell chronicles the remarkable story of the courageous Liberian women who came together to end a bloody civil war and bring peace to their shattered country. Thousands of women — ordinary mothers, grandmothers, aunts and daughters, …

A recent news release from the US government named a few of the items that are connected to child labor -

WASHINGTON – Children are used to produce everything from pornography in Ukraine to fireworks in the Philippines and diamonds in Sierra Leone, the US Department of Labor said in a report published Thursday.
The report lists 122 goods “produced with forced labor, child labor, or both, in 58 countries” from Afghanistan to North Korea to Uzbekistan.
“Agricultural crops comprise the largest category, followed by manufactured goods and mined or quarried goods,” said …