But amidst this celebration, it is troubling to hear one of the major stories coming out of the World Cup is the issue of all the sex slaves trafficked into the country for the event. While human trafficking is common for any major event like the World Cup or the Olympics, the problem is seemingly worse in a country like South Africa. The U.S. State Department considers South Africa to be a source of sexual slavery and forced labor, as well as a destination for human trafficking from other countries and a transit nation for the modern slave trade. South African human rights groups estimate that 38,000 children are trapped in the country’s sex trade. While there have been disputed reports regarding how many people have been trafficked in for the games, the fact remains that it is occurring.

For a games meant to symbolically celebrate a country’s efforts to see all of its citizens as full human beings worthy of respect, the widespread presence of human trafficking simply undermines that message. But while the country might be responsible for not trying harder to prevent trafficking in their borders, the real problem comes from the tourists and fans that create the demand for sex slaves. When the world gathers to celebrate sport and national pride together and the result is thousands of women and children abused and oppressed, good sportsmanship is nonexistent. There’s been much talk about what the governments did or did not do to prevent the trafficking, but why aren’t we talking about how to get fans to stop raping children as part of their celebration?

The Salvation Army has launched “The Truth isn’t Sexy” campaign to raise public awareness about human trafficking in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

As Trisha Baptie, a former sex-trade worker said, “It’s human slavery. There are women in brothels in Vancouver right now, and more will come before the Games.”

The Salvation Army defines human trafficking as “…illegal movement of people for the purpose of exploitation in the form of commercial sex, domestic service, manual labour, and sales of organs.” The Salvation Army’s focus is on sexual human trafficking internationally and nationally. In the 1800’s, when it was called the “white slave trade”, the Salvation Army opened 117 homes to rescue young girls. This past January 2010, the Salvation Army in Vancouver opened Deborah’s Gate, which is a safe house that holds 10 women. Although it is primarily for sexually trafficked women, women trafficked in domestic servitude are also accepted if there is room.

At the recent Burnaby Teachers’ Association panel discussion on human trafficking and the sex trade, it was revealed that there are a larger number of trafficked persons in forced labour than in the sex trade. This includes farm workers across Canada, underage and unpaid workers in restaurants, and children held as household help 24/7.

Currently, there is nothing in the Canadian laws to guarantee protection of trafficked persons. People in this situation are terrified to speak because they do not trust authorities here nor in their own countries. They do not want to be sent home because they are ostracized by their communities and picked up again by international traffickers who abuse them even more violently because they ran away.

Women in other countries are lied to about what they are getting involved in when they are lured to Canada. The same techniques used for all types of abuse-isolation, beatings and psychological terror-are used against these women to keep them hostage. Their passports are held, many cannot speak the language, and they do not know who to trust to ask for help.

They are trapped.

As Salvation Army’s Winn Blackman said, “Desperate people do desperate things.” There are direct connections between homelessness, poverty, abuse, addiction and prostitution. There is a vicious cycle for trafficked persons who are trafficked, raped, and beaten by a pimp; who self-medicate with drugs to endure the physical, mental and emotional pain; and who then have to prostitute themselves to cover the cost of the drugs.

Currently nothing is stopping traffickers and pimps from working this trade in human flesh. This is a billion dollar business for organized crime.

90% of people in prostitution, who Salvation Army workers have spoken with, would choose a way out if they had one. What is urgently needed is exit strategies: safety, shelter, food, justice, equal treatment, support, education, and skills training in order for these exploited women to leave prostitution.

Winn said, “People always want statistics. We say if one person is harmed, it is too many. We just want this to be stopped and not part of our beautiful, beautiful city of Vancouver. We all need to join forces to make sure this is ended. If there is no demand, there is no trafficking.”

Ben Perrin indicated that human traffickers have already been here in Vancouver for at least one year and that they view the 2010 Vancouver Olympics as the biggest opportunity for them in decades.

Globally, Sweden is the only country that has reduced trafficking and the exploitation of women for sexual purposes by decriminalizing the selling of sex and criminalizing the purchasing of sex by pimps, traffickers, and johns, shifting the blame to the person who has choice.

The Salvation Army campaign is to increase public awareness because people are not aware enough of what human trafficking is and that it is happening right here in Canada and right here in Vancouver right now. They are doing a media blitz during the Olympics with CTV ads, postcards to be handed out, Slavery isn’t Sexy ads in transit shelters as well as big screen and billboard ads. There is a number to call for people who need help: 604.872.7774.

Brian Venables, of the Salvation Army, said, “Truly there is a problem in Vancouver. Those victims of human trafficking who are prostituted are not prostitutes, They are slaves used for sex who are not compensated, not cared for, and not making their own choices because their liberties have been taken away.”

Have we learned anything from the Pickton trial here in Vancouver? As was said at the BTA discussion, our common ground is women are being killed.

Please speak out to stop this horror.

“The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look on and do nothing.” Albert Einstein

“A resolution passed by the US Senate in 2007 marked January 11 as a day of awareness for the countless victims of human trafficking across the globe. And it does occur everywhere across the globe. Certain countries have created huge demand. And like most marketplaces, where there is demand, supply follows.

We could talk about which nations are source, transit and destination countries. We could state how some countries have become so infamous for trafficking that they are now known as both supply and destination countries. We could mention how the age of the children who are trafficked gets younger and younger: youngest on average now age 3. We could talk about who gets trafficked and for what reasons: women and children for sex; men, women and children for labor and so on.

But the main issue is how human trafficking has been escalating over recent years and is now the second largest criminal industry in the world. In some areas of the world, it is highly organized crime and others places, new crime rings are being structured now. The number of actual people (approx. 27,000,000 worldwide) is not known since many of these people do not report the crimes. Also, a lot of money is at stake. The money involved (estimated between 10 billion and possibly, up to 42 billion) is not really known. With illegal trade, it is hard to know exactly how much money changes hands.

With the economic downturn, more people around the world find themselves in desperate economic situations and are more at risk of falling into human trafficking. To see firsthand the impact these crimes have on an individual is overwhelming. I remember the faces of the people I have met after such traumatic experiences. It is hard to hold in your mind but even harder to imagine the actions behind closed doors that they experienced. Awareness can create change that can become action. That is what today could be.”

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 or www.globalexchange.org to find fair trade chocolate as well. Cadbury has also recently gone Fair Trade. Oh and many thanks to Julie Clawson and her new book “Everyday Justice” for inspiring and informing this children’s sermon.

Good Morning! So, we are well into the month of October already. Are you having a good Fall? Do you like this month? What are some of the best things about October (leaves changing color, cool air, the first fire in the fireplace). And isn’t there a really fun holiday at the end of October? Halloween! That’s right. Are you already thinking about what you want to be? Great. Well I thought today I’d help you get ready for that holiday by talking to you about one of the most important parts. Can you guess what that might be? Candy, right. (reveal the chocolate)

Now I have two bowls of chocolate here. Can you tell me the difference between them? (one is full of snickers and one is full of other stuff, color of the wrappers, one more familiar). Well let me tell you the most important difference. This bowl here is full of Fair Trade chocolate and this bowl here is not. Do you know what Fair Trade means? It means that the people who worked to grow the cocoa beans to make the chocolate were paid fairly so they have enough money to live on. So if it’s not Fair Trade, do you know what that means? It means that whoever grew the cocoa beans for this bowl of chocolate wasn’t paid fairly at all. In fact I learned something very sad this week. I learned that most of the cocoa beans grown in the world are grown by people who receive little to no money at all, and that many of them are children; children who have been taken out of school and in some cases even taken from their families and they are forced to work all day for no money at all in really horrible conditions. We have a word for that kind of treatment. It’s called slavery. It’s supposed to be illegal, but it still happens all over the world.

But there is something very powerful we can do to help those kids and get the big chocolate companies to start treating them fairly. We can refuse to buy any chocolate that is not Fair Trade and tell every one we know to do the same. I got this chocolate from Ten Thousand Villages over in Northampton, but you can also get Fair Trade chocolate at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, you can order it on line, or you can buy Cadbury chocolates, because they just recently made the commitment to go Fair Trade. It may be a little harder to find, it may mean skipping our favorite brands for the more familiar candy we are used to, and it may mean spending more money, but I think it is worth it to help those kids and their families.

You know in our gospel reading today, a young man comes up to Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. After they go back and forth a bit, Jesus tells him to give away all of his money to the poor and the young man walks away sad because he was a very rich man, and that meant giving away a lot of money. I think this story scares a lot of people because they don’t want to give away all of their money, but how we use our money really matters and if we can give even some of it away in ways that help others we’re at least on the right track.

I think buying Fair Trade chocolate (or sugar or coffee or bananas) is a great way of giving our money to the poor and helping them. And it’s definitely more expensive. This bowl of Fair Trade cost me $8 and this bowl only cost me $____. Spending three dollars for a little bag of chocolate coins when you could get a whole big bag of mini snickers bars, might seems like giving your money away, and it is, but it’s giving to people Jesus cares about and who we ought to care about too because they are our neighbors and also children of God. So I hope you’ll only give out Fair Trade Chocolate this Halloween at your house and that you’ll encourage all of your friends to do the same. Sound like a good plan? Great. Let’s have a prayer together.

Dear Lord, please help us to help others by using our money lovingly and wisely. And please bring an end to the selfishness and greed that is hurting children around the world. Amen.

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 recipients of poverty and child labor problems in the cocoa industry, affecting mainstream candy enjoyed at Halloween and around the year, and how Fair Trade certified chocolate provides a solution.

Parents of last year’s youngest participants raved about how Reverse Trick-or-Treating transformed Halloween into a meaningful event when youthful activists can give back to their neighbors and to cocoa growing communities.

The chocolate and cards are FREE! Thanks to generous donations by these Fair Trade chocolate companies:
· Equal Exchange
· Alter Eco
· Sweet Earth
· La Siembra

Participating lead nonprofit organizations:
· Africa Action
· Amherst Fair Trade Partnership
· Ballston Spa Fair Trade Coalition
· Fair Trade Federation
· Global Exchange
· Green America
· International Labor Rights Forum
· Jeannette Rankin Peace Center
· Oasis/Stop The Traffik
· San Diego Friends of Fair Trade
· Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
· United Methodist Church (UMCOR/GBCS)

Participating organizations include: Africa Faith and Justice Network, Americans for Informed Democracy, Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Chicago Area Interfaith Council Peace and Justice Center, Durham Fair Trade Coalition, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Fair Trade LA, Fair Trade Portsmouth Coalition, Fair Trade Resource Network, Human Rights Action Service, InterReligious Task Force on Central America, NY State Labor-Religion Coalition, Organic Consumer Association, Washington Fair Trade Coalition

Reverse Trick-or-Treating is an initiative of Global Exchange’s Sweet Smarts network, with leadership from Equal Exchange and all of the organizations and companies listed above.

Reverse Trick-or-Treating is an initiative of Global Exchange’s Sweet Smarts network, with leadership from Equal Exchange and all of the organizations and companies listed above.

For more information visit globalexchange.org.

But I’m facing an ethical dilemma. What do I give? I refuse to support human trafficking and child slavery by buying chocolate from one of the big name distributors. And as the buzz around the new documentary The Price of Sugar raises awareness of slave conditions inflicted on Haitians in the production of our sugar, I don’t want to just go with pure sugar stuff either (and of course trying to avoid high fructose corn syrup as well). It would be easier to be a hypocrite, but that’s not sitting well with me. So that means I need to find fairly traded organic Halloween candy to give out this year.

Halloween is a $2 Billion dollar a year industry for candy and the average household spends around $17 each year on the candy supply to give out. To break it down – each piece of mini brand name candy costs you between 8-13 cents and the “fun size” pieces are between 20-30 cents each. Depending on the size of your neighborhood, that adds up. When I first started searching for fair trade Halloween candy a few years ago, the cheapest stuff I found in my search was $.50 a piece. I realized that attempting to have an ethical and green Halloween could really cost me. So at the time I turned to the internet.

Thanks to the groundwork done by the wonderful Candy Blog I found what I was looking for. While there doesn’t appear to be loads of options out there, there are some pretty good choices available. Apparently Global Exchange carries an entire Fair Trade Halloween Kit full of candy, decor, and info postcards. Pretty spiffy. I’m also a fan of their fair trade gold coins which will go well with the pirate theme Emma is insisting upon this year. Also available are Endangered Species Bug Bites. These mini-chocolate bars come in milk and dark chocolate varieties and are high on the yummy scale. I let Emma try one and asked if if she thought other kids would like them. She said, “no, just Emma, I eat them all.” We’re working on the sharing thing. Plus each piece comes with a bug trading card which I think are rather fun. If you are looking to avoid chocolate altogether, Yummy Earth carries organic lollipops and hard candy in a variety of interesting flavors (watermelon, pomegranate…). And of course, the Natural Candy Store carries all sorts of fairly traded, organic, and allergen free options.

But in addition to these online options, I am beginning to see some in store possibilities available this year. My local Whole Foods is offering individually wrapped organic gummy bear packages as well as large bags of the yummy Earth lollipops. Ten Thousand Villages carries bite size chocolate bars. It’s a start at least, and hopefully each year other stores will join in green Halloween offerings.

(this is a revision of a post that first appear at onehandclapping)

That said, I am a bit disturbed as to why this case has captured the media’s (and my) attention and outrage. It is of course horrific, but it is hardly unique. Thousands of girls around the world face similar terrors every day. Children are kidnapped off the streets in Africa, drugged on trains in India, or sold by uncles in Cambodia and end up as captive sex slaves in brothels around the world – including in the USA. At the Not for Sale site you can read the story of Srey Neang – a young girl sold to a Karaoke bar owner who repeatedly raped her and forced her to service up to ten men a day. Once when the police raided the club, this 15 year old’s “rescuers” charged her with prostitution and but her in jail until her owner bought her back. At the Polaris Project site one can hear the story of Katya, a 20-year-old Ukrainian girl who thought she had landed a waitressing job in America. But instead she found herself in captivity in Detroit forced to work in a strip club and locked into a tiny apartment with other women. Fear of getting caught as an illegal immigrant and imprisoned as a prostitute bought their silence.

Theirs is a story common to thousands of women and children, but those stories don’t make the 24/7 news channels. Maybe it’s because they aren’t cute little white girls from middle class families. Maybe because Jaycee seems so “girl next door” and these other women seem worlds away. I have a feeling the guys visiting the massage parlours or the bachelor parties at the strip clubs don’t see the girls there (often trafficked slaves) as sentimentally as the nation does Jaycee. But shouldn’t we be just as outraged at the captivity and rape of each of these girls as we are about Jaycee Dugard? I think we are right to be outraged and disgusted by what was done to her, but I don’t want that anger to simmer down just because she is now safe. There are girls all over the world, many of them in our local U.S. neighborhoods that are still living that day to day terror. They need rescue too.

So I hope this news coverage of Jaycee Dugard is not just the next sensational story to capture our attention after the death of Michael Jackson. I hope it is a wake-up call for Americans that there are girls being treated as chattel in our very midst. They may not all be cute white girls kidnapped from bus stops, but they are all someone’s daughter and children of God. Their rape, captivity, and exploitation should be pissing us off and causing us to do whatever we can to restore their lives too.

In 2007, a case of crucifixes purchased by St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York was traced back to a factory in China where girls as young as 15 were forced to work up to 19-hour days, seven days a week. Today, Christian items from bible covers to t-shirts are being made in factorys which abuse and traffic workers. And some Christians are standing up and refusing to stand for slavery.

The Just Holy Hardware Campaign has launched this week as part of a movement to end slavery, especially slavery of children, in the production of religious items. The initiative, based in Australia, aims to provide religious organizations with paraphernalia made under fair labor conditions, with a “no-slavery” guarantee. Sr. Pauline Coll, a representative on the national executive of Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans (ACRATH), has been particularly outspoken on the issue, saying the massive U.S.-based Association for Christian Retail,

“was found to lack basic codes of conduct and a factory-monitoring program. There was little to reassure American Christians that the religious products they buy to celebrate their faith were not made under inhumane conditions.”

In Australia, a team of NGOs have drafted a Christian Good Standard, which they hope organizations will adhere to when purchasing Christian items. Organizations in Australia are currently adopting it.

The U.S. is a huge market for Christian goods, and if the Association for Christian Retail (a very large organization) agreed to adopt a set of standards similar to the one adopted in Australia, it would make a huge impact on the lives of the slaves who are right now suffering in silence while making religious artifacts. Please, ask the Association for Christian Retail to adopt a set of anti-slavery standards for the production of Christian goods.

Christian or not, slavery is wrong. And slave-made items are tainted by this injustice, whether they are shoes or crucifixes. We need all people, regardless of faith to come together and take action so that we can end slavery in the production of religious artifacts.

In just a few short days President Obama will be arriving in Ghana to mark his first presidential trip to Sub-Saharan Africa. It is widely known that Mr. Obama has insisted on visiting the slave castles that line the Cape Coast to witness remnants of the horrors from when thousands of African slaves were being sold to Europe and the Americas.
…
My hope is that when Mr. Obama stares out over the castle walls to the Guinea Sea to reflect on how far humanity has come that he will remember that human slavery has not been completely abolished. My hope is that he will look at the empty dungeons that once held men and women in chains and see the 246 million children that are still enslaved today. Mr. Obama does not have to look but a few kilometers away to Lake Volta to witness this slavery first hand. The children working on this lake may not be wearing chains or kept in dungeons, but they may as well be. These children, some as young as 4 years old, wake at 3 a.m. to begin their day. They are fed only one meal and forced to work outside. None go to school.

The dungeons of St. George castle may be empty, but Lake Volta is still crawling with slaves today. Mr. Obama, do you see them?

Thank you Emily for asking the question and for raising awareness about the horrors these children face.