Australia & New Zealand: by Mark Wexler

One thing is for sure… my frequent flier miles have really started to pile up.

In conversing with my fellow Not For Salers it’s apparent that we are all quite often asked two questions: (1) How do you ‘handle’ such a grueling issue like modern-day slavery on a day-to-day basis? and (2) How do you hold up in light of all of those oh-so-fun red-eye flights/that busy schedule?

As I see it the answer is one and the same.

Let me explain, we at Not For Sale strive to be a solutions-based organization. Continually working to locate, cultivate, promote, support and connect best practices in the fight to end human trafficking. Undoubtedly we see the grave need to help create an international abolitionist network – even if crewing gum and duct tape are required. And the truth is that through this process we are constantly meeting folks just like you who inspire us. Your amazing work pushes us to do the same; we all have a role to play to ensure that no one is for sale in our world.

This is what I have come across in my whirlwind travel through Australia and New Zealand.

I am continually (and pleasantly) surprised with the amazing roll that young adults and youths are playing in our abolitionist movement. No greater example of this are the amazing people at Vision Generation, a youth-focused program run by World Vision Australia, where young adults such as Shae Spry and Elliot Costello (and VGen’s entire merry band of abolitionists) are mobilizing hundreds of schools to raise up the issue of modern-day slavery. The same can be said about the Oaktree Foundation an inspiring –entirely youth-run organization– based in Melbourne that is focusing on human trafficking in their advocacy work in schools and universities.

The list continues from down under and I could write until my fingers are black and blue, but I’m tired because I just got off a red-eye and have a meeting in the morning… just more people and actions to be inspired by.

So, from the road I say keep up the truly inspiring work everyone! You are all making a difference in the fight for freedom.

Free to.... in Lima, Peru: by Kilian Moote

The Not For Sale campaign was founded on five specific platforms, Free to: learn, play, be, create, and work. These were created to initiate action within a wide range of constituents. For the most part the five platforms can incorporate any individual with a desire to take action.

Over the past few weeks we, three University of San Francisco students, have been visiting and working with the children of Generacion in Peru. Throughout our stay here, these five platforms have taken on a deeper and more important meaning. Not only are they unique and innovative ways for constituents like ourselves to get involved, they are an essential part of the children at Generacion’s lives. During the day the kids are where all children their age should be, in the classroom learning. Lucy, the founder of Generacion, has one main rule: to live at Generacion the kids must go to school. When the final bell rings, sounding the end of the school day the kids of Generacion waist no time in engaging themselves in one of the other platforms. The older ones quickly head home, change into their wet suits, and grab their surfboards (both of which were donated by various constituent families). Rarely does a day go by that Generacion kids will not be seen playing on the beach or surfing the waves along the San Bartolo boardwalk. A few have become good enough to stand out among Peru’s Southern Coast natives and have the makings of legends on the San Bartolo waves.

While the older kids are thrashing about in the ocean, the Generacion house is far from dormant. Instead the remainder of the children are sure to be creating music using either a guitar, piano, or flute (with the helping hand of “el professor,” a man who travels two hours round trip to work with the kids). Those who have yet to return are liable to have stopped by the local soccer pitch to play a quick game or headed straight to the skate park.

After dinner, when all has settled down a couple who are not exhausted from a day of learning, creating, and playing might decide to do some work to help support themselves and Generacion. This work consists of string together unique Peruvian river pearls into a beautiful necklace to be sold online, available in the Freedom store. This is simple work that keeps them doing what they love and safe from exploitation. Spending one day with these energetic, sharp, and outgoing kids is enough to realize how essential not for sale’s five platforms truly are. Not only do they encourage each individual to enact change in their own way, they also allow the kids vulnerable to trafficking to have a more complete and fulfilling childhood. Through being able to create, learn, play, work, and be these children are breaking their own cycle of poverty by living a fulfilling childhood and learning life skills that will keep them off the streets and safe from trafficking.

The Family Connection

My last night in Peru, I was having a family reunion before I returned to the US. We were all talking when Gregorio, a guy who currently lives in the streets, rang the bell.

We have seen Gregorio in both good and bad times. He is a very good hip hop dancer, so he has performed for us countless times. He used to live in a house with other guys that were around his age. This group worked in the morning and went to school in the afternoon. The other people living in the area did not like having a group of teenagers that had previously lived in the streets as neighbors, so they gathered signatures to close the house. Gregorio did not have any other place to go, so he ended up back in the streets.

I do not recall seeing Gregorio in such bad shape as I saw him that night. After taking a shower and getting clean clothes, he joined us for dinner. As the good friend that he is, he was involved in the conversation and we shared some laughs. In the quiet moments, we all could hear his quiet crying and could tell that he was trying to hide his tears.

Gregorio was desperate for affection. He had just had a nasty fight to protect himself and his friend from people who wanted to enslave them. Traffickers target people that are easy to convince that slavery is their only fate. So Gregorio had to visit us to remember that there is a family that will always receive him with tenderness.

Slideshow: Not For Sale's Westmont in Cambodia trip

Ellie’s Courage

Unjust circumstances put Ellie into juvenile hall. She promised that once she was free, she would defend other young women who could fall victim to unscrupulous people.

Once back in the streets, Ellie met a group of young women that rented a room in an uninviting hotel – a place with an owner known for hosting young people with no jobs, so if they are not able to pay the rent, the owner will coerce them into sexual exploitation.

Ellie rescued two women who were being exploited, but they wandered around for several days without finding a safe place where they could stay. Ellie and the two women ended up in the same place they had started. When they returned, Ellie got beaten up so badly that her face looked like one big bruise. Through Ellie the traffickers were warning all abolitionists.

Ellie told our Peru team leader, Lucy Borja, that it is urgent to have a shelter to host women rescued from sexual exploitation. So Ellie is one of the people that is helping Not For Sale to find a house that will host women rescued from sexual exploitation.

The Culture of Work vs. The Culture of Exploitation

I am currently in Peru with Dave Batstone visiting our team Generacion. One of the topics during our conversation is the importance of building a vocational center. The entrepreneur spirit exists in the children and teenagers that we are meeting, but being a victim of slavery and violence has taught them that making money is only possible through exploitation.

The importance of the vocational center goes beyond only teaching carpentry, landscaping, cooking, and so on. The key is about introducing the children and teenagers into the culture of work. Team work, respect, transformation of the world with and for others, wealth and dignity, identity, responsibility, creativity, discipline, organization, reflection, analysis, individual and collective development, are the values that organize a culture of work.

Independent of what career they choose once they finish the course, we want to make sure that they have the skills to identify and produce a healthy working environment for all.

Toyota Prius: Solution for the Privileged, Slavery for the Vulnerable

Between 70,000 and 93,000 workers go each year into Japan as guests and temporary workers. These workers are mainly from Vietnam, China, the Philippines, and Brazil. The National Labor Committee reports that these temporary workers are cheated, afraid, and forced to work for Toyota Prius:

1. They are stripped from their passports.
2. The first year they are not even covered by a Japanese labor law, and they end up working at least 16 hours a day, 7 days a week (112 hours a week).
3. They end up getting paid 1/3 of the legal minimum wage, and they have to live in assigned housing where they are charged extraordinary amounts of rent.
4. If they try to move, change factories, or complain, they are deported.

The concern for the environment has to go hand in hand with concern for people’s freedom and rights.

Not For Sale: East Africa

I had the pleasure of meeting David Mwambari several years ago while attending a symposium on mediation and conflict resolution in Cape Town, South Africa. It was evident from the beginning that David had an infectious personality and an unbending heart for those who have had their voice silenced due to conflict, violent or otherwise.

It is with great joy that we welcome David to the Not For Sale team; taking on the role of regional director for East Africa.

Below is David’s account of an incident that occurred just two weeks ago involving a Rwandan trafficked into Kenya. Within the editorial (submitted for publication at Rwanda’s The New Times daily newspaper) David describes why there is such a grave need to raise awareness as a preventative measure in East Africa, particularly in David’s native Rwanda. He proposes the culturally and historically proven model of producing radio vignettes about the perils of trafficking in the region.

-Mark Wexler
Managing Director, Not for Sale Campaign

By: David Mwambari — East Africa Director, Not for Sale Campaign
No One is For Sale

In 1833 the British Parliament passed the historic Slavery Abolition Act, which guaranteed freedom to all the slaves in the British Empire. Across the ocean in 1865, as civil war came to an end in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed. Even as slavery continued, the enacted laws allowed the arm of law to prosecute those who were still slave owners. Many believe that slavery is a thing of the past, a relic induced by the noted laws, but this is simply and unfortunately untrue writes Professor David Batstone of University San Francisco. In his book, Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade and How We Can Fight It, Batstone, president of the Not for Sale Campaign, informs us that there are still 27 million people enslaved in our world today – more than at any point in history. He declares that in the United States alone there are about a hundred thousands slaves and notes that President George W. Bush, in a 2003 speech, stated that each year 800,000 to 900,000 hundred human beings are bought, sold in this growing global market.

As globalization facilitates unfettered international trade –and unmolested movement across borders– those with evil intent have also rediscovered this global business: the human slave trade. For industrialized countries, poor Asians, Mexicans and all other nationalities, are brought to work under hard labour in restaurants, on farms, construction sites, and thrust into the commercial sex industry. They are enslaved through unmanageable (and illegal) debt, coercion, beatings, rape, and threats. All of this is meant to heighten the fear and stave off any thoughts of escape or calls for help. The people come from all categories, women, men, and half are children.

To bring the point closer to home, in the Southern Sudan, the slave trade is alive and well. Here it assumes a different kind mould; it is less sophisticated given the environment of post conflict areas and extreme poverty. Young men are bought from their families either given to rebel groups, or to Arabs from the North. They are forced into hard labour, tortured, exposed to hard labour that can even lead to death especially when involved in war a young age. Cases of child soldiers in Northern Uganda highlight these operations even further. In Chad, the world watched in disbelief as the so called aid workers’ plans to export up to 100 children were halted. The case was so serious that it required the French President Nicolas Sarkozy to travel to Chad immediately and save these ‘good Samaritans’ from shame. In this Noah’s Ark saga, no one considered the fate of these innocent toddlers separated from their families with promises a heavenly life in their new homes in France.

Even closer to home Rwandans are being traded as a commodity in the East African marketplace and beyond. Kaneza Joseline (not her real name) recounts how her ordeal started. She was serving lunch in a busy Kigali restaurant where she was employed, when some regular customers, a Kenyan man and woman, approached her about taking a better job in Kenya. In her broken Swahili she indulged in a conversation that would redirect her path over the next few weeks. They promised her $100 USD per month to work fewer hours as a chef in an undisclosed restaurant that they purportedly ran in Kenya.

After encouragement from her friends, Kaneza arrived in Nairobi to be welcomed by an unknown woman who had been given all of her information. She was immediately taken to a residential home, given work to wash their dogs, prepare children to go to school, cook for them, wash their cloths and other chores. All of which was the complete opposite of the job description originally reported to her by the couple in the Kigali restaurant.

The owners started inquiring about her family and hurling insults towards her ethnic identity. Kaneza called her friends in Kigali regularly, hoping that as soon as she had been paid the $100 USD she would find her way home soon. After several weeks Kaneza was informed that she would be sent up country to an undisclosed location where her “work would begin”. In her efforts to resist, she was beaten, tied up with rope, and repeatedly spat upon. What had began, as a promising new career opportunity had become enslavement. Kaneza feared for her life.

Due to the injuries inflicted upon her Kaneza was taken to a nearby health clinic. While there she pushed on towards her freedom and recounted the story to a nurse. She refused to leave with her captures and her owners fled the clinic when they realized they might be caught.

Without at doubt Kaneza was lucky. From the clinic she was able to call home to Rwanda and her friends were able arrange for a friend to locate her. The person was able to deliver her to the Rwandan Embassy in Nairobi, where she was assisted in her return to Rwanda. With her eyes swollen and new scars added to the existing ones from the machetes of the genocide, as she is the only member of her family to have escaped the horrors of 1994, she returned safely home.

Rwandans are fighting to exit the weight of dire poverty. This makes the people of Rwanda most vulnerable for this dark trade. Often Rwandan ladies are associated with remarkable natural beauty, which is an added value within this unfortunate human industry. Aroused by Hollywood movies and stories from friends in foreign lands fosters a naivety and lust within the youth of Rwanda to live abroad, which contributes to the needed psychological preparedness for the traders. Additionally, the environment of corruption in East Africa allows the brokers of human life to all to often go untouched.

There is urgency to warn Rwandans about this scourge. Rwandans have a tradition of listening to short radio dramas for both advertisement and entertainment. Furthermore, it is imperative that others are informed about this trade, especially youth forums to scrutinize these prospects from foreigners when approached and to report whichever they find suspicious. A clear message needs to be sent out to parents, school teachers, business investors, and tourists: that Rwandans are NOT FOR SALE and for that matter NO ONE SHOULD BE FOR SALE.

*Not For Sale needs $20,000 to produce and place radio vignettes to warn Rwandans about the dangers of human trafficking. Help by donating to Not For Sale. Help by donating to Not For Sale

Forced Labor forgotten in anti Trafficking Law

My trip to Paraguay has ended, and after my conversation with local experts, they express their legal challenges in order to fight human trafficking:

1. Slavery and human trafficking is also forced labor. The law in Paraguay does not recognize that smuggling people into other countries for forced labor is human trafficking. The law focuses only on fighting forced sexual exploitation.
2. Lack of prevention and aftercare services. The law focuses on persecuting and sanctioning the crime, but not on protecting the victims, which makes it very difficult to guarantee social services and the protection of the victims of trafficking and slavery.

Do you want to hear your fortune?

“Come and hear your fortune!” is what you read in a sign, without knowing that the fortune tellers may be trying to recruit you for forced sexual exploitation.

Lourdes Barbosa, a former governmental officer in Paraguay, explains that fortune tellers may tell their clients that they will have a travel opportunity accompanied with good economical gain. After the session, while walking in the street, a person will approach the victim and offer travel and job opportunities to Europe or the USA. The naïve victims usually feel that this is a sign and that they need to go for it. They do not know that, in the destination countries, they will land in the hands of traffickers.

Aftercare of Freedom

Yesterday I presented at a conference in Asuncion, Paraguay in front
of a group of people that all together represented more than 80
non-profits and governmental organizations.

A newspaper, ABC, writes an article about my talk: restoring people’s
life is about them being able to re-imagine their own identity –
specially if that identity has been for years of a slave – and to
actively participate, with and for others, in the social, political,
and economical decisions that affect their lives.

Read the entire article (in Spanish)

Easier to Trade People than CDs

During my visit to the Brazil-Paraguay-Argentina tri-border area, I
met Fr. Nilo who helped me understand the trafficking of Paraguayan
women into Brazil for sexual exploitation.

Paraguay’s border city, Ciudad del Este, is quickly improving
economically. Due to their trade agreements with Asian countries, the
items are much cheaper to purchase in Paraguay compared to Brazil,
and in less than a thirty-minute-walk a person from Brazil could buy
the latest computer in Paraguay. Brazil, to protect their economy, has
designed a strict control so every item that passes into their country
pays taxes.

Most of the trafficking happens through this border. Their focus to
prevent smuggling of products into Brazil makes them oversee the
smuggling of people. Anyone can bring into Brazil several young women,
and the border police probably will not questioned them about the
passengers. Fr. Nilo showed me that it is easier to trade people than
CDs.

A Victory for Children by Children in Paraguay

In Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, a group of homeless children were recruited to work at a shopping mall to help the customers carry their bags and to also clean the bathrooms, the floors, and parking lots of the mall. They were promised compensation from the shopping mall but what they got were only the tips from some of the costumers. The children were afraid of saying something to the owners because they knew that they could lose even the tips from the customers. However, a small group of courageous kids protested for their salary.

The owners immediately fired the protesters, cleared them out of the area, and did not pay them for their work. They made sure to tell everyone that letting the children receive a tip and stay in the mall during the day is more than enough because the streets are dangerous.

I met with CONNATS, a social movement of children run by children, that was created to protect working children’s rights and to prevent the exploitation and slavery of children. CONNATS decided that it was necessary to take this case to court because there is a corporate culture in Paraguay (and in the rest of the world) that makes children consent to unpaid work due to their necessity to subsist.

In order to compete, businesses may find ways to justify the use of coercion. Giving a street child something to eat, is an act of charity. But we cannot ask a child to work for eight hours as exchange for food when s/he has no other option. The recruitment of children by the abuse of a position of vulnerability for the purpose of gaining from their free labor is also slavery.

The children won the case, but the company has appealed the judge’s decision.

Beyond the Glamour of Rescue

We love the story of a heroic abolitionist who rescues children from bondage. That’s the easiest part of an anti-slavery movement to “package,” frankly. But what comes after the rescue?

Kru Nam, our Thai abolitionist partner, represents the challenge in sharp relief. She has rescued over 125 children from one form or another of captivity. We helped her build a village for shelter. When I was with her this last week, however, she had the look of exhaustion and worry written all over her face. “We have no money for food,” she admitted sadly. “We did all we could to help these kids out of crisis situations, but now we have to create a future for them.”

Once or twice a week she takes the kids to the local temple because the monks will give out free food to the destitute. Our Not For Sale filmmaker, Robert Marcarelli, listens to her tell me the story. He puts down his camera and takes the Thai equivalent of $50 out of his pocket and hands it to her, his eyes misty with compassion. Kru Nam, with embarrassment, tells him his gift is not necessary. He insists, and she puts the money into her pocket. Three minutes later one of her assistants runs up and tells her that a delivery of rice bags just arrived, and payment is being demanded. She pulls the newly received donation out of her pocket, and the assistant is puzzled: where did the money come from…we didn’t have the funds this morning!? She points to Rob, who is now enraptured that he could help.

I committed Not For Sale to cover the village’s next two months of basic expenses, food and medicine above all. We are sending a public health and medical team in July to map out a health scheme. A French foundation may start picking up the tab in late July.

Our anti-slavery work has to be holistic – prevention and education for the vulnerable, intervention for the captive, and restoration and hope for the freed. A generation of justice agents…we have our work cut out for us.

The Ripple Effect of Music

Street children are easy targets for trafficking. At night, while left abandoned on the streets, many kids are abused and/or abducted. Years before the Not For Sale began, a grassroots organization called Generacíon (Spanish for “generation”) already had started working on the front lines in Lima, Peru aiming to prevent these tragedies.

Generacíon selected a small group of kids to teach how to play music. Within a couple of months, these children became very skilled with the Kena, Andean panflute, Charango, and drums. They started playing for compensation in city plazas and on buses. Most days they earned sufficient money for food and to rent a room.

Generacíon hoped that giving the children music lessons and instruments would provide them a tool for subsistence. But teaching a handful of children to make music caused a ripple effect that the organization never imagined. The small group of children that first learned to play music started teaching their friends. Their friends taught other groups, and so on. Today one can go to the streets of Lima and find many children playing music in the streets, on transport, and in restaurants to survive. Hundreds of children in the streets of Lima find in music a shield against destitution.

Giving children a tool for subsistence was what Generacíon could do in that moment. Today, Not For Sale is enabling the organization to dream bigger. In partnership they have created a project to expand the earning potential of musicians and promote social development.

In Stage One, the project will facilitate the formation of musical bands and offer agent promotion for the groups to perform in schools and community groups in the Andes region of Latin America. The musical performances will be tied to teaching other children the dangers of human trafficking and their rights as members of a civil society.

In Stage Two, the most talented musicians will be given the opportunity to tour the rest of Latin America and the United States, both as a form of entertainment as well as an educational event to raise the challenges of the global people trade and steps that will mitigate its threat. Stage Three of the project aims to give musicians access to recording studios so that
they can record their own albums.

For a budget of US$35,000 Not For Sale will be able to deploy Stage One of the project, which will directly benefit 100 child musicians and educate 50,000 school children.

Cambodia Trip visit to Hagar

These girls are beautiful. Vietnamese. Cambodian. Raven hair, olive eyes. From eight years old to mid-teens. Spunky, graceful, delicate. Each one glowing from the inside out. These girls are full of life, energy, excitement, joy.

These girls are survivors of brutal sex crimes. Some were rescued from trafficking, where adults sold their tiny bodies daily to the highest bidder. Some were auctioned by their parents to locals who believe sex with a virgin can shield them from HIV. Others lived in homes where mom, desperate for extra income, allowed ravenous men to visit them and their sisters regularly.

I can’t express the rage, the heartbreak, I feel at the thought of what men could do to these beautiful girls. It wrenches me, beyond what I’ve ever experienced, to comprehend the human capacity for evil.

And in the midst of this, hope.

The shelter at Hagar, which these girls now call home, reaches out to the poorest and most destitute women and girls in Cambodia. Our visit there this week was nothing shy of riveting. This children’s shelter is only one facet of their remarkable programs and business initiatives. The girls receive holistic counseling and intensive schooling, positioning them towards a promising future. For as dark as their pasts are, these girls will end up leagues ahead of their Cambodian peers with the care they now receive. Today, they are the blessed ones.

The Kids of Myanmar

The 12-year old Burmese girl was glued to the television set. Being from a rural village in Myanmar, she was spellbound by the Thai equivalent of an MTV rave broadcast. I’ve seen that absorbed fascination from a child, a TV-induced trance. In this instance, the young girl finds it a comforting escape until someone taps her on the shoulder and directs her to take an adult client into the backroom.

This scene from a child brothel in Myanmar will be etched in my memory for some time. Three of us from Not For Sale passed into Myanmar today to observe the trafficking of young children for forced labor. We visited two brothels and frankly did not see one “worker” over the age of 18 years old. A boy who looked about eight years old was dangled in the doorway of yet another brothel in a dilapidated karaoke bar strip. Most of the kids come from impoverished hill tribe villages – some sold, others abducted.

This area of Myanmar is awash in opium – intel has it that the Myanmar generals deal directly in opium sales to fund their illegitimate government. In a cynical effort at face saving, the government has posted signs in the district for the people to stay “drug free.” I suppose they look at opium as a cash export crop not to be consumed by the general population. Unfortunately, locals do imbibe, and many of the trafficked children we encounter had served as chattel to barter for money for opium.

We pass through the border in Mae Sai and do not encounter any resistance. The cyclone-affected area of Myanmar is far to the south. Stories are awash of refugees on the move, though very few would seek to enter into Thailand from this border. They head to a more desolate stretch of mountainous border on Myanmar’s eastern flank. But the destitution we witness in this northern region confirms that the Burmese live on the edge of existence without the cyclone’s destruction. In terms of supply and demand, the Burmese peasants offer traffickers a glut of potential targets. And the demand for free labor in global markets, be it illicit or licit commerce, at this point faces few restrictions. We need to alter the supply-demand equation, even if in small increments. For each increment translates into tens of thousands of lives.

Safe House for Burmese Trafficking Survivors

It’s hard to use the word “fortunate” in the same sentence as Myanmar at the moment. I don’t know if you saw the picture on the front page of The New York Times this week of a seemingly endless line of Burmese sitting along the side of the road praying, hoping for any morsel of food. Though I admit to being desensitized to most media reports on suffering a world away, this image kicked me in the gut.

Nonetheless, despite my reluctance, I’d have to say we were indeed fortunate to have started the construction of a safe house for Burmese trafficking survivors nearly six weeks before the cyclone hit. Our Thai partner, Kru Nam, had asked us to help her build a facility autonomous from the Buddies Along the Roadside village for children. We did not have all the funds in hand, but like most of our Not For Sale ventures, we embarked on faith that the funds will come.

So it was a thrill to visit the safe house today and watch it near completion. Our constituency has shown extraordinary generosity not only to construct the building (a big tip of the hat to Bob Squeri and his One Child at a Time foundation) but also to raise the funds to keep it functioning. By mid-June Kru Nam hopes to begin taking in the most high-risk children and women. The safe house lies adjacent to the Golden Triangle region, near the Myanmar border town of Mae Sai. Not many families from the cyclone-afflicted region are passing through this border at the moment, above all because it is a highly guarded border crossing. Kru Nam is in touch with some of the remote hill tribes which lie along the remote, western border of Thailand. There the mountainous passes connecting to Myanmar are safer. Kru Nam has word out to her network to watch out for abandoned or obviously exploited kids.

What we know for sure is that there is now a huge vulnerable population in Myanmar. Save the Children recorded a case in Rangoon just a week or so ago that orphaned kids are being targeted by suspected traffickers. As time goes on, the people in that region without food, work, school, hope for a future will for sure be potential human trafficking victims. It is likely that many of those trafficked in the cyclone region also will pass through a southern route to Phuket or Bangkok or perhaps through Mae Sot or Kanchanaburi. Recently in the news you would have seen Burmese illegal workers that died in the back of a truck coming through this southern route.

Maybe it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the depth of the tragedy. But I’m here on the ground on the Myanmar-Thai border, and I can tell you that your prayers and gifts are an oasis of hope.

Adventure in Cambodia

The crew of the Westmont Cambodia Immersion Trip has safely arrived in Phnom Penh, the largest city in north-central Cambodia. The past four days in the southern city of Siem Reap were nothing short of remarkable.

Our trip has begun with such a solid base of cultural experience and integration. We are being exposed to all of the beauties and tragedies of modern Cambodian life. It has been less than a decade that the country has been free from the fear and devastation of continual war. In the 70’s, a civil war debilitated the entire country — what is called the Khmer Rouge genocide. Cambodians of the Khmer Rouge brutally killed the entire educated Cambodian class, and anyone critical of their political aims. Yesterday we visited a children’s hospital, free to all, that prides itself on being a teaching and training center. After the devastation of the genocide, 40 doctors were left in the whole country. I can’t even begin to imagine the state the of an entire country in that situation.

Lauren Salaun, in our group, describes this history so well!

“Pol Pot’s regime wiped out 2 million Cambodian people—the educated were targeted, while children were used as spies, soldiers, and sex slaves. Because so many of the older generation were killed, more than 50% of the current Cambodian people are under 18 years old. The Khmer Rouge really did an excelled job crippling the nation—murdering professors, teachers, doctors, and anyone else with any education. It would be hard enough to recover from years of war, but a regime that only left children, the poor, and the uneducated? The horrors of the Khmer Rouge aren’t even really taught in school and it’s still not ok to talk openly about the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, because, as our guides have told us, you don’t even know if your neighbor was former Khmer Rouge.”

Today, it’s difficult for many of the people – especially in rural areas – to live beyond today. We are so focused on the future, for ourselves and our children, in the US. When the adults are only thinking of whether they’ll make it to tomorrow, the situation in debilitating.

I have been astounded by the rich culture, traditions and history here. One of the highlights our first day was visiting one of the Seven Wonders of the World — Angkor Wat (built in the 12th c). In a single day we visited four elaborate temples. The local claim-to-fame is Angelina Jolie’s stint at the temples to film “Tomb Raider.”

Here are just a few of our adventure highlights….!

Playing with wild monkeys on the roadside, eating large spindly BBQ’d crickets in the country, riding in tuk-tuks, fruit parties on the bus, seeing a floating village (all houses literally floating!) with locals that would paddle up to our boat carrying sodas for sale and humongous snakes, herds of crocodiles kept under a floating restaurant, wild marketplaces, a woman with tarantulas on her shirt (just for attention’s sake!), traditional Khmer dance performances, and the best moment of all…being caught a tropical thunderstorm and getting lost in the middle of the most beautiful, exotic temple ruins I’ve ever seen.

It’s nearing midnight here. I’m sitting in the hotel lobby in Phnom Penh, watching beautiful Asian women escort men from the elevator out to the ominous red glow of the brothel across the street. The sign outside offers room stays as cheap as $5. As we move further into our time here, the reality of the sex industry is going to become more and more of . . . a reality. Being so near to it simultaneously fills me with rage, and breaks my heart.

Rescuing Burmese Children

There I am in a van with two children fast asleep on the seat, the kids sandwiched between myself and the Thai abolitionist Kru Nam. We are driving back from the border town of Mae Sai where a narrow river and a simple bridge are all that segregates Thailand from Myanmar. One boy, one girl, both Burmese, have just escaped hell. I feel privileged to be a part of the experience.

The girl, Pim, is eight years old. Her Burmese mother forces her to go to the border bridge every day to beg for money.
The mom is addicted to opium which grows widely in the Golden Triangle region. The mother tells Pim not to come home unless she comes back with 300 baht (roughly $10). With local events in Myanmar already depressing the low tourist season, finding willing donors is tough business. Kru Nam hears through the street grapevine that the mother is looking to sell Pim.
When she tracks the mom down, Kru Nam makes an offer. “I’ll give you 500 baht if you let Pim come live with me at our children’s village.” The mother agrees, and Pim now sleeps peacefully, cradled into Kru Nam’s arm in our van.

The boy next to me, Kho, is 11. Two years ago he was trafficked into Thailand for child labor. He escaped and found refuge at Buddies Along the Roadside, Kru Nam’s village. You can watch a video of the history of the village. His Burmese family made contact and demanded that Kho come back home, and Kru Nam happily complied with their request to reunite Kho with his family. Two months have passed, and we ran into Kho in the streets of Mae Sai today. He begged Kru Nam to return to Buddies. His family is forcing him to sell drugs – primarily ice and amphetamines – on each side of the border. When kids are caught selling drugs, the police treat them lightly. Adults, on the other hand, will be sentenced to long prison terms. So many adults use kids as their drug peddlers. Kho has spent two years in school and living with a community of hope. He is now on his way back home.

Two children tell the story of children for sale more powerfully than any set of statistics I could offer.
Once again, my heart is broken.

Hill Tribe Villages of Northern Thailand

I guess it was about halfway up the mountain atop my elephant that I realized that I was no longer in Kansas. I am traveling with a group of my University of San Francisco students this week, and our goal today was to reach a tribal Acha village high in the Thai mountains. The roads are impassable, and in the extreme heat I feared we might lose half of the students (and more likely the professor!) to heat stroke. So we rode elephants. Remarkable how these enormous beasts are so adept at keeping their balance and placing their feet in the right place.

The hill tribe people are the most trafficked native population in Thailand. They live on the edge of sustenance, with agriculture and animal grazing a marginal source of family income. Our partner here in the hill tribe area is called The Mirror Foundation, founded nearly two decades ago by a group of Thai university students. We will be collaborating with them to bring education to primary schools, using theater and music to share the signs of trafficking behavior. We also will start marketing in our Freedom Stores some of the products that they make in the villages.

When our elephant caravan reached the top of the mountain, we met a village of about 200 people. The school barely has enough resources to survive, and one teacher tries to tend to 51 children of all ages. It takes only $3600 to pay the salary of a teacher for an entire year and give him/her the supplies needed for classroom teaching. Can you imagine the impact on so many children’s lives, only for $3600 year?!

Our guide from the Mirror Foundation laments that teenagers see no future in the hill tribe villages. They go to the city looking for work, and there traffickers seek the advantage. Undermining trafficking means bringing justice, economic justice as well as legal justice. Where there is no justice, the poor will be exploited. Every day, everywhere.

All Hands On Deck

In a recent article Nicholas Kristof the New York Times raises a point of conversation that we’ve seen in action throughout the Not for Sale network; backyard abolitionists, including students of all backgrounds, collaborating to combat modern-day slavery. This is a perfect example of the the under-pinning ideal of the Not for Sale Campaign: open-source activism.

College students used to be the activists, but increasingly they’re joined by high school pupils and even younger children. The spotlight may be on billionaire philanthropists like Bill Gates, but one of the country’s healthier trends has been the rise of piggy-bank philanthropists.

-Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

Over the past year high school students from Pasadena to Atlanta have taken up the cause of freedom by wearing and displaying their orange (the color of freedom), holding freedom dances, Free to Play games, and joining Not for Sale on Facebook.

If you’re interested in learning more about what your high school can do download our High School Toolkit and Curriculum Guide

If your school has held a freedom program let us know by posting a comment below.

The New Yorker reports on modern-day aboltionist

“Stella Rotaru’s cell-phone number is scribbled on the wall of a women’s jail in Dubai. That’s what a former inmate told her, and Rotaru does get a lot of calls from Dubai, including some from jail.

But she gets calls from many odd places—as well as faxes, e-mails, and text messages—pretty much non-stop. “I never switch off my phone,” she said. “I cannot afford to, morally.” She looked at her battered cell phone, which has pale-gold paint peeling off it, and gave a small laugh…”

Read the story of Stella, a modern-day abolitionist, in the latest edition of “The New Yorker.”

Update from Not For Sale Georgia

The Peach State is turning Orange!

NFS State Directors Mark & Keisha Hoerrner give us their remarkable update on the anti-trafficking movement in Gerogia…

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“It’s been a very busy time here at the NFS Georgia campaign. We started our mapping project with students from Kennesaw State and are working to bring in other student groups from UGA, GSU, GC&SU, Emory, Ga. Tech and other local schools.

In addition, we have been putting together a day-long summit on human trafficking.

We’ve been meeting and networking with state and federal law enforcement, state and federal government agencies, and with partners from the Georgia Rescue & Restore coalition.

We have been assisting the national campaign with finalizing many of the documents we are making available to the public at no charge. We’re working to put together a logical framework for a statewide annual report on human trafficking and slavery. We’re authoring a handbook for starting community coalitions. We’re examining international trafficking data in order to produce groundbreaking research on human trafficking statistics and the environmental effects of trafficking on a community.

This is not to brag about how tired we are but how committed we are to ensuring that the scourge of human trafficking is eliminated in our lifetime. We can’t do it alone. We need you. We’re seeing some great things happen – such as the recent arrests in China at the same time our local law enforcement is busting up forced labor rings here in Georgia. But the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article also brought to light that as soon as six different illegal employment agencies were brought down, two new agencies had opened their doors to do the same business. This only underlines the need for constant vigilance and the need for organizations like NFS to exist.”

Coming soon: SlaveryMap.org!

Our staff at Not For Sale has entreated on a new, never-before attempted venture: to virtually map all incidents of slavery in the US and abroad.

This past month, we have been working with a phenomenal company called Vision Launchers to create an interactive website that will allow anyone to research incidents of trafficking and populate them to a map.

Whether through news sources or compiling local data, you can begin gathering information about Modern-day slaves to post on the website. Once reports start getting posted, the map will function as an international resource to demonstrate the gravity and breadth of this world-wide epidemic.

The map is set to go live by the beginning of next week! Sign-up for the Underground to stay informed….

A New Meaning For Easter

Don Crean visited Lima, Peru during the week of Easter and learned about the plight of street children. After we spoke with Lucy and Desiree, the Not For Sale representatives in Lima, they told us about Don’s remarkable reflection. One night, Don went with his group to the streets to celebrate a boy’s birthday. Once they surprised him with a cake, a bunch of children gathered around to sing and celebrate. During the gathering Don heard some of the kids stories. Don was shocked when he realized that these children had experienced so much violence at home and later in the streets. He also learned that in the streets, these children are exploited and later put in jail where they suffer torture. When they turn 18 years old they are released and their self-esteem is nonexistent, which makes them easy targets for exploitation and trafficking. The only prevention and after care house that many of the street children had, was shut down because the neighbors did not want to see them around. When Don went to visit the house, a neighbor across the street started screaming and saying that the children were drug addicts, thieves, and prostitutes. Don was overwhelmed.

At the end of the week, Don reflected about his experience: Sharing a cake with a boy in the streets for his ninth birthday was like the last supper. While listening to the life stories of the children, Don remembered the stations of the cross. Each story was a painful fall. When he visited the children’s home and the neighbor started screaming at the group and cursing all of the children that live in the streets, the words that Don heard coming out of the woman’s mouth was “crucify them, crucify them!” Resurrection happened the next day, when he visited a safe heaven, a small house where street children enjoy a healthy environment and have the opportunity to go to school, practice their favorite sport, play music with their friends, and dream of a better life.

Our team in Peru really appreciates Don’s analogy. The constant harassment against vulnerable children that live in the streets weakens the self-esteem of these children and underestimates the good work of the people on the front lines. Don’s interpretation of the children’s story opens a new representation of their lives.

Teamwork in Northern Thailand

Bob Squeri is a one man foundation. He travels the world helping communities in need. Our Free To Play director, Jeremy Howell, introduced me to Bob, and soon we were brainstorming of ways that he could partner with Not For Sale. I asked if he could help us build a safe house for trafficked kids along the border of Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand. As you know, we have already helped a remarkable Thai woman, Kru Nam, build a village for over 120 children. We are now helping her to on more urgent care cases along the border. Bob is currently in Northern Thailand helping with the safe house construction. Here’s his report:

Kru Nam…what a remarkable women. You think you have met heroes in your day, well you must meet Kru Nam. What she has done with her budget is pretty amazing. You have to see here in action and she is with the street children whom are mainly from Burma. I would like to tell you about one of them. Her name is Chimee.

She came to Kru Nam from the streets of Burma, where she was begging for money for her mom’s drug problem, which in this area is Opium, of course. One day Chimee’s sister didn’t earn enough money from begging so the mom got mad and poured burning hot water on her arms. You should she her scars. Kru Nam heard about this, and rushed to the area of Mai Sai, near the Burma Border and met the mom. She negotiated with the mom and for 800 baht (roughly around 22 US Dollars) she was able to purchase little Chimee. She is now safe with us at the children’s village.

The problem Kru Nam has with children like Chimee is they don’t have papers, so it has to be done through the underground and you have to sneak them across the border. That can be dangerous because of the government of Burma and outlaw pirates. We went to where Chimee’s mom lives was which is a area filled with the drug gangs. When we were there a kid who was in one of the gangs and is a friend of Kru Nam’s, drove up on a motor bike and warned her that we should get out of there. So we left before we could make a deal for Chimee’s sister. Her mom has sold all 8 of her children – some of whom are in the sex trade – to support her drug habit. Just think… Chimee is only 4 years old, comes up to my knee, and she was already begging for money. In the next few years she would have been sold for sex if Kru Nam didn’t save her.

On a good note her smile would knock your socks off, and she has been at the school for only 6 months, and doing great. So put Kru Nam in your prayers because she is truly an angel who walks this earth. I’m lucky to have met her and in some small way because of your donations and prayers we have helped these kids.

Learn more about Buddies.

Red-eyed postng

I write this morning from Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) Airport in anticipation of jumping a flight back to San Francisco. After a cumulative 3.5 hours of sleep over the past two days I look forward to the 6 hours of solitude. CLT is just one of many stops this spring while making my way around the country speaking at universities, providing steps for action to combat slavery in our backyards, by using lessons learned by the students at the University of San Francisco.

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking at Malone College in Canton, Ohio where a collaborative student/staff human trafficking awareness week was culminating (see my grainy phone-picture of the wonderfully engaged Malone crew). Often I say what continually drives me, and my colleagues, through red-eyed nights (and days) is the hair-on-fire reaction that students (and others) have when presented with the proposition of initiating research that can result in tangible change: Freedom.

Ensuring Fields are free of slavery

In all that we do here at Not for Sale our attempt is to go beyond partisan name calling. Raising the level of your voice an octave or three in the name of justice has its place; our overall goal, though, is to create and foster a (business) environment that instills and upholds freedom in all (social) realms. See David’s update from China for one example of what we’re personally doing.

In addition to our actions, we also search out and connect with organizations doing the same. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) also upholds these ideals and standards while coupling their zeal for justice with grounded, well-thought action.

CIW is a Florida-based farmworker organization that has uncovered and assisted the U.S. Department of Justice in investigating and successfully prosecuting five cases of modern-day slavery in the Florida fields in the past decade. For example, one case currently under prosecution, involves tomato pickers who were beaten, chained, and locked inside a U-Haul-type truck. The CIW is also the winner of the 2007 Anti-Slavery International Award, not only for its efforts to uncover cases of slavery but also for its precedent setting agreements with McDonald’s and YUM! Brands (owner of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, etc..) to establish an enforceable code of conduct with zero tolerance for slavery in these company’s tomato supply chains.

We encourage you to join CIW’s National Petition Campaign to End Sweatshops and Slavery in Florida’s Fields by clicking here.

The petition calls on Burger King and other food industry leaders to work with the CIW to establish an enforceable code of conduct with zero tolerance for slavery and improve the sub-poverty wages and conditions faced by the farmworkers. You can also download a PDF of the petition to collect signatures in your community, church, or school by clicking here.

Last, check out Not for Sale’s Freedom Store where you can uphold the network of goods created by slavery survivors through your purchases.

We're all complicit in the slave trade

I am currently on a speaking tour of Australia. The hectic schedule, an average of four speaking engagements a day, has kept me busy. I have, however, been delighted by the response of the many people I’ve meet along the way. More postings about my journey are sure to come.

In addition to speaking I was asked to write an editorial for the Australian daily, the Courier Mail. Here is an excerpt:

In our globalised world we can no longer think of slavery as something that happens “over there”.

In fact every time you go to the supermarket you are potentially fueling this boom in human trafficking and slavery – in which the greatest victims are children.

If you eat chocolate or drive a well-known brand of car with tyres from one of the bigger-name companies, chances are these products have raw ingredients linked to human slavery, exploitation and trafficking.

Recently there has been a push for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to remove chocolate from Parliament House vending machines.

Read the entire editorial

Report from the field: Peru - Recruiting Young Women During Lunch

For Marissa, a young woman who was juggling school and her low paying job as a nanny, the nebulous offer of a high-paying job during her lunch break was seen a possible positive break.

Marissa’s story is all too familiar in Peru. She had been abandoned by her parents when she was a baby and grew up in a home run by nuns. When she was in her teens, and without any prospect of being adopted, the nuns trained her to take care of the newborns. In time she decided to use her skills by going to Lima, continuing her education, and taking control of her own fate.

At first, Marissa did not accept the job offer, but one of her classmates kept talking to her about the chance for a better job, the possibility of making more money. Soon thereafter, while out with the fore-mentioned classmate Marissa was drugged. The same ‘friend’ had given her bubblegum that had been laced with drugs.

Slave recruiters have an eye to recognize people that are naïve or vulnerable. If the victims have any social tie with a group or person that would speak up on her or his behalf they find ways to break that connection.

The drugs made Marissa feel like a zombie, hyper, aggressive, wild, and reckless. Her boss, without knowing that she was drugged, noticed the strange behavior and fired her fearing that she would harm her child. Marissa had lost the only family that could speak up for her if necessary.

Not for Sale was able to investigate this matter. We found that the person who offered Marissa a job, runs a sex trafficking ring in the city by recruiting kids from local high schools.

We are happy to report that Marissa is currently in a temporary home run by our Lima-based partner Generación where a social worker is caring for her.

China Olympics Give New Opportunity for Second Wave of Corporate Responsibility

International scrutiny of China is at an all-time high as we come closer to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Companies with operations or supply chains in China have a choice: lead by example or risk the media spotlight being turned on you. Having just returned from China, I can assure you there is increased sensitivity on the ground to international scrutiny. Further evidence: Just last month Nike released a corporate responsibility report focused exclusively on its supply chain in China, citing the increased attention from the Beijing Olympics as the main reason for its publication.

Corporate responsibility today is moving beyond traditional concerns such as environmental impact. I am seeing companies move to ensure their supply chains – including suppliers and contractors – are free from slavery, and labor conditions meet international standards. These steps are often taken not just from a moral standpoint, but a punitive one – companies don’t want to risk litigation or tumbling share prices off the back of bad publicity. A Chinese factory that produces light bulbs for General Electric was only last month accused of making employees work 64-hour weeks and exposing them to mercury. To their credit, GE is investigating, but on the same day their stock price dropped.

Indeed, a ‘second wave’ of corporate social responsibility is emerging, as managed funds start to closely examine the ethical standing of companies they are investing in. Last week I spoke at the World Bank in Washington DC about combating human trafficking. There were plenty of business leaders present, but fund managers representing $1.3 trillion of fund equity were present too. I think that illustrates how seriously they are treating these supply chain issues.

Yet the next challenge for publicly listed companies operating in countries like China could come from a surprising direction – shareholder activism.

Traditionally shareholder activism has centered on issues of corporate governance and executive compensation. But in the US we are starting to see shareholder group’s holding companies to account and saying hang on – how we make our profit matters.

Welcome to The Not for Sale Blog

The goal of this blog is simple and straight forward.

We want to keep you plugged-in, informed and equipped. In addition to being educational and informative about campaign actions our desire is to foster a space that will serve as an inspirational forum about you, backyard abolitionists, working in our communities and world.

Our staff interacts with abolitionists you every day and through those numerous conversations we continue to be inspired. Whether it be high school dances for freedom or the rising tide of awareness around the world we think you should share in the collective hope and fun!

So, sit back… relax… and join us at Not for Sale’s blog

-From The Not for Sale Campaign Staff.