Little Changes, Big Results (Part 1)

Fight human trafficking! Hooray! ...now what?

If we can't storm the brothels and sweatshops personally - although perhaps we can! (We'll talk about that soon, have no fear) - there are still definitive ways we can fight human trafficking in our ordinary lives, amid commuting, grocery shopping, and soccer practice.

One of the best ways available to combat human trafficking is the Fair Trade system. Simply stated, Fair Trade certification means that the people who produce many of the things we buy are paid an adequate price to cover their labor and living costs. When the farmers and artisans are not paid enough, entire communities break down. Traditional ways of life become impossible, and the resultant extreme poverty makes the people vulnerable to traffickers. Parents sell or give their children away because they either can't afford to raise them and/or because they have been promised a better life. People borrow money to survive and find themselves trapped in debt bondage. By purchasing Fair Trade certified products, we can use our consumer power to stop the problem at the root.

Fair Trade items are widely available online, but it is slowly taking off in mainstream stores as more people find out about it. Ask store managers to order fairly traded coffee, chocolate, sugar, rice, olive oil, flowers, tea, vanilla, wine, bananas, and sports balls. Soccer balls are frequently made in sweatshops, but there are alternatives! Order Fair Trade coffee and tea at your favorite coffee shop, or buy it to make at home, and ask your places of business and worship to switch to Fair Trade coffee. Stores like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods carry Fair Trade certified products, and you can ask employees to help find them on the shelves. Since the farmers are given a fair price for their products, we can expect to pay a little more (although it's frequently not that much more expensive), but a practical way to offset the cost is to purchase more sparingly. It's cheap and easy to buy a huge bag of Hershey's Miniatures, but it is so much more rewarding and satisfying (and health-conscious) to savor a bar of fairly made chocolate piece by piece.

There are other ways to live counter to our slavery-filled culture, and November will be full of posts about how to do just that! Stay tuned...