By: Jocelyn Post

In addition to writing and taking pictures for CGI’s blogs, newsletters and promotional materials,
Jocelyn is a freelance photojournalist for WND.]

The Center for Global Impact’s (CGI) mission is to “engage and empower the poor”.

Although I’m constantly reminded of this whenever I submit a piece of writing to the organization, in my mind I’m often still guilty of thinking it solely fights the social injustice of human trafficking.

I knew all the facts about by Tavi—CGI’s longest and most successful vocational training initiative. How it employs women ranging from young adult singles to widowed grandmothers. How the women receive a salary each week and are paid per product. How they also get all sorts of unheard of benefits in the Southeast Asian textile industry including maternity leave and holiday bonuses.

It all sounded great, and the women are certainly appreciative. But I just hadn’t put it together how this project fit with CGI Daughters or the Culinary Training Center—until a tearful recognition one afternoon as I was completing interviews for the “Meet Your Seamstress” profiles featured on the byTavi website.

My translator noticed the tears, and as I looked up from my notebook where I was scribbling, “I can now help my daughter…” I realized I was talking to one of the CGI Daughter’s mothers.

Suddenly everything CGI does made sense.

I realized this woman lives in a community where her neighbors regularly sell their young female relatives just to make enough money to survive. While her daughter is directly ending the cycles of poverty and trafficking, she is too by choosing a better future for both of them—one in which they can provide for themselves with dignity and confidence.

The woman shared how happy she was to find work at her age and how now she has the money she needs to not only take care of her family, but also her home.

Participating in byTavi has radically transformed the life of this woman and her daughter. Not only have they been engaged, but they also have been empowered—just like CGI promised.

The mothers and daughters of byTavi and CGI Daughters aren’t the only ones being impacted though. Mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and girlfriends in the U.S., and even in other countries abroad, are also getting involved in CGI’s mission simply by being fashionable.

Join the countless women and girls who have already fallen in love with byTavi’s stylishly practical products and see for yourself how each byTavi handbag is made and how purses really can help assemble proud and sustainable lives in Cambodia!

For more info visit worldnextdoor.org

Below is an interview with founder Colleen Thompson.

How and when was BunduBags formed? How is your product produced?

BunduBags was formed at the beginning of 2012, when I returned to South Africa to scout for new product and artisans for my social venture company, Bundu Designs. I had met an amazing team of women who were trying to get a women’s development project off the ground, and trying to find overseas markets for their various crafts. I knew they needed to develop a new product that could utilise their existing skills, but at the same time, produce and design something contemporary that would resonate with a North American market. It was also really important to me, that anything we did could achieve a triple bottom line…a product that could socially uplift, that was environmentally sustainable and that was profitable.  With those three objectives, we set out to design a range of handbags and the material we ended up using was recycled cargo strapping. It is an interesting product to work with because we are able to weave it, and therefore make use of the ladies traditional African weaving skills. The strapping is collected from
large cargo and airline companies, and we sort, clean and upcycle it. Keeping it
a 100% African product, we then line each bag with traditional African Shwe Shwe fabric. The result is something really unique and very striking.

Describe the ways women’s lives are being changed through your business.

We now have approximately 40 women making BunduBags and this allows each women to earn a sustainable income for themselves and their families. BunduBags is not only aimed at skills development and income generation, but takes a holistic approach to the lives of the people who attend. It provides a safe environment where they become part of a larger community, and are thus able to fight the desperation and degradation of poverty and regain their self-respect as income earners.

What are some of the challenges these women face?

African women are still some of the most marginalized and disadvantaged people. They face huge challenges everyday, with very little resources. All of the women come from Alexandra – known informally as Alex – home to around 500 000 people, found 15 minutes from the heart of Johannesburg’s CBD.

Alex celebrates its centenary in 2012, and its one-hundred-year history is a tale of conflict, hardship and extreme poverty. In addition to a general lack of infrastructure, Alex has been tragically affected by a lack of educational opportunities, resulting in a vicious cycle of unemployment and poverty. Even in the post-Apartheid years, attempts at urban renewal have been slow, education facilities continue to be sub-standard, communal and political conflicts have continued and most residents still live in appalling conditions. This has been compounded by HIV and AIDS, crime and the breakdown of family values.

What is the concept behind the designs? Where does the inspiration come from?

The inspiration really came from traditional African weaving, but trying to put a modern and contemporary twist on it. Who would have thought that we could weave cargo strapping? But it works and lends itself perfectly, because
it is lightweight, flexible and pretty indestructible. We wanted to keep the range small and tight initially so we produce a beach bag, a messenger bag and a range of very cool kids tote bags. The fabric we use into line each of the bags inside so vibrant and exiting, that it then elevates the product to another level.

How many women has BunduBags employed since you started?

We have around 40 women on an ongoing, permanent basis, with a waiting list of around 100. As production and orders increase we will hopefully be able to employ more.

How can our readers reach you to purchase your bags? 

Our bags are available in retail stores in the USA, South Africa, Australia and online. For more information our website is www.bundubags.com <http://www.bundubags.com>  and we can be reached via email bundu@eastlink.ca <http://bundu@eastlink.ca> . You can also watch our video to learn more about us http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35POz4ddPKk

Could you share a short story from one of the women working with BunduBags?

Phindile Mabotja is 31 years old and started with Bundubags in January 2012. She was previously unemployed and Phindile’s lack of education (she left school in Grade 10) meant that she was unable to find work in an already overstretched marketplace. She is now able to support her two children and her mother with the income she generates from making bags.

‘This project has helped me a lot. Without it I wouldn’t be able to survive.

‘I fell pregnant at 18 with my first child, a son who is mentally disabled. When he was born the doctors told me there was something wrong with him as he didn’t cry after the birth, even when they smacked his feet. They asked me how I felt. Most people would be crying “Why me, why me?”, but I just said “Thank you God’. The doctors were surprised. I am grateful for my son and for everything in my life. I have a daughter too. My son goes to a school for the mentally challenged called Nokuthula, and after school my mother looks after him until I get home.

‘When I get home I cook supper for the family, do the washing and ironing and clean the house.

‘I have so much faith. I thank God for everything. My dream is that Bundubags grows bigger and bigger, like a big factory.’

We share the stories and lives of our ladies on our website, read more about them here http://bundubags.wordpress.com/meet-the-ladies/

By: Joanna Hanson

How was TAT formed and what is our ultimate goal?

In 2007, six women – a mom [Lyn Thompson], her four daughters [Kirsta Melton, Kylla Leeburg, Kendis Paris and Karin Leeburg] and a friend [Crystal Chandler] — started Chapter 61 Ministries to fight issues of injustice, with an initial emphasis on human trafficking. As a result of information gained from a 2008 national human trafficking awareness conference hosted by Kendis Paris and Molly Wolff (current TAT board member), in 2009, we started an initiative called Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT) to the 8-million members of the trucking industry to reduce demand by educating, equipping, empowering and mobilizing them to fight human trafficking in their own arena, along America’s highways.

To do that, we created a website, www.truckersagainsttrafficking.org, materials including wallet cards, posters, webinars, window stickers, and, in conjunction with another abolitionist group, a trucking-industry-specific training DVD.  We began a letter-writing campaign to major entities in the trucking industry and began having a presence at trucking shows and engaging in other promotion and publicity.  By 2011, TAT was growing so fast, and we were spending so much time on it, that we dissolved Chapter 61 Ministries, and assumed our present roles in TAT. Kendis, our national director, took TAT through its 501c3, put together a board and began spending 30-40 hours a week, growing its influence within the trucking industry, as well as working to liaison law enforcement and the trucking industry in joint operations.

Our goal is to:

• put our wallet cards (and other materials) in the hands of members of the trucking industry;
• have our trucking-industry-specific training DVD made part of orientation for all truck stop and travel plaza employees, all students of private and public truck-driving schools, all truck drivers employed via major carriers or owner/operators;
• and partner with law enforcement to facilitate the investigation of human trafficking.

And then, once equipped with both awareness of the problem and education, when human trafficking is suspected, have every member of the trucking industry call the national hotline number of 1-888-373-7888.

In your effort to educate truckers on human trafficking, what is the greatest challenge you’ve come across?

There are 8 million members of the trucking industry employed by hundreds of individual companies and organizations, both those directly involved in trucking and those which are supporting organizations. Three million of these over-the-road truckers who are always on the move. As with any communications campaign dealing with human trafficking, you have the side-by-side challenges of

·         reaching all 8 million with this information,

·         providing enough proof to change perceptions and correct misinformation,

·         and then working on a number of fronts at once to ensure that when the trucker does what you ask and makes the call, action is taken on the call made.

Because TAT is not a trucking organization itself, but is an organization coming alongside the trucking industry, we’ve also had to gain the trust of members of the trucking industry by the way we’ve framed the message and by working in ways that are beneficial to the trucking industry and helping them see we’ve got their interest at heart as well as those of the trafficking victims.

I think if you watch our training DVD, on our website, the answer to that question is quite visible. Shari and her cousin, both of whom were trafficked, might never have been rescued and returned to their families if that one trucker hadn’t decided to make a call to law enforcement. One trucker, one call, and not only were Shari and her cousin rescued, but seven other minors were rescued, 31 offenders were arrested and a 13-state prostitution ring was broken up.

What can you tell America about human trafficking that would help them understand how this issue affects their country?

Most Americans believe human trafficking takes place “over there,” across the ocean or down in Central and South America, and it does. But it’s also happening right here in our country. The FBI estimates that between 100,000-300,000 American kids are at risk annually to be trafficked, some into the sex trade and others into labor … all are modern-day slavery. Traffickers relate they can look at a schoolyard full of kids and pick out the ones that are most vulnerable. Traffickers are master manipulators, con arrests and violent predators who use a toolkit of force, fraud and coercion to trap kids into a trafficking lifestyle. They can find and recruit unsuspecting kids anywhere — online, in a grocery store or shopping center, at school, in their neighborhood, just about anywhere. Some of these kids are from broken homes or difficult circumstances, but not all of them. These kids can be from stable homes, with loving parents, but they become vulnerable when a trafficker finds opportunity. Human traffickers see people as usable and disposable goods that become their property and which can earn them big money with little risk to themselves. The younger the child is or the less parental involvement, the easier to handle and the easier to move around. If anything happens to the child, they just leave them or kill them and go get another one. If they can keep a child long enough, they can destroy them for life and keep them in that lifestyle until they die. To stop trafficking, you have to reduce the profitability of it and the demand for it. And everyone must become educated about it, so they recognize the signs that it’s taking place. The more safeguards we can put in place against it … the more people who are committed to fighting it … the harder we make it for traffickers to succeed … the more we’ll see trafficking reduced and the safer our children will be.

Looking to the future, if every truck driver working across the United States used the tools provided by your organization, what would that look like?

If all three million truck drivers, and all five additional million members of the trucking industry were educated through our training DVD, our webinars, our presentations, our website and our wallet cards, and were making calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline when they suspected human trafficking was taking place, we believe

·         traffickers would find their profitability greatly reduced, as it would be much harder to sell their victims,

·         traffickers would find themselves at greater risk as law enforcement would be working much more closely with trucking

·         victims would be rescued more rapidly

·         so then, human trafficking would be less attractive as a means of business as opportunity would be curtailed and serious consequences enhanced

·         and the trucking industry would be seen as the cutting edge of modern-day abolitionists.

I’m a comics journalist, educator and animator originally from the UK and I am passionate about using comics and visual media to report on human rights issues with a focus on women and children. Not only does sketching in the field create a more personal, universal connection with my subjects, as opposed to thrusting recording equipment in their faces, but publishing social justice stories in visual format has proven to raise far more awareness and enjoy more popularity among a younger, harder to reach demographic of readers.

Test page adapted from Patricia McCormick’s SOLD

Sample comics interview with a survivor of human trafficking: sfpublicpress.org/news/2012-07/comic-obedience-is-the-best-weapon and an introduction to trafficking in Truthout here: truth-out.org/news/item/6662:slavery-lives-on-in-the-united-states.

In 2011 I was the first comics journalist to be awarded a John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford, where I spent the year creating and developing interactive digital platforms for explaining news stories using comics, animation, interactive documentary and audio. Here’s a 3 min talk on the power of graphic journalism I gave at the end of it:

To support their work visit their kickstarter campaign: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/archcomix/graphic-journalism-on-human-trafficking-in-nepal

By: Erin Danae Fowler

Who would have thought that such a young girl would be the inspiration for such a big dream.
No eight-year-old should have to go through what Nomi did. Nomi was one of many children caught in human trafficking: an estimated 32 billion dollar industry that is considered to be the third largest criminal enterprise in the world (after drugs and weapons, according to the U.S. Department of State).

Nomi’s story sparked the beginning of the non-profit organization that bears her name. Based out of New York, Nomi Network is committed to fighting human trafficking, primarily through providing jobs for women either at risk or who have come out of the sex industry.

Alissa Moore and Diana Mao’s, founders and directors of Nomi Network, met Nomi, a dark-eyed Cambodian girl while visiting a children’s rehab center in Cambodia. “Nomi, through her experiences in the sex industry, suffered a mental disability that will keep her at the rehabilitation home for the rest of her life,” said Moore.

During a second trip to Cambodia, Diana connected with Supei Liu, a product designer with a desire to
help impoverished women through product development. “Diana and I founded Nomi network in order to
empower survivors like Nomi, to give them an opportunity to be fully rehabilitated and to give them a hope
and a future,” said Moore.

In 2009, Nomi Network launched a pilot project working with women in Cambodia. Last February, a $200,000 grant
from the U.S Department of Sate towards fighting trafficking has enabled them to expand their reach into India.
By 2025, Nomi Network hopes to have provided 100,000 jobs to women.

Nomi Network’s product line, Buy her Bag, Not her Body® has been the key to connecting the global marketplace with a “vulnerable workforce”. Through Nomi Network, these women are trained to create high-quality marketable items, gain financial stability for themselves and their families, and raise awareness among consumers about the reality of sex trafficking. “One way that we’re looking to engage people and people who care about this issue is to ask them to use their dollars to buy products that are socially conscience,” said Alissa Moore. This model of consumerism, encourages buyers to be more thoughtful with their fashion purchases, and move beyond just looking good to actually doing good.

Buy Her Bag Not Her Body® fair trade products are often made from recycled rice paper bags. “We
enable women to make these products that will sell in the main stream market,” said Diana Mao. The
women receive individualized mentoring and hands-on training as they learn about production design from
professionals in the fashion industry. As workingwomen, they become less of a target to traffickers. All
sales from their products go back into education and training programs for the women. Nomi Network also
supports shelters for children like Nomi in recovery from the horrors of the sex trade.

Nomi network is a partnership between businesses, designers, advocates and volunteers joining together
to fight against human trafficking: a destructive cycle that has torn women’s lives apart. Nomi Network
has offered a cycle of restoration and development for women in impoverished conditions, so that they
might live fuller, healthier and safer lives and provide for themselves and their families. Through Nomi
Network’s method of product manufacture, a larger global audience can learn about and participate in
fighting for the freedom of these women, even through something as simple as fashion purchases.

To learn more about their organization, Buy Her Bag Not Her Body products and how to share with others
about Nomi Network, visit their website at http://nominetwork.org/.

Thanks to 266 kickstarter backers Tim has seen his project funded and is that much closer to seeing his mission fulfilled. To learn more about the Endangered Alphabets Project you can visit their kickstarter page or website.

Below is an interview with Tim Brookes,

How did you get involved with the preservation of endangered languages?

A complete fluke, especially as I’m not an anthropologist, a linguist, an artist or a woodworker! I stumbled upon a website (http://www.omniglot.com) that is an encyclopedia of all the world’s writing systems. I was struck by how few I’d even heard of, how amazingly beautiful some of them were, how incredibly strange some others were, and also how many of them—fully a third—were no longer taught in schools or used for official purposes. Some were only used by priests, some were banned, one was used only by women to write secret love letters. So I decided to carve pieces of text in several of them, partly to preserve them and partly to draw attention to the issue. I had no idea I was the only person in the world looking at endangered alphabets (or, to use its official term, “script loss”) and the only person doing so by making art.

What can you tell us about the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh and its people?

Well, I was in Bangladesh recently doing some public health work and I met representatives of three indigenous people (the Mro, the Marma and the Chakma) who live in an upland area toward the Burmese border called the Chittagong Hill Tracts. And they were being targeted by the government for what can only be called cultural eradication. Just like, say, the Aborigines in Australia and the Native Americans in the U.S., they were being denied full citizenship rights, they were being educated in Bengali, the national language, rather than their own languages, and they were targeted by the army—villages burned down, populations moved. We now know how devastating it is for a people to lose their cultural identity (school dropout rates go up, unemployment goes up, suicide rates go up) so I decided to carve some signs in these endangered alphabets, again to draw attention to the issue but also because signage denotes official status. It asserts a right to exist, to be taken seriously.

Then, again by a fluke I met Maung Nyeu in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and that coalition became the Endangered Alphabets Bangladesh Project.

Who is Maung Nyeu and what is his significance to the people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts?

Maung is an extraordinary man. He’s a member of the Mro people, and when he was a kid he had a terrible time in school because he couldn’t speak Bengali, even though he could speak several of these endangered indigenous languages. His mother eventually pulled him from school and he self-taught so effectively he got into the University of Hawaii, got an engineering degree, and went back to the Chittagong Hill Tracts to build a school for his people. Then he realized that the children coming to the school had already lost their ability to read and write their own script, so he went back to school (to Harvard!) to do a graduate degree in education so he could create curricular materials and schoolbooks—in Mro, in Marma, in Chakma, and so on.

Our aim is to help him in two ways. I’m carving signage, a calligrapher from RISD is creating beautiful but culturally appropriate script, and a typographer from Cambridge (UK) is going to create a typeface and a computer font. Using these, Maung can get schoolbooks printed in these indigenous scripts, and the kids can grow up being able to read their own history and culture.

The other aim is to wrap a coalition of Western collaborators (Harvard, Yale, RISD, Cambridge, Champlain College) around Maung to offer him a certain degree of protection. If the Bangladesh government knows the eyes of the world are watching, then maybe Maung is less likely to be targeted or arrested when he goes back to the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

What effect could preserving the indigenous languages of Bangladesh have on its people?

It’s easy to be optimistic or self-important, of course, but our hope is that the government will be forced to grant indigenous Bangladeshis full citizenship and language rights—something they repeatedly refuse to do.

Having reached your Kickstarter campaign goal what does this next part of your life look like? How will your campaign be carried out?

The next part of my life is very, very busy! Just making and mailing out the Kickstarter rewards will be almost a full-time job for the next two months or more! But then we can get down to the real work, and attention will increasingly turn to Cambridge, where the scripts will turn to fonts and to type. We should have books in schools some time in 2013—we’ll post updates at http://www.endangeredalphabets.com. I may also make some more mass-produced signs using a laser, just to get them into as many schools and villages as possible.

I should point out that the Kickstarter money we raised, even though it’s a substantial sum and we’re very grateful to all our supporters, will come nowhere near covering the time and materials involved. This is still a largely volunteer effort.

How can others get involved?

Well, donations will continue to be immensely helpful, of course, and they can be made through PayPal (brookes@champlain.edu). But information is just as useful—contact information for people who can still speak, read and write any of the indigenous languages of Bangladesh, or for people who support this cause and can start a letter-writing campaign in Bangladesh itself.

Just for the world to know what’s going on, not only here but in the many other countries where indigenous people are marginalized and suppressed, is an important start.

Visit their kickstarter page

For mor info visit: http://www.endangeredalphabets.com/

War is a word we often associate with history books, not always being able to relate it to our everyday lives. The Karen, a people group of Burma, have known little but war for the last 60 years. The unrest which started in 1948 has sent nearly 160,000 displaced persons to Thailand where the Karen people struggle to live out their lives in refugee camps in danger of becoming a forgotten people.  Joshua Montoya and Daniel Park have a plan to give voice to these waylaid people. Armed with a camera, creativity, determination and now the backing of kickstarter they head towards Thailand to make a documentary of the Karen people.  Watch this video to learn more about their kickstarter campaign, now fully funded, and the forgotten Karen people who should be forgotten no more.

A documentary sharing the stories and struggles experienced by victims of one of history’s longest wars.

For more info visit: www.theforgottendocumentary.com

  

  

Building Burundi: You Bought Bricks. We Built Homes. from loveworks on Vimeo.

For more info visit: http://ourloveworks.com/

This post is part of our special coverage Syria Protests 2011/12.

The Syrian revolution has inspired many artists, writers, painters, directors and photographers. It has awakened the genie that was sleeping in many innovative Syrians, who are showcasing their work online.

The result is an amazing bouquet of photographs, paintings, songs and poems that depict not only the struggles and suffering of the Syrian people but also their high hopes and aspirations for a free and democratic country.

Wissam Al Jazayri is a young Syrian graphic designer, who uses his blog and Facebook page to contribute in his own pacific way to the revolution.

He tells Global Voices:

I decided to work for the revolution, following the storming of Al Omari Mosque in Daraa in April 2011. I tried to resort to Metaphysics to express my ideas, in order to reach the unconscious mind rather than the traditional and ordinary political design.

Wissam’s activism has not been an easy mission for him. He has received various threats and he is wanted by the Syrian regime. He is currently staying in an anonymous place, while his parents have fled Syria to ensure their safety.

Below are some of his designs, all posted with his permission and can be found on his Facebook Page or on his website.

Revolution is a women, so do liberate yourself

Bread and Human being in the land of death

In the memory of Ghayath Matar

Dancers in the Dooms of a dictator

Freedom for all Syrian Artists

The Labour of Freedom

The revolution is a conflict between the past and the future

Requiem for a Dream

Life Does Not Stop

 

The Last Wish