Children are not items. Children should be able to enjoy there childhood, enjoy their innocence. When they are sold and auctioned off like they are an item they lose all of that. They lose everything. They lose things that they can never get back.
Jam of the Day: Muse - MK Ultra
Stop Human Trafficking: http://notforsalecampaign.org
Slaveryfootprint.org Brings It Home
How do you personalize a difficult issue that most people don’t realize still exists?
Slaveryfootprint.org takes on the challenge and nails it with this incredible website that tallies up the number of slaves involved in your daily life - right down to the toiletries you use and the number of shoes you own.
Three things make this site especially powerful:
- It provides a friendly way into a difficult issue. Global slavery and sex trafficking are horrifying and the stories are heart-wrenching. The biggest awareness hurdle is simply getting past avoidance.
- It’s interactive and me-focused. We love taking quizzes, probing our identities and comparing ourselves to others. The site taps into that need, but then turns it back on us. It makes us responsible for an issue that we’d prefer was someone else’s problem.
- It gives us the first steps to address the issue ourselves. Many cause-related pleas just leave the audience feeling helpless. It’s a problem “over there” to be tackled by “other people.” This site shows in detail daily changes we can make in our own households and is connected to a handy app that lets users write to companies and “check-in” to register concerns while shopping.
Slaveryfootprint.org is one of several dozen finalists for this year’s SXSW Interactive Awards. You can check out the other work here.
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Today there are more than 27 million people in slavery around the world - more than at any time in human history. For more on human trafficking and slavery, check out:
You’re hearing a lot about human trafficking I hope. But you wonder what you can do. The following is a simple list of things to look for in a possible victim and a list of ways to help. All of this is taken from http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/osdfs/factsheet.html.
How Do I…
- Approximately 75-80% of human trafficking is for sex.a
- Researchers note that sex trafficking plays a major role in the spread of HIV.b
- There are more human slaves in the world today than ever before in history.l
- There are an estimated 27 million adults and 13 million children around the world who are victims of human trafficking.l
- Human trafficking not only involves sex and labor, but people are also trafficked for organ harvesting.k
