How Can Bananas Be 29 Cents a Pound?

You may have noticed Chiquita prints labels on bananas from Honduras over pink ribbons supporting breast cancer research. Possibly the company has seen research by Kantar Consulting in the UK. Kantar's Purpose 2020 study found "almost two-thirds of millennials and centennials...express a preference for brands that have a point of view and stand for something." Consultants went on to conclude consumers expect brands to use their social power for positive change.

      Nowadays, the world has a wide variety of models that affect positive change. Religious missionaries and JFK's Peace Corps show how to bring education and skill training to impoverished areas. Experienced nongovernmental organizations rush water, food, and medical quick-fix support when earthquakes and other natural disasters strike, while international banks grant low-cost loans to finance the projects and equipment for long-term solutions. Foundations, universities, and major stockholders pressured South Africa to end apartheid by withdrawing investments from South African companies. Supermarket shoppers lent their economic power to Cesar Chavez's campaign to better conditions for lettuce pickers.

     The mothers, children, and other relatives walking, riding, and floating north to escape violence and poverty in Central America crave positive social change. According to ethicalconsumer.org, United Fruit, now Chiquita, and Standard Fruit, now Dole, came to Central America in the 1890s, because fertile land and government corruption provided excellent conditions for their banana businesses. In time, grocery chains habitually began to use bananas as loss leaders, offering them at low prices to attract shoppers who would buy other items, such as greeting cards that can be $3 or more, at profitable prices. These shoppers now are in a position to pressure supermarkets to buy from suppliers who treat workers fairly. Customers, who work for a living themselves, understand employees are entitled to fair compensation for their work. Those who climb trees to harvest bananas in Guatemala cannot be expected to subsidize grocers by accepting low wages, poor education and housing, and medical problems from unsafe working conditions.

     Today's greater access to worldwide information prompts both consumer concern for the exploitation of labor in foreign countries and exposure to the consequences of government corruption. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission in Kenya recognizes foreign companies involved in corrupt practices "ruin our country." At the same time, what company wants to risk prosecution for bribing government officials for a construction contract in Brazil or to pay off officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, if the same commodities are available in Australia?

     Migrant refugees don't want to walk miles to seek asylum from violence and poverty. Consumers and businesses have the power to change the conditions that can help them stay home.   

Add Pizzazz to Service Projects

Sure a scout troop, school band, or church youth group can organize a car wash, run a bake sale, or collect funds for every mile walked. The trick is to come up with a new project to attract media attention.

Water Aid, a nongovernmental organization (NGO), needed a project to gain support for Goal 6 of the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development objective, water and toilets for all. This wasn't a naturally attention-getting topic, like saving children or baby animals. And the place where Water Aid wanted to attract attention was New York City, center of high-priced public relations firms that make the big bucks by promoting any and every thing, such as rock stars and best sellers.

What Water Aid did was invite individuals and organizations to join a two-mile, "water walk" from 72nd Street and Lexington Avenue to the United Nations building at 45th Street and First Avenue. Two miles just happened to be the distance the average girl or woman in many developing countries walks every day to procure the family's water...time she could spend getting an education or earning an income.

On their walks through NYC, females and males of all ages and various nationalities and professions offered the media a visual photo opportunity by carrying buckets in their hands or on their heads. The buckets also collected funds from passersby.

All the walkers could explain how a lack of water and sanitation caused diarrhea, other diseases, and death; every two minutes one child under five dies from dirty drinking water and poor sanitation and hygiene. Water Aid considers the right to water a human right and opposes selling water, since privatization enables cities and corporations to limit water access to manufacturers and people who can afford it.

The two-mile "water walk" idea invites groups to put greater effort into coming up with original fundraisers. I just saw an article that mentioned managers made Google great by demanding employees to think bigger and bigger. And Water Aid collected funds in buckets that were relevant to its cause. I've seen firemen and women collecting money in their big boots. A middle school collected money at a fundraising dinner in oatmeal boxes band members decorated to look like drums in the middle of every table.

Once a group has a visual event and related fund-collection containers, write a news release describing the event and the purpose of the event. Make a list of producers, addresses, and telephone numbers at local TV news programs and editors at newspapers. Send out your news releases, designate someone to call stations and papers a couple of days before the event, and get ready to welcome the attention. The world has many needs that merit your best efforts.

Women Used by Human Traffickers Need International Amber Alert

"...humans, unlike drugs, can be sold for repeated use."

There is nothing comfortable about the globalization involved in this statement by the president of an Asian movement against human trafficking, mostly of the estimated 7 out of 10 who are women and girls kidnapped or lured into this new form of slavery. 

     Women are taken by force like the 276 schoolgirls the terrorist group, Boko Haram, abducted in northeastern Nigeria in 2014. They are the objects of sex tourism for old white European men on the coastal beaches of Kenya. And they are promised "good" jobs by the traffickers in India who sell them as maids, prostitutes, and bonded laborers in households, brothels, and factories. If they are rescued and returned, as at least 82 of the kidnapped Nigerian women were, they need counseling and help to be reintegrated into society.

     Slavery prevention requires military and police protection and organizations that provide poor females with food, education, sewing, farming, and other alternatives to earn an income for themselves and their families. By distributing pamphlets, producing street plays, showing documentary films, and putting up posters, organizations also warn girls and women about the false promises used to entice victims.

     Stories about women who have been spotted and rescued on airplanes and trains suggest how teachers, and even students, should be suspicious and ask questions about students who suddenly disappear. U.S. airlines, aware they are vehicles for human trafficking, train their agents to recognize warning signs: young travelers with no identification and no adult with them, small bags rather than luggage, one-way tickets paid for by cash or credit cards not in their last names and possibly flagged as stolen. In one case, when a customer service agent spotted these signs, she told two girls they wouldn't be able to fly and called the local police department. On social media, a man had invited the girls to New York for the weekend to earn $2000 modeling and appearing in music videos. The man disappeared as soon as he knew the police were on to him.

      A woman on a train from Bhopal to Mumbai, India, was able to ask a nun for help, because the man who her husband allowed to take her to a job was riding in another coach. She was told to meet him on the platform at Borivali, a station in Mumbai. The quick thinking nun took a photo of the passenger, told her to get off the train one station before Borivali, and gave the woman the cellphone number of a nun who could meet her and help her get on a train to return home. This story had a happy ending, because the husband thanked the nuns for their help. 

     Other rescues are more dangerous, since traffickers are well organized and financed. In India, trafficking is a multibillion dollar business. By working with the police, a non-government organization in India did successfully free women confined in a fish-processing plant, force the company to pay back wages, and transport the women back to their homes.

     Sister Florence Nwaonuma tells how her experience networking with religious congregations in Nigeria was effective, because training acquainted the nuns with human trafficking issues and prepared them to collaborate and avoid ego conflicts. Working with immigration officials in Lagos, Nigeria, sisters resettled trafficking victims there or helped them go on to Benin City, where other religious congregations were ready to provide short term housing. In many jurisdictions obtaining licenses for shelters also requires cooperation with government agencies. 

     At shelters, traumatized victims of trafficking often require the same services, such as medical attention, as victims of sexual abuse. Psychosocial support is needed to heal memories, provide reassurance about safety, and listen in counseling sessions. In some cases, where legal action is possible, victims are prepared to testify in court. Long term drug therapy also may be needed for those who have contracted HIV/AIDS.

     The U.S. holds a National Human Trafficking Awareness Day on January 11, and the UN-sponsored World Day against Trafficking in Persons is July 30. Plan now, how to mark these days in your communities. In thinking about the future, check the Trafficking Day websites to find out about job opportunities in this important field.