On Thursday, February 24, our group met with Ayn Riggs, the founder and CEO of Slave Free Chocolate, a company that helps bring awareness to how child labor is used in the chocolate industry. This brand was founded in 2007 by Ayn Riggs, Paige Hahn, and Bridget El Khayati. The company has grown a lot since day one as it was originally planned to be a brand that’s only job was to spread the word but since then they have led campaigns and speaking engagements while also helping other similar companies with their own work.

During our talk with Ayn we learned a lot more about her work and against companies that implement child labor and enslaved working in their chocolate making. Some major companies that use these services include Nestle, Hershey, Mars and Cargill. These companies find loopholes in the laws to make use of these inhumane practices. These companies don’t outright encourage child labor but their process of checking their company to see if it is being used is subpar. Although these are some companies are one side of the spectrum, on the other hand some companies are working hard to combat this, like Tony Chocoloney. Or so we thought…

The most interesting part of the interview was when we started discussing Tony Chocolonely. We had heard from other sources that this company was doing a lot to help our cause and that we should consider interviewing one of their representatives so we were surprised when Ayn Riggs told us about how they weren’t who they seemed. Tony Chocoloney was apparently using child labor and enslaved labor behind the scenes. Their chocolate was also from another chocolate company, Barry Callebaut, who is known for treating their workers poorly. How did they get away with this? On their label it tells you that they are working towards 100% slave free chocolate and that they are not their just yet. Lots of people overlook this small detail and that’s why it is easy to miss. All in all, I learned a lot in this interview with Ayn, including how you shouldn’t always believe everything you hear.

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On Tuesday, February 23, our social justice group spoke with Lauren Jackson of the Walkfree foundation. She is a Research and Policy Officer at the Walkfree Foundation. She is also the co-founder and director of the Children of Massai Educational Programme. Lauren and Walkfree are both located in Perth, Australia. The Walkfree Foundation was originally founded in 2010 by Grace and Andrew Forrest. Since then, they have dedicated themselves to completely eradicate all forms of modern slavery in their lifetime. Their staff have a variety of different jobs, from lawyers to statisticisians, and they all have one common goal, to address the root that causes slavery.

One of the main focal points in Walkfree’s goal of eradicating slavery, is their Global Slavery Index. Walkfree is a very data driven company that makes benchmarks that will help companies keep track of themselves and Walkfree will help them do better. All of this benchmarking is released in the Global Slavery Index. It gets released every four years in a downloadable report on their website. The last one is from 2018 so we can expect another report this year. The newest report will also analyze how COVID has caused risks for migrants and other vulnerable workers.

All in all we had an amazing interview with Lauren Jackson. I really learned a lot and I felt content knowing that people were out there helping with this cause. She also told our social justice group about other people that can help our cause. Another thing that you can do is to speak with your representatives about changing labor policies and boycotting companies that implement this slavery. With this newfound information, I will teach my classmates and peers and hopefully, one day, slavery wont exist anywhere.

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On Thursday, the 10th of February, our social justice group interviewed Meredith Dank online. Meredith Dank is a consultant in the Urban Institute, specifically the Justice Policy Center. She researches a broad variety of topics such as sexual and human trafficking, teen dating violence, victimization and LGBTQ+ issues. She has gone on travels to eight different countries to conduct research and was even a part of a white house stakeholder meeting for survivors of victim services. Meredith was also the principal investigator in two sexual and human trafficking related studies, overseen by the US Department of Justice.

Meredith can definitely be described as courageous. She was willing to do anything to further her research and was extremely invested. She recalls experiences where she was in harm’s way but still continued. There were neighborhoods that she visited where kids were being hit by cars while trying to haggle on the street. Trying to help enslaved people, she told us about the ways that you can be freed. There is the possibility of living out your contract but this is very difficult to do and you will be facing terribly unethical working conditions for years but there is also the option of escaping. This doesn’t happen a lot but it’s still possible and it shocks me that innocent children have to escape their jobs because they aren’t allowed to leave. Luckily there are people like Meredith that give out a third option where they can bust the people in charge but this rarely happens and this is still a major problem.

One of my questions that she began to elaborate on was, “is there ever a situation where you see people in front of you that desperately need help but there is nothing you can do?” “All the time,” she said. Because many of her trips are funded by organizations and universities, she often can’t interact or help the people in need. It pains her to do this but it is necessary because if she helps one person, more will follow. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to reject somebody that is being treated so poorly but I feel so bad. She has also been up close with the people that run the child labor trades but she couldn’t do anything about because it might risk their freedom. This was my favorite part of the interview because I felt like it was an extremely interesting point that people often don’t realize.

Overall, it was a fantastic interview that our whole group enjoyed. After our interview my mom, sitting next to me, joked about how she was basically the perfect person for our topic and it wasn’t even an exaggeration. She was! I learned so much about child and enforced labor through her years of experience. It was disappointing that the call was online but I would love to go more in depth with certain issues and talk to her again another time. She also gave us a cool connection that might lead us to another interview. There is a certain type of chocolate bar that you can find at stores and when you open it up, it details how it was specifically made without any child or forced labor and what it is doing to fight it. I am definitely interested in that and I thank her for a super educational interview.

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On Monday, the 9th of February, our group met with Jason Scherr. Jason Scherr is the founder and CEO of Think Coffee. He is also one of our group members’, Arlo, dad. He began his career as a lawyer but after 10 years he decided to switch professions. He moved to Brooklyn which wasn’t the place it is today. In Williamsburg, he decided to open up a coffee shop where its key value was where the coffee came from instead of how it tasted. He still wanted the coffee to appeal to and attract customers but Jason was more enticed with the idea of the coffee beans coming from good people in fair working conditions.

As Think Coffee grew, it was able to reach out to more people in other countries and check out their farms to see if they would choose them as a supplier. Jason and his colleagues traveled out to these farms and talked to the farmers to see if they would be suitable. During his travels, Jason encountered child labour and really bad working conditions. He turned these farms down but he also provided help by building houses. So far Think Coffee has built 74 homes across the world but that isn’t the only way they have helped out. During COVID nobody visited the coffee shops anymore so Think Coffee did not need to buy from the farmers. Instead, they made a deal with the farmers to loan out money until the pandemic ended. This helped these farmers a lot in such a difficult time.

Jason was very great to talk to and brought up many fascinating ideas. Upon first asking him about child labour he responded with a very interesting point, “What does that mean? What makes child labour, child labour? My son who is 15 years old works here and he still worked here when he was 14. Arlo is probably even going to work here soon. He’s a child and he’s working. What truly defines child labour?” In response to this we looked up the definition and here is roughly what we got, child labour is when the work a child is doing is denying their education. Arlo’s brother still goes to school but lots of the kids that we are focussing on don’t. This was only one of the intuitive points that he brought up during the interview.

All in all, it was a great experience to have. We heard from somebody who had seen this first hand and who had helped the same people we were trying to help. He recommended another organization that was in the neighborhood and was overall very helpful. I learned a lot about how these farmers worked and their living conditions. I found it inspiring that he visited a lot of these farms himself and didn’t delegate it to someone else. We will be sure to check out the people he recommended and we thank him for such an informative conversation.

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On Jan 24, my group presented our social justice project to the class. I helped my peers and I also made sure that I worked on each slide. I wasn’t very nervous because I had done a lot of previous research and what I discussed was something that I was enthusiastic and passionate about. One thing that I shared was that, “I was shocked by the Thai fishermen stories and it is definitely something I would like to learn more about. It shocks me that people are getting kidnapped and it’s not stopped yet. There were people interviewed that went through this and they said that they didn’t get to see land for years and had to survive on scraps of fish. The term “Sea slaves” is used to describe them and the whole system is incredibly unethical and illegal.” I hope to interview people working on this topic and find more people so I can learn more and spread the word of these terrible acts.

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