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 Tuesday, February 23, our group spoke with Lauren Jackson, the Research and Policy Officer at the Walk Free Foundation.  Based in Perth, Australia, the Walk Free Foundation undertakes research and writes about modern enslavement. Over time, a group of people conduct this research on certain countries, looking to stop the exploitation of workers. This…

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On Tuesday, February 23, our group spoke with Lauren Jackson who is the Research and Policy Officer at the Walkfree foundation. The Walkfree Foundation is based in Perth, Australia which made it very hard for us to interview them. Walkfree collects data and creates benchmarks in order to monitor companies and sometimes force them to do better. This benchmarking system is called the Global Slavery Index which is published every four years and is mainly directed for companies to monitor themselves instead of being targeted toward consumers.

The goal of the Index is to give companies a wake-up call when they are mistreating their workers. Walkfree visits these companies with their team and discusses solutions. Sometimes companies are very reluctant to speak with them which is a big struggle. This year they are re-evaluating companies and they expect that COVID-19 has made the forced labor issue even worse, which makes their benchmarks even more important. Lauren also talked about the migrant workers who were being left out of relief plans and made their lives even harder during COVID-19. This caused these workers to be even more desperate and forced people to make the tough decision to work in forced labor just to get the minuscule wages they earn there.

She also told us about the change that consumers need to make in order to pressure companies into treating their workers better. She recommends boycotting companies that use forced labor and talking to your representatives in order to change labor policies in your communities. This gave me more of an incentive to learn more about this topic so I can educate other people in the future. This interview inspired me to keep working and also educated me even more on the topic and the companies who abuse their workers.

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On February 24th, our group met with Ayn Riggs the Founder and Director of Slave Free Chocolate. Slave Free Chocolate brings awareness to labor issues and child slavery in the chocolate industry, Slave Free Chocolate also lists chocolate companies that treat their workers ethically and releases them publicly for companies and consumers to use.

Ayn talked with us about the way companies exploit laws and loopholes in order to keep using child laborers while technically keeping inside the bounds of the law. She specifically talked about the self-monitoring system that chocolate companies were supposed to follow in order to make sure there wasn´t any child labor in their companies. Companies often abused this system and reported false facts and hid the labor issues in their company. Major organizations like Nestle and Hershey were the main false claimers though there are many other chocolate companies responsible for this. In our previous Interview with Lauren Jackson, she mentioned that we should interview a representative for Tony Chocoloney.

Tony Chocoloney is a Dutch chocolate company that claims to be 100% percent slave-free, but Ayn revealed to us that Tony Chocoloney did in fact use child and forced laborers, and also worked with major chocolate companies who abused their workers. Even the actual chocolate they produced was actually from Barry Callebeaut a major chocolate company which was known to mistreat their workers. This was very shocking to me and it helped me open my eyes and not trust all of the information I was given.

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On February 24, the workers rights group interviewed Ayn Riggs, the Director of Slave Free Chocolate. Slave Free Chocolate is a grassroots organization that does campaigns and educates on child labor in the chocolate industry. Ayn has done a lot of research in this field, the reason we chose to interview her. She had mentioned…

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On Thursday the 24 of February our group was able to meet with Ayn Riggs. Ayn has worked with forced labor in chocolate for over 10 years. Ayn has spent a lot of time trying to help stop forced labor in Ghana and Cote D’ivoire which are the countries that produce the most cocoa.

Something Ayn told us is that while making companies supply chains traceable is important. Unless farmers are being paid a living wage, then anything anyone comes up with won’t affect change. Another thing Ayn said is that big chocolate companies have previously signed agreements where they would make their chocolate free of forced labor, but that was years ago and nothing has really changed. She also told us that some chocolate companies that say they are free of forced labor and have traceable supply chains manufacture their chocolate with bigger companies that use forced labor to get more profit than a truly forced labor free company.

It was great to meet with Ayn and we learned a lot about forced labor in chocolate, and how individuals can make changes without being in a foundation. One thing that I never though about until Ayn told us was that instead of big plantations using forced labor, there are sometimes many very small plantations that come together to produce things like chocolate. This makes it really hard to effectively trace your supply chains.

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On Wednesday the 23rd of February our group was able to meet with Lauren Jackson. Lauren is a member of the Walkfree Foundation which is based in Western Australia, and is an International Human Rights Organization. Walkfree collects data on how many people are in forced labor, and how well governments are dealing with forced labor. Lauren told us that the main thing the Walkfree foundation is famous for is its Global Slavery Index which using many factors lets them estimate how much forced labor is in supply chains.

One thing I thought was really interesting was when Lauren told us about how Covid 19 has increased the amount of people in forced labor. She said that migrant and vunerable workers were getting left out of relief plans to help people during the pandemic. These people were not getting good healthcare or social support so they were more desperate and would work for even cheaper than before.

When we interviewed Lauren one thing she told me that I had not really relized before was that as consumers we have a lot of impact on companies and what policies they have. This reinforced the idea that if we educated people about how companies use forced labor we could change these methods for the better.

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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 February 10, the Workers Rights Group interviewed Meredith Dank. She is a Research Professor, and directs the Human Exploitation and Resilience initiative of the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management. She is a worldwide expert on human trafficking, having conducted research in more than a dozen countries across the globe. Meredith has an extensive…

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On Thursday, February 10th our group met with Meredith Dank. Meredith is a research professor at NYU, she specializes in commercial sex economy, human trafficking, teen dating violence, and LGBTQ issues. We talked to her about the work she does overseas and the labor issues she fights for. She talks with human traffickers and supports victims of human trafficking in other countries.

She told us about the people she met overseas and was saddened when she couldn’t help people in a horrible situation. She also talked about the dangers of being a “hero” and attempting to save people who are being trafficked, because most of the time dangerous missions can backfire and make life worse for victims of human trafficking. She relies on people to live out their horrible contracts, or escape from bad trafficking conditions in order to conduct her research and teach more about the topic. Her work is very important in solving this problem because if people aren’t educated well enough, they aren’t informed about the topic which allows it to go unnoticed.

I really felt for Meredith when she had to make the tough decisions to leave people who are in horrible situations and will most likely go back into the human trafficking system. I was shocked when I learned that people some people she talked to are so desperate that they will reenter the horrible working conditions they endure just to get a very small amount of money. Her experience opened my eyes and gave me a professional view of the issue, I am excited to continue fieldwork and learn more about our topic.

Meredith told us that

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On Thursday, the 10th of February Our group was able to interview Meredith Dank, Meredith is a consultant in the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Her areas of focus include human trafficking, Forced Labor, LGBTQ issues, and victimization. She has investigated and been in many studies overseen by the U.S department of Justice.

She has done studies in over 8 countries and has worked to identify challenges in the investigation and prosecution of state and local human trafficking cases. She has helped anti-trafficking programs in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, and the Philippines.

This interview was really important because it gave us an view from a professional who has spent 16 years learning about Forced and Child Labor. Her experience’s were really interesting and helped us learn a lot about our topic.

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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 Monday, February 8th our group met with Jason Scherr. Jason Scherr is the founder and CEO of Think Coffee, he was originally a corporate attorney. But after many years on the job, he realized the lack of human connection he encountered in his job and was faced with a difficult decision. Should he quit his job and risk making less money, or should he stay in a job he didn´t enjoy? He chose the first option and in 1996 he started a small coffee shop as a hobby, called Think Coffee. Eventually, his little shop turned into a coffee shop chain, with 11 locations in NYC and a franchised location in Korea.

Jason talked to us about the background checks he runs on coffee farmers, and the contracts he makes with them that sometimes force them to treat their workers better. Think Coffee actively goes to countries where their coffee is sourced and inspects the farms, to make sure the farmers and the children in the neighborhood have access to stable living conditions and are treated fairly on the farm. Oftentimes Jason will make deals with coffee farmers, build homes for farmworkers, and supply library books for children. He currently has two employees working in Nicaragua and meeting with farmers. One of his biggest issues is spreading the word of his sourcing practices to his customers, he told us that ¨Seeing a Fair-Trade certification is very straightforward, but telling our story to customers who really just want a caffeine buzz in the morning is very difficult.¨

He mentioned that he has not seen any forced labor firsthand on any coffee farms, but he has seen workers being mistreated and neglected. But he says the main problem is the harsh living conditions and lack of education children are given. We asked him about any child labor that goes on the coffee farms, and he said ¨It depends on your definition of child labor.¨ In the United States does my 15-year-old son working at my coffee shop count as child labor, I don´t know¨ Some kids on the coffee farms help out their parents during the harvest in Nicaragua, but it is not usually all year, and it doesn´t usually ruin their education. I learned a lot from our visit and I am looking forward to doing more fieldwork in the future.

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On Monday the 7th of February our group was lucky enough to meet with Jason Scherr the founder of Think Coffee. Jason has worked for a long time to make sure that the supply chains for his companies coffee are forced and child labor free.

Jason told us that executive people in the company including himself will personally visit the farmers who grow the coffee. They look through all of their supply chains and where their ingredients are made and try to stop as many labor issues as possible. They have done many projects in different countries like building housing for farmers in Santa Teresa Nicaragua and making sure that farmers have clean water.

Jason also informed us that one big major problem for workers on farms is housing. Many farmers don’t have a roof over their heads when they work. Many people are often forced to live in subpar housing with many people. This is a major problem and Think Coffee tries to build many homes for farmers to combat this. Jason told us that big coffee corporations have the resources to look into their supply chains if they want to.

It was great to get to meet with Jason and learn about labor in supply chains, and how a company can be successful and profitable without having major labor issues.

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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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On Jan 20 my group presented about our social justice project to the class. I helped provide info and organize the slides, I was very interested in learning about our topic during our initial research. One of the things I shared in the presentation was the following. ” Workers are treated very unfairly on fishing ships in southeast Asia and I was appalled. People are coming to Thailand for jobs then being put on boats and forced to do grueling labor. Some workers don’t see land for years. “

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On January 24th, my group presented our social justice project to the class. I helped create slides for our group and researched workers issues around the world. I learned a lot about the abuse of Thai fishermen abroad, and how they are fed with false promises. I was shocked by the conditions that migrant Tomato Farm Workers endure. They are worked long hours and are kept in filthy camps which are sometimes infested with bedbugs and rats. Workers are also illegally withheld pay. And sometimes children and even infants, are forcefully worked in tomato farms, in the blazing sun.

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This week, in school, our group presented our Social Justice Presentation 101. This was our first attempt at presenting our research to classmates, and explain the basics of our topic. We had so many facts, leaving me confident going into our presentation. Each of us worked together and shared what we felt strongly about. We formally emailed experts on our topic who work for organizations that stand for similar things as us. We have not received emails back from any experts as of now, but this is only the beginning.

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