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 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 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 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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