The Orbis

Issue date: 5/1/10 Section: News/Features

Media Credit: Cayla Mackey The Global Poverty Initiative displays a banner they hung outside Rand dining hall

The Global Poverty Initiative concluded its series of events highlighting Modern Slavery Awareness Week by sponsoring a luncheon with the topic of "What You Can Do." The April 16 luncheon featured speakers from the Nashville community who advocated for fair trade policies, involvement in combative social groups, and more government attention to human trafficking issues.

Speakers included C. Lee Eby from the fair trade enterprise Ten Thousand Villages Nashville, CEO of Free for Life International Colette Bercu, and Vanderbilt University International, Educational, and Public Policy lecturer Dr. Brian Heuser.

Eby, the board of directors chairman for Ten Thousand Villages, began his speech by making a connection between poverty and the origins of modern slavery. He noted that "slavery problems grow out of poverty and children of the world are exploited by the international trade system."

Eby defined fair trade as the "direct exchange of goods based on the principles of economic and social justice" and explained that free trade and fair trade are not synonymous, as free trade only refers to economic agreements made between countries.

Fair trade businesses, like Nashville's own Ten Thousand Villages, ensure that children are not exploited as labor in any part of the production process. They also offer, Eby said, cash advances for the artisans for up to 50 percent. The main incentives for artisans to do business with fair trade companies are reliable payments and long-term relationships, factors that often cannot be found in impoverished nations. Eby pointed to Haiti and Chile, countries hurt deeply by earthquakes in the past year, as places with struggling economies with which Ten Thousand Villages now works.

Although Eby stressed that poverty is the undeniable cause of modern slavery, Dr. Heuser sharply disagreed. "Poverty does not cause human trafficking. It only provides the context," Heuser said.

He related an anecdote detailing his own personal encounter with trafficking during a collegiate study in Shanghai. Expecting to meet with a local purportedly willing to exchange currencies, Heuser instead found himself face-to-face with a man attempting to sell him a young girl. This experience caused Heuser to recognize that the problem of slavery still persists even in the modern world.

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