By Caroline Riseboro – VP, Marketing and Communications
Early this morning, we left Cambodia and walked across the border into Thailand.  We joined ten thousand other Cambodians, all heading over for the promise of a better life.  There were young women in bright uniforms with short skirts, destined for their jobs at one of the dozens of nearby casinos.  Other families, most walking barefoot, were pushing huge, make-shift wagons to stock up at the Rongklua Market just north of the border.  Some were already returning, laden with food, with the hope of making a few dollars as they sold it back in Cambodia.

To enter at this official border, you must pay fees and show documents.  But thousands of Cambodians crossed this morning without doing either. They used one of the illegal entrances in the jungle, somewhere along a border hundreds of kilometres long.

For some Cambodians it’s a relatively short trek to Thailand.  They’ve built their huts just metres from the border, and cross illegally every day with the hope of making a few dollars to continue the meager survival of them and their families.  It’s like having another country in your own backyard, except for that furtive dash for safety when the guards aren’t looking. Human traffickers don’t have to be so quick with their cargo.  With salaries of a modest $300 per month, police can be easily bought.  Traffickers generally find it quite convenient to bring slaves through the jungle.

Life at the breaking point

If you ask the girl we’ll call J (to protect her identity) what she wants to do when she grows up, the eleven-year-old answers without hesitation.

“Work at the casino,” she says, with eyes wide. “Because they are the only ones with the nice clothes.” Ask her what she’s most afraid of, and the response is almost universal for a child her age.

“Ghosts,” she admits, with a shy giggle.

Move on down the list of fears and you get a picture her life as an illegal Cambodian child migrant, living in a cramped storage box in Thailand’s Rongklua Market where her aunt works.

“Being hit by my aunt with a wire coat hanger,” she shares, eyes looking down at the two hands gripping the stool she’s sitting on.  “And being discovered by the police.”

Riding her rickety bike home from the World Vision office – where she comes to read and have a bath – takes J straight past what the locals call “Channel Seven”.  It’s little more than an opening in a fence, with a path disappearing behind the shacks and into the jungle.  This illegal border crossing is so handy that some Cambodian migrant children duck back into their home country to attend school in the afternoons.

Apart from the occasional sweep, the police normally turn a blind eye to the migrant settlement in the market.  The owners of the storage boxes pull in an exorbitant $80 a month per unit.  And for that, you get laneways filled with pools of a reeking green substance and a miserable night’s sleep on a concrete floor.

The rent is a fortune for J’s aunt, who is supporting her own children, as well as J’s mother who has a mental illness. Walking into the family’s box home, with its rags for curtains and filthy floor, made it clear that there’s absolutely no margin for misfortune here.  If the aunt can’t make enough money, the children are the safety net.

With a chill, I remembered Mao back at the Trauma Recovery Centre in Phnom Penh.  The girl had sold herself for sex to a Westerner rather than have her family face eviction.  And I recalled the stories I’d heard of entire families lured deeper into Thailand by traffickers, with the promise of that decent job.  One last, desperate grasp at hope.

Using every tool we’ve got

In the World Vision Thailand office near J’s market home, it was wonderful to watch children sprawled on the floor, reading, singing and playing with stickers.  I was intrigued to see a staff member sit down on the floor to teach them about eluding human traffickers – and escaping if they’re caught.

He used a story told with large pictures, a common teaching tool for team members travelling around the area.  Characters that looked something like Asian Muppets were shown sticking together, thinking critically, phoning a hotline number, and turning to other adults for help. The children lapped it up, wanting to know all they could.

This prevention work is crucial and effective.  But this is one small office along a lengthy border.  And by the time some children cross that border, they’re already in the hands of a trafficker, looking to exploit them.  Even working closely with our Cambodian offices and partnering with other agencies, we can’t possibly reach them all on our own.

Trafficked children enter Thailand not just from Cambodia, but from Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar.  The economies of all three countries are still struggling to recover from war, genocide and political upheaval – and Thailand often seems like the best solution.  With a new East-West highway about to be completed, spanning all four countries from the South China Sea to the Bay of Bengal, movement will be that much easier.

As the government of Canada puts the finishing touches on its National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking, World Vision, along with other Canadians, is asking them to do the following:

• Think of the children we’ve met across Cambodia and Thailand.  We’re imploring the Canadian government to put children front and centre in its plan.
• Think of J, an extremely vulnerable child living right in trafficker territory.  CIDA’s role in the plan must include training for children and youth on how to protect themselves from trafficking.
• Think of Vanna, the girl we met in the brick factory.  The government should pledge to tackle labour trafficking.  For every one person trafficked for sex, nine are trafficked for labour.
•  Think of the hundreds of thousands of children who are trafficked around the world, and make the plan international in scope.  Just working within Canada won’t truly tackle the issue of human exploitation.

The children we’ve met in Cambodia and Thailand need this plan to be a strong one, and they need you.  Whether it’s signing our petition about the National Action Plan, questioning what you buy, or just forwarding this blog to a friend.

It will take hard work and a great deal of love.  But together, we can end child slavery.  Thank you for travelling – and learning – along with me this week.

- Caroline Riseboro

Join the discussion on this blog and discover other ways to end child slavery on the Voices for Children Facebook Group page.

By Caroline Riseboro – VP, Marketing and Communications
We’re driving north in Cambodia, toward the border with Thailand.  It’s like driving toward a magnet – or a black hole.  For Cambodian families living this close to the border, the temptation to cross and look for work in Thailand is a powerful one.

Adults know the risks that come with crossing the border.  And they try to teach their children. Human traffickers stalk vulnerable people both during the crossing, and on the other side. They prey on people’s hope for a better future.

Yet after what I saw today, I can fully understand why people try their luck.  It’s not stupidity or, in the case of mothers sending their children, a hardness of heart.  It’s because many children are already forced to serve the cruelest master of all.  That’s poverty.

Life in an oven

The picture I saw today was one that seemed utterly hopeless.  We visited a brick factory about 50 km south of the Thai border.  There, I saw two generations of Cambodians working side by side.  From behind the cloths over their face that they used to filter out the choking dust particles, I could see that the children’s eyes were still bright.  Their parents’ eyes were resigned to a life that most Canadians would equate with a living hell.

The midday sun beat down and fired back off the buildings all around us.  Despite the humidity of the environment, everything felt baked dry.

The brick factory day begins at six a.m. for children, four a.m. for adults.  It often doesn’t end until well into the evening.  Seven days a week.  Week in, week out.  Day in, day out.  And no matter how many people in a family work, or hard anyone works, or how many bricks they produce, they still make enough to just barely stay alive.

Vanna’s job

The loudest voice in the factory’s main work area was one of an eerie grinding so loud I had to cover my ears.  I had heard of this machine.  Just last week, our World Vision colleagues told us, it had chewed a girl’s arm off.

I walked toward the machine, used for shaping clay into bricks.  Feeding the machine lumps of clay with her bare hands was a girl of 16, Vanna Chhua.  Although factory workers in the area have now agreed to restrict this machine work to children over 12, Vanna has been doing this since she was 11.

I watched her slender hands so close to those grinding jaws, and had to turn away.  I was careful not to startle her.  God forbid she should make an error in timing.

Feeding the machine is just part of Vanna’s job.  She also has to cut huge lumps of clay-rich soil from the small quarry outside.  She hauls them up onto her shoulder, and carry them in.  Once the bricks are shaped, Vanna pushes them to the oven in a huge cart.  I looked at the heft of the wheels and shuddered to see that Vanna’s feet were bare.

Vanna stopped to rest, and we talked for a while.  Her smile was bright and beautiful, especially when sharing her dream of working in a beauty parlour.  We took her picture, and asked permission to use it on the Internet and perhaps even television. She was overjoyed at the idea of being “famous”, and beamed across at her mother standing nearby.  Suddenly, she was just another teenage girl.

A few minutes later, I said goodbye, and Vanna turned back to the machine.

Considering the child at the source

As we checked into our hotel tonight, I stopped abruptly in the doorway, noticing that the building was made of brick.  I felt a wave of nausea.  Had a teenage girl with a laughing smile risked her arm to make these bricks?  When the rice came at dinner, I thought about the children we’d seen working in paddies at the side of the road.  Who stood bent over in the blazing sun to make sure my plate was full?

These are all questions I’ll keep asking when I return to Canada next week.  And they’re questions we’re asking Canadians to consider as they partner with World Vision and children like Vanna.  We can’t end child slavery if we have no idea how we’re perpetuating the problem.

Caroline Riseboro, VP Public Affairs, World Vision Canada

Join the discussion on this blog and discover other ways to end child slavery on the Voices for Children Facebook Group page.

By Caroline Riseboro – VP, Marketing and Communications
For two weeks every year, one stretch of Cambodia’s mighty Tonlé Sape river accomplishes the unthinkable.  Because of water build-up, it turns and runs upstream.  The water defies the downward pull of gravity – and literally pushes back.

As I travel through Cambodia, I’m continually bracing myself for the misery of children whose lives are torn apart by sex and labour trafficking.  Much of the time, that current of sorrow seems impossible to fight.

But I’m also finding that in small but miraculous ways, things are turning around.  And often it’s the courage and determination of children that makes it happen.  In a culture where many boys and girls are raised to be soft-spoken and deferential, children are standing up to terrifying foes and speaking out against overwhelming odds.  And, little by little, their voices are causing the miraculous to happen.

It’s an inspiring thought.  At World Vision, we take joy in partnering with children not “saving” them.  As we ask Canadians to join with us in helping end child slavery, it’s humbling to know that children are already speaking out.  How can we remain silent now?

Here are some stories from my past 24 hours, on the ground in Cambodia.

Amber Alert, Cambodian style

We normally think of rape as something that happens to a girl.  But at a slum I visited yesterday in downtown Phnom Penh, I learned that sexual predators frequently saunter into this community to “groom” boys for sex.  They take advantage of the friendly, open Cambodian culture – and children who are raised to listen to their elders.  They come back repeatedly, offering candy, food and drugs.

When the moment is right, they strike, luring children away from the safety of home and family.  Sometimes the abuse happens in the tall grasses right next to the slum.  Sometimes it’s in a place where no one can find them.  Even the smallest are violated in ways that my mind won’t let me consider, though police have apprehended hard drives full of the video made by sex offenders travelling to Cambodia.

But through the World Vision program “My Son”, the boys and their families are standing together against sex traffickers.  Think of it as the Cambodian version of the Amber Alert program.  There’s no electricity in the slum, no flashing billboards letting everyone know when a child is in danger.  But they have something equally powerful: a community committed to protecting its children.

Every afternoon, the boys are called out of their homes to play sports.  You should see their volleyball spikes and the little boys’ wrestling moves! Then, panting and happy, they flop down on the ground and share intelligence about any unusual characters they’ve spotted in the neighborhood.  World Vision has taught them to move in threes, to be wary of any man trying to bribe them to leave the area.  And they know to sound the alarm, by telling parents and calling the World Vision team member in the area.

These children are helping take responsibility for their own safety, saying “no” and speaking up when they’re afraid. Their voices at the daily meeting are crucial.  Even the smallest boy can mobilize an entire community to rally around its children.

A small circle of light

As night fell, our van bumped down an alleyway into an open area littered with garbage.  This was World Vision’s night outreach program for street children.  Girls and boys trickled out of dark places between the buildings to sit on tarpaulins lit by blazing lanterns, for lessons in health and safety from laminated posters.

Then in the crowd, I spotted him – a little boy of about three, the same age as my son.  All day long, I learned, he’d earned a grand total of fifty cents, picking for trash to sell.  Broken bottles and sharp bits of metal were among his treasures.  At one point, his shirt moved up and I saw a huge gash running down his side.  With a gulp, I turned away.  I couldn’t imagine such a wound on my own son, unless he was sitting squarely in the best emergency room Ontario had to offer.

There was a medical worker on site applying alcohol to the injury.  Still, I began to wonder what difference these discussions about hand-washing and walking in threes could actually make for this little guy.

Then I saw something that made me think again.  The sessions on the tarpaulins were lead not by adults, but by older boys.  One of them, fourteen-year-old Rith, lives at a World Vision centre for street children while he’s finishing school.  But he returns to the street at night time, to guide and teach the little ones still making their livings in these dirty and dangerous ways.  I watched his beautiful face as he talked to the children.  And I saw a young leader in the making.

With the right support, I know the same can happen for the little boy.  Perhaps by the time he’s fourteen, children working in garbage dumps will be a thing of the past.

Barbed wire and laughter

The Trauma Recovery Centre for girls is surrounded by high walls and barbed wire.  I learned it’s not uncommon for sexual predators or their lawyers to try to reach the girls, trying to talk them out of testifying in court.  World Vision once faced a $20,000 lawsuit, filed by a sexual offender, for the “illegal detention” of the girl he sexually assaulted.  He referred to her as his Goddaughter.

Inside, with the gates tightly closed, the compound was like an oasis.  There were trees and flowers everywhere, a mural on the wall showing all the things the girls want for themselves – including marriage.  And from every room, I heard laughter and chatter as the girls worked away at their sewing or weaving.  Painstaking work, with beautiful results.

I was guided to an inner room, where I sat on the floor with a young girl known as Mao to protect her identity.  I’ll never forget the way she held a stuffed bunny rabbit as she told her story, softly but calmly.

At fifteen, Mao sold her virginity for $200 to keep her family from living on the street.  Centre staff had let me know the details of her assaults beforehand, as repeating them can traumatize a child all over again.  Two days after the rape, still sore and bleeding, this tiny girl had slept with another man so she could keep sending money home.  This second sale yielded a fraction of the first, as did all subsequent sales.  Mao was no longer a virgin.

Her final rapist was a man the police were already seeking.  Mao was rescued, and has remained in the centre for 17 months, healing, learning and receiving counseling.

Changing history

It’s so painful to imagine a girl like Mao standing up to a sexual predator in court.  I couldn’t imagine the girl who clutched the bunny giving intimate details of her attacks – while standing only a few feet away from her abuser.

I learned that World Vision works with the girls and their families to prepare them for court, staging mock trials with a variety of questions.  And they help families find the strength to say “no” to money from sex offenders who want them to blame their own daughters.  Poverty is crippling, and the payoffs can be generous.

“These girls are making history,” says World Vision Cambodia’s Ray Sano.  “Five years ago, it would have been unheard of for a young girl to stand up for themselves in court.  But they’re using their voices.”

In Canada, we think of slavery as a thing of the past.  But I can tell you that modern-day slavery is alive and well.  I’ve seen it here in Cambodia.  But with your help, we can start to turn the river around.

Please stay with me, as I visit a brick factory tomorrow, to see children working long hours in incredibly dangerous conditions.  And the day after, as I cross the border to Thailand along with several thousand Cambodians heading over for work.  It’s a prime spot for traffickers and children are especially vulnerable.

By Caroline Riseboro – VP, Marketing and Communications
“That brick is way too heavy for you.  If you drop it, you’ll really hurt your foot!”

That’s what I’d say to my three-year old son, if he tried to lift something like this.  Yet Salay carries hundreds of huge bricks every day in the Cambodian factory where he works.  Not only does no one stop him, he’s reprimanded if he slows down.  If Salay doesn’t carry those bricks, his family can’t pay their debt.  They lose everything.

Over the years of my work at World Vision, I’ve seen many photos of children working in unthinkable conditions, just to survive.  It’s hard not to call out in disbelief.

“He’s only three years older than my son, and he’s standing so dangerously close to that furnace!”

“That hole is so dark you can’t see the bottom.  How can anyone send a child down there?

“Please don’t let it be that she is forced to have sex with grown men.”

Dirty, dangerous and degrading

These children are the reason I’ve come to Cambodia and Thailand.  I’ll be driving across both countries, meeting children who work in jobs that are dirty, dangerous and degrading.

World Vision has just launched a three-year campaign aimed at helping end child slavery.  Here in Canada, the toughest job many kids do is to clean their room.  Yet these children are fighting each day just to keep body and soul together.  And they have no choice but to continue.

This trip will be tough-going.  In my work with World Vision, I have seen children on the brink of starvation, or battling deadly diseases.  This is horrifying enough.  But quite honestly, I don’t know how I’m going to react to seeing a ten-year-old girl standing on the street, made up like an adult, waiting for the next travelling sex offender to come along.  I think there will be a lot of tears and outrage on my end.

How do we stop it?

What I most want to know is what we as Canadians can do to stop the exploitation of children through these brutal jobs.  Most of us would never tolerate it here; one such story would be all over the newspapers.  So why do we let child slavery go on in other countries?  Do these children not matter?

I want to understand how we, all of us, are part of the problem of child slavery, and how we can help solve it for good.  We need to know how the choices we make, both as individual Canadians and as a country, keep children like Salay in bondage.  How can we change our buying habits and our policies to give children like him a different kind of life?

As Canadians, we have to lift our voices to make a difference.  We can’t just look at the photos and turn away.  I invite you to track with me in my travels this week, as I meet these children in person and learn how we can connect our lives with theirs.

Children are often found harvesting cocoa in West Africa. By purchasing Fairtrade chocolate, you help reduce the demand for chocolate produced by child labour.

Every day we make decisions about what we buy to care for ourselves and to support the life we lead. Increasingly, personal economic situations and values are making many stop and think about what we are buying and why. Some have taken up the challenge of buying nothing new for a day, a month, a year, or more. Others focus on buying locally made products and produce, or trying to shop at stores that are locally owned to support small business.  Some of you do all of the above and more!

These are all examples of responsible consumerism – stopping before we buy big and small things to consider what impact our purchases may have on us, our community and our world. World Vision wants to encourage Canadians to be more responsible consumers because we can all contribute to healthier and better lives for ourselves, those around us and children around the world.

This short document provides you with information on how you can be a responsible consumer by working to consume ethically. To share this resource with your family and friends, click here for a printable version.

What is Ethical Consumerism?

When a consumer makes a choice to purchase goods or services that tries to address the harmful practices underlying the production and marketing of these goods and services.

How can it reduce child slavery?

Ethical consumerism can play a role in encouraging changes in markets and corporate practices. It’s one way for individuals to help address really challenging social and ecological problems.  Ethical consumerism is not a perfect solution to challenging issues like child slavery. But it can create change, especially when our purchase helps transform the harmful conditions in which the things we buy are produced. In fact, creating positive change is more important than simply not buying what is made in harmful conditions, for example through boycotts.

Ethical consumerism is part of a set of solutions to help end child slavery. Other parts of the solution include actions by governments – Canadians and others – as well as corporations to prevent and address the exploitation of children and its root causes. Through the Help Wanted: End Child Slavery campaign we will provide opportunities to press governments and corporations to act, which will expand the effect of your ethical consumerism. Go to endchildslavery.ca now to find out about our current action.

What are the different types of ethical consumption?

There are many products that are certified or labeled as ethical in some way. Energy Star, Certified Organic, Forest Stewardship Council, Dolphin Safe and Fairtrade are all well-known examples of certification that address ethical issues like energy use, treatment of animals, the environment, and people. All of these certification tools have standards that companies have to meet to use the certification on their products. Each certification tool has limits, but they are helpful tools for both consumers and producers to reduce the likelihood of exploitation of people and/or resources.

Tools that World Vision Recommends

There are many resources and tools available to consumers to assist them in being more ethical or at least more informed consumers.  World Vision has done some research to identify some simple tools you can use to get started, or to affirm and expand the ethical consumer decisions you have already been making.

As we progress through the Help Wanted campaign we will share additional ideas and resources to expand your ethical consumer decisions.

1) Fairtrade: Certified Fairtrade products labeled through Fairtrade International (FLO) strictly prohibit the use of child labour – work that is hazardous, exploitive or that undermines a child’s education or its emotional and physical health.  Fairtrade does audits to ensure compliance with child labour laws and standards. And, if there are incidents of child labour at companies or businesses with Fairtrade certification, rather than immediately decertify the business, FLO tries to work with the business and community to solve the problem. This process helps prevent children from being put at risk going forward.Go to www.fairtrade.ca to find out more about the certification tool and where there might be Fairtrade products suppliers near you.

2) Good Guide: www.goodguide.com is an impressive website that rates companies and products on environmental and social performance as well as health risks. Each product is given a score out of ten, for Health, Environment and Society. There are additional subcategories for each product that are also scored.

3) Rankabrand.org and ethicalconsumer.org: These are two websites that help filter the social and environmental ratings of a company. These are useful tools to find products that appeal to ethical consumers. The problem is that it might mean supporting either a) a company with a still weak system of labour standards, or b) a company that still supports child labour but which works on issues in other areas. While this is a good learning tool it does highlight that there is much work to be done to address company and government actions to improve the ethics of the manufacturing of goods.

But what about my cell phone?

Cell phones often make the news as connected to child slavery and conflict.  However, there are currently no certification tools or widely supported regulations by all companies involved in the production of cell phones to ensure that a phone is free from child slavery. The number of people and companies involved in the manufacturing process is significant – from the minerals required to make your phone vibrate (Tungsten) to the final product. There are initiatives under way to understand the supply chain that results in a phone in your hand, and the ideas for action that can be taken to make sure that no child or adult is exploited in the production of the phone. Stay with World Vision as we look into what can be done.

Shopping for Change Challenge!

Here are five things you can do to mark World Day to End Child Labour, June 12, and use the information provided above to help you shop more ethically.

1) Share this Shopping for Change document with family and friends.

2) Buy only Fairtrade coffee, tea and chocolate for the week visit Fairtrade Canada website for information on where to find these fair trade products and more!

3) Either on your own or with family and friends, do a Fairtrade scavenger hunt. Find as many Fairtrade products as possible or find the most unusual Fairtrade product, take pictures of these products and post them to our World Vision Voices Facebook Group page or our Flickr account. Visit Fairtrade Canada to learn about where to find these products. Who ever finds the most or the most unusual wins!

4) Make a longer term decision to try to buy second hand household or clothing items for a month.

5) Use the website resources provided in this document to inform any big purchases you might make.

William Wilberforce was a British politician, a committed Christian, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. The “abolitionists”, as they were known, fought a long uphill battle to end slavery. The campaign to abolish slavery used many of the elements of modern-day campaigning – organizing action groups, investigative research, using the media, influencing politicians, legal challenges, and consumer pressure.

This campaign led to the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which abolished slavery in most of the British Empire. Wilberforce died just three days after hearing that the passage of the Act through Parliament was assured.

Even though state-sanctioned slavery was outlawed over 200 years ago, child exploitation and trafficking – modern day slavery – continues.

Children are being abused and exploited for someone else’s gain; their value seen in terms of profit rather than as precious children of God – made in His image, for His glory.

How can we shed light on this injustice?

What if the Church, a worshiping and serving community, came together to reclaim the Abolitionist spirit of 200 years ago to support efforts helping to end child slavery?

On Sunday June 10th, two days before the World Day to End Child Labour (June 12) , World Vision is asking Christians around Canada to learn about, pray and act to end modern day child slavery. This activity is part of World Vision’s Help Wanted: End Child Slavery campaign that is working to help end child slavery by calling on Canadians and our government to act.

We invite your church to join with the next generation of Abolitionists – bringing honour and glory to God as we seek justice for the oppressed and defend the cause of the needy.

Visit our ACT NOW section of this website to find resources to support your church’s participation in Abolitionist Sunday. Additional resources will be added in the coming weeks. Also, you can email worldvisionvoices(at)worldvision.ca to learn more about this activities and access resources to support how your church can be involved.

After many years in the advocacy campaigning business, I have come to rely heavily on many online tools to reach campaign goals. Online tools such as email, websites and social media are cheap to use and reach across this vast country of ours. But I know that campaigns can be even more successful when they include offline activities.

Last year we put this to the test and did three events supporting our ‘Cooking Up Justice” campaign – a campaign to encourage the Canadian government to ensure the nutritional needs of children living in poverty where being meet. These events featured celebrity chef, recording artist and child advocate Roger Mooking (check out his show on the Food Network ‘ Everyday Exotic’). At these events, Roger taught participants about healthy food, food preparation and encouraged them to send a letter to their Member of Parliament about good nutrition for poor children. The events were a great success. Even the local Members of Parliament attended!

Before you panic, I am not asking anyone to organize a big or even small event. However, you can help us bring the Help Wanted: End Child Slavery campaign offline to people you might not be connected to online by downloading the petition (see below) and asking 10 or more people to sign it.

Every name counts! We regularly let government leaders know how many people support our concerns for children living in poverty and, in this case, our hope is that the National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking will address the needs of trafficked children and prevent them from being trafficked in the first place!

Here is a little bit of a script for you if you are ready to jump offline to support the End Child Slavery campaign:

• I am a supporter of World Vision and one of the issues they are working on right now is helping to end child slavery – situations where children are forced to work in dirty, dangerous and degrading work.
• Some kids work in places like mines, manufacturing, fishing, brick making and the sex trade. These jobs threaten the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of children and can really damage their development into adults.
• Right now World Vision is asking the Canadian government to make sure that its National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking addresses the needs of trafficked children and works to prevent children from being trafficked in the first place.
• Did you know that 1.2 million children are trafficked for labour or sexual exploitation at any given time? That represents half of the over 2.4 million people trafficked worldwide.
• If you sign the petition, your name will not be put on any mailing list. The document will be shared with staff who work in World Vision’s External Relations team so that they can let the government know that Canadians care about child trafficking.
• If you are interested in learning more about this campaign visit endchildslavery.ca.

When you have filled a petition page, send it back to the address on the bottom of the petition. If you need more information yourself on the campaign, read this campaign summary document or fact sheet. Of course you can always contact us a worldvisionvoices(at)worldvision.ca.

This won’t be our only offline activity. Stay tuned for more ideas. Thank you for taking another step towards helping to end child slavery!

– Cheryl Hotchkiss Campaign Manager

Help Wanted: End Child Slavery Petition