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I recommend you check out this blog post by Siddharth Kara on CNN.com.  The topic is forced labor in India.

Forced labor can easily give rise to human trafficking, where people like Amina who are desperate for better wage-earning work succumb to offers from traffickers for better jobs in big cities.

Throughout rural West Bengal, I met numerous young girls who fell prey to offers for domestic work in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata. They ended up working for well-to-do families around the clock, and after several months they were paid perhaps ten or twenty percent of the promised wages. Eventually, they are returned home, where they are just as desperate as before.

I asked one such girl, “Khadija”, if she would ever take such an offer again.

“Yes,” she replied, “There is no other work for me. What choice do I have?”

At the end of the post they pose a question, “We want to know what you think… What do you think needs to be done to stop this practice?”

Oh, me! Me! Pick me! (Imagine me raising my hand in an excited fashion).  Notice in the quoted excerpt above what Khadija said she would take an offer again because there is no other work for her.  One answer to what can be done to stop human trafficking is to give people other opportunities to generate a sustainable income for themselves.  Hey, what do you know? That’s what Stop Traffick Fashion is about!

One of the organizations that makes our products is Freeset in Kolkata.  They hire women who have been trafficked and employed in the sex trade to make fair trade bags and t-shirts.  Not only are they paid a fair wage, they have a new, free, healthy lifestyle, are taught basic literacy, receive health care, a pension and child care is provided!  You can support these women and enable Freeset to hire more women by purchasing their products. The number of women they can employ is directly tied to how many products they can sell so check them out!  In our next post we’ll share some exciting updates from Freeset, as well.

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