On the Beach

On the Beach

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Modern Day Slavery - an Article by Robyn Hearn

Here's an article written by Robyn Hearn along with a link to the local newspaper that showed up at the event she was a part of planning and also an article written by one of her youth pastors that mentions the event.  Young people doing great things - love it!

PQNews article: http://www.pqbnews.com/community/159468965.html
Pastors Point: http://www.pqbnews.com/opinion/160763215.html



According to www.ijm.org, there are over twenty-seven million slaves in the world today, a higher figure than any other time recorded in history.
We’ve all learned about the history of slavery. We know of the millions of Africans being shipped and sold around the world for free labour until slavery’s supposed “abolishment” in 1833. Still, though, so few of people are aware that slavery is still going on today.
While William Wilberforce and the British Legislature succeeded in illegalizing the practice of one human owning another, this certainly did not rid the world of forced labour.
Today we define slavery as “people forced to work against their will under violence or threat of violence and are paid nothing.”1 While slavery, historically, was mainly limited to Africans being owned by Caucasians, slavery, today, has moved across to include all race, age, and gender. In fact, slavery takes place all over the world, including North America, and it’s estimated that 40-50% of slaves are children.2
This forced labour includes work in rock quarries, rice mills, sweatshops, brick kilns, fisheries, as well as prostitution. One becomes a slave either through violence or deception. In the case of deception, a family is typically doing very poorly financially and is desperate. Maybe a “friend of a friend” offers to loan some money in exchange for a bit of work; the family agrees and is completely unaware that they just sold themselves, or their child, into slavery.
When I first heard about modern day slavery, I was overwhelmed, shocked, and upset, but I also knew that just feeling bad wasn’t enough. I needed to do something more. Since then, I’ve started a fundraiser at my youth group in Parksville, Pym3. I’ve been so blown away by how willing people are to get involved once they’ve heard what’s going on. There are several organizations that are physically freeing slaves, and we’ve chosen to fight slavery through donations to International Justice Mission2.
Although, in the past, slaves were freed by simply buying them and releasing them, abolitionists have learned from previous mistakes and seen that this actually grows and stimulates the slave trade. “IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local officials to secure immediate victim rescue and aftercare, to prosecute perpetrators and to ensure that public justice systems - police, courts and laws - effectively protect the poor.2” The biggest advantage to working this way is that we’re not only holding perpetrators and officials accountable, but we’re also helping to prevent future cases.
Our goal is no longer to just free one or two people, but rather to actually eliminate the modern day slave trade from our world.
If you would like to get involved, you can make a donation at www.ijm.org or contact Pym’s fundraiser team at robalyn@shaw.ca.



1www.freetheslaves.net
2www.ijm.org
3www.pym.ca