Help STOP Forced Labour!
Taking action to stop forced labour around the world
By: Lindsay Peach (Miranda)
Can you Imagine?
Imagine working every day with little or no pay? You wouldn't have nearly enough money to be able to support yourself and your family. Even children are brought into forced labour, many through human trafficking. You could be brutally hurt and beaten, or receive some type of punishment if you don't work as hard as you should, even though you're not making anything near a reasonable amount of money. All of this, is what forced labour REALLY is, and, it's possible to stop it, the thing is, you just have to know how!
10 Easy Ways to Help
- Shift your spending to companies that don't use forced labour to make their products. Boycotting a specific brand would also work.
- Make a petition against a company or companies that use forced labour to produce their products
- Use the power of your entire school to act against the companies using forced labour
- Create pressure onto the companies by telling and showing them everything you know about their working conditions
- Contact higher status politicians or even world leaders, such as the president, about the problems and discuss how they could help you address them
- Buy locally grown food instead of food from companies that have bad working conditions
- Interview experts on forced labour and bad working conditions and see what they have to say about the subject
- Go onto a local new station and inform people of what is going on and what you are doing to help people who are forced into labour
- Have fundraisers and earn money to donate to people who work in a forced labour community
- Protest and have rallies in a peaceful manner while informing people of this problem
Notes on Taking Action:
- Write your own "vision statement," a clear idea for your mission that you can share and explain to people.
- In anything you write or say, make sure to add in WHY other people should participate in helping. Give them a real, strong reason!
- Remember that when you are speaking about this subject, be sure of yourself and sound confident!
- Use facts and evidence in anything you say or write about this! The stronger and more outrageous the facts and statistics are, the better!
- For public events, speeches, or protests, make posters, use photos, use charts, or even make pamphlets to hand out to people so they have a better understanding of how THEY can help
It's as Easy as Writing a Letter!
An easy and efficient thing to do to help raise awareness is to write a letter to your newspaper or send it to the white house! But just keep in mind to:
- Be firm and to the point, but not rude
- Have the letter be formal and mature, so people will take you seriously
- Have everyone in your class sign the letter at the bottom of it