Monthly Archives: December 2013
Trafficking in Asia: Slavery in our Day and Age
Posted by Peter MUIR
Today at DC Year 9 and 10 students were presented a talk titled “Trafficking in Asia: Slavery in our Day and Age” by Matthew Friedman. In this talk, Mr Friedman described a range of different human trafficking cases often found within Southeast Asia, including sex trafficking, forced labour and domestic servitude examples. He outlined the various ways used to address the problem and provides a critique of their relevance in the present-day fight.
Matthew Friedman is an international human trafficking expert with more than 25 years of experience as an activist, programme designer, evaluator and manager. He currently supports the counter-trafficking initiatives of three organisations: Freeland Foundation based in Thailand, Liberty Asia, based in Hong Kong, and the Mekong Club, an organisation of Hong Kong-based private sector businesspeople who have joined forces to fight human trafficking in Asia.
He also highlighted how human slavery exists here in Hong Kong. More can be see about this issue in these clips that were a Pearl TV news feature.
Plastic Free Seas needs a volunteer
Posted by Peter MUIR
Can you HELP?? Plastic Free Seas needs a volunteer (or a small group) to assist with a trash tracking project. It is not technical and should only take a few hours – especially if you can read Chinese! They need a document/map produced for a meeting on Tuesday. Please let us know if you can spare some time Sunday or Monday – email tracey@plasticfreeseas.org
Looking for global citizens to represent DC
Posted by Peter MUIR
We are looking for a group of students to represent DC at the GIN852 Conference – Hong Kong’s very own Global Issues Network conference. If you are keen to make a change – then this conference is for you!
The GIN852 conference aims to achieve the following goals: To provide a basis for inter-school collaboration in solving local Hong Kong issues; and to encourage long-term course of actions to combat urgent problems in Hong Kong. Conference activities include action groups, keynote speakers, a film festival, simulations, and a school exchange fair. Students who attend will both an audience and also involved in presenting to other students. The theme for this year’s conference is “Sustainable Planning, Immediate Action.”
This event will be held at International Christian School March 1st-2nd 2014 and is open to students in Years 10-12. The cost for each student and supervisor is HK$250, which includes conference materials, and food. To sign up – click here
10 December – Human Rights Day
Posted by Peter MUIR
The annual Human Rights Day marks the anniversary of the Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. To find out more visit the UN Human Rights Day website.
This year’s theme is ’20 Years Working for Your Rights’ marking 20 years since the United Nations General Assembly created the mandate of High Commissioner for the promotion and protection of all human rights in December 1993.
One group at DC working towards the achievement of universal human rights is the DC Labour Rights group. This group is working towards improving the rights of workers in the VTech, aiming to engage in a dialogue with this large company, aiming to collaborate with them to agree upon suitable working conditions.
CAS Inspiration – Natasha Suri
Posted by Peter MUIR
In 2012 16-year-old Natasha Suri gained first hand knowledge about the high volume of food that gets discarded daily by small restaurants and bakeries. Natasha became motivated to find a way to redistribute this food to those in need, and along with her friend Siena they began to address this community need by collecting food donations from various vendors and delivering them to local shelters. As her program grew to accommodate more food donors and recipient organizations, she launched FoodSync, a crowd-mapping website that allows one to track and record food donations in real time. This youth-run food recovery organization strives to focus on programs that are often neglected, such as a homeless shelter that serves male adults that does not receive a lot of publicity or donations. Currently, FoodSync volunteers average food collections of 500+ kilos per month for redistribution to shelters and community programs and they seek to triple this goal over the coming year.
