Blog Tag: slavery
#MyFreedomDay 2018
Posted by Peter MUIR
CNN is asking students and schools to join them on March 14 for #MyFreedomDay.
The event will involved students from around the world organising events at their school on the day to highlight modern slavery and celebrate freedom.
Right now, 40 million people are trapped in slavery. At least 10 million of those are children. This day aims to develop awareness about this issue.
CNN will feature a selection of student action on CNN TV, CNN.com and CNN Facebook. A few schools will even receive a visit from a CNN correspondent, who will report live from the school.
If you’re doing something to raise awareness of modern slavery, let us know your plans by telling us on Twitter or Instagram, using #MyFreedomDay. (You must be aged 13 or older to post on social media).
Find out more at cnn.com/myfreedom
You can CNN coverage of the 2017 events here.
DC team runs a 24 Hour Race
Posted by Peter MUIR
Over the past month, 16 DC Year 12 and 13 students have been busy working towards a goal. This goal is to help stop human trafficking and slavery.
Last weekend these students represented Discovery College to help ‘Stop the Traffik’ by participating in the 24 Hour Race. It was the first time that DC had participate din the event, which saw teams run a continuous relay for 24 hours. Held at the Peak, the event aims to raise awareness to combat the issue of human trafficking while raising funds to benefit anti-slavery charities.
This race included about 30 local and international schools in Hong Kong, with events taking place in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur over the same weekend.
The goal of the Discovery College team is to support The Mekong Club, who aims to ‘create educational platforms, events, forums and resources to raise awareness and capital to combat modern day slavery and human trafficking’.
To help raise funds a bake sale will be held on the 27th November, where an information booth will be set to provide information on the issue, which is said to affect 21 million people worldwide who are regarded as modern days slaves.
If you consider that t is not acceptable for people to be sold, then take action by supporting this DC group. Help make a difference now by donating to the team through the team’s Just Giving account.
Boko Haram – another case of slavery?
Posted by Peter MUIR
It was great to see the solidarity and concern expressed by DC students in today’s White Ribbon day – an act to show support for the girls kidnapped in Nigeria. Something to keep in mind though is that such acts of kidnapping in Africa happen a lot more than we realise. According to this article the Boko Haram is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Africa’s slavery crisis.
The article reports that that as many as six million Nigerian children had been trafficked at some time in their lives. And it may well be that the we as consumers are purchasing products that come out of the slavery supply chain – children in West Africa are trafficked (that is, kidnapped and forced to work against their will – slavery) to work in the Ivory Coast’s cocoa farms that supply about 40% of the world’s chocolate. As pointed out in the article, there is no guarantee that the chocolate you enjoy has not been produced using young slaves. Other products have slavery in their supply chains; the Slavery Footprint organisation produces a website that will help you work out how many slaves work for you.
Slavery is indeed an issue in Asia, and is present here in Hong Kong. Last December Matthew Friedman, an international human trafficking expert presented information about slavery in Asia and the work being done by groups such as Hong Kong-based Liberty Asia to address it.
If the kidnapping case in Nigeria did not get as much media coverage, what would your response be? Would you be as compelled to do something about it? If you are keen to get involved in doing something about human slavery and be an agent of change, email Mr Muir – peter.muir@dc.edu.hk – to sign up.
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.
