Human Trafficking (Week Seven)

Slavery is illegal in every country and outlawed by several international treaties, including the Palermo Protocol from year 2000 , which has been fundamental in recognizing and defining the rapidly growing world-wide criminal industry of human trafficking. The exploitation and violation of human beings in the form of slavery has changed its name and its face, but nonetheless still exists, comprising a 32 milliard/billion USD illegal industry, second only to drug dealing, equal to the illegal arms trade, and, grievously, the fastest growing of criminal industries. Currently, there are an estimated 27 million modern-day slaves across the world, men, women and children, who are trafficked primarily for sexual exploitation, exploitative/forced labour, organ theft, forced begging or to be child soldiers.

The numbers are staggering and the forms of exploitation heart-wrenching, so much so that the reality of it all becomes very hard to grasp. While a trafficker can earn back in one week the money he or she has paid for a person trafficked into prostitution, victims of forced labour can be trapped in bonded debt for generations. Children forced into begging may often have inflicted injuries to attract more empathy, and babies are one of the most highly at-risk categories for organ theft. There are an estimated 200,000 – 300,000 known child soldiers in 20 countries today, brainwashed to kill as a way of living.   

Our teacher, Rochelle Potter, or Ro for short, has grown up as a missionary kid in Japan (and is consequently bilingual J). After completing her degree in Biblical Theology and Communications, she has dedicated most of her working life to fighting human trafficking. She shared with us some of her extensive in-depth knowledge on the topic, covering aspects such as push and pull factors, which make people more susceptible to falling pray to traffickers, push factors being things that push you to want to leave a region (such as low employment, lack of educational opportunities, political corruption, armed conflict, famine or drought) and pull factors being things that attract you to a new region (for example relative freedom or job opportunities). Ro also explained how we as consumers create a market traffickers are answering to, and as a result of a lowest price philosophy and a global economy that decreases accountability, we buy and eat products harvested by slaves.  

Ro emphasized that there are tons of things we can do to fight trafficking. “We’re going to die as a movement if we don’t find ways to take action; we need to translate awareness into action,” she underlined, which brought me back to a comment from Janna from the first week of teaching in reference to at-risk children: “How much more aware can we be. I get tired of people making an issue out of an issue. I want us to stop talking about this and start joining the people who are already doing this”.

So instead of going in more detail into the statistics, facts, definitions and subcultures related to human trafficking, I would like to encourage you to do some research on the topic, and then think and pray about how you can translate your increasing awareness into action. It’s also important to realize that in addition to rescue and restoration, prevention is a significant factor in fighting the trafficking of humans. Investing in the lives of children, especially at-risk children, and supporting families address some of the root causes for trafficking. Buying wisely, preferably fair-trade and local products, is also something all of us can do to decrease the demand for products that involve slave labour, as well as pushing companies to be accountable.

You may not be called to dedicate your life to anti-trafficking like Ro has done, but that doesn’t mean you can do nothing at all. Ro left us with an exercise she asked us to think about. I’d like to share it with you as it might help you come up with ways to increase awareness and take action on the topic. She suggested we come up with different ways to take action if we have

                                                          one minute

                                                          one hour

                                                          one day

                                                          one week

                                                          one month

                                                          one year

                                                          or one lifetime to give.

In one minute, for example, you can buy fair-trade chocolate instead of chocolate made from cocoa beans harvested by trafficked children in West Africa or you can ask if your favourite coffee shop offers or would consider offering fair-trade coffee. In one day you could write an article on the subject and in one year or a lifetime you could make a significant impact on the life of an at-risk child. Just to put a few ideas out there J  

Project Planning and Development (Week Six)

I have brought You glory on earth by completing the work You gave me to do.

Jesus Christ (John 17:4, NIV)

Lance Rawlins, who currently works for the Women and Children’s Advocacy Centre, taught us on Project Planning and Development. He has a degree in Business Management, which he has been able to utilize in advising and training people working in grass-roots development projects. After looking at concepts such as a relational definition of poverty and an asset-based approach to community development (as opposed to a needs-based approach) we got the chance to get started on planning our own community development project. Instead of trying to plan every aspect of how to move forward with the preschool (Shepherd’s Heart) in Malawi, for the purpose of this week I narrowed it down, as Lance suggested, and focused only on the aspect of motivating and empowering the caregivers/volunteers through training.  

The premise for a relational definition of poverty is that God is relational. He’s triune and deeply values relationships. He longs to be in a relationship with us and has created us to live in a relationship with each other and with creation. In his teaching Lance defined the foundational relationships in our lives as our relationship with God, with ourselves, with each other and with creation. We were created for intimacy with God and community with each other. As for our relationship with ourselves, our identity can be built on the understanding that each of us has been created uniquely in God’s image, with inherent worth and dignity. These qualities are not something we can lose or do anything to gain, or even give to someone, for that matter, since they’re innate in every human being, including those who may be looked down on or pitied by society. In relation to creation, we’re created for stewardship over it, not to exploit the resources we have, but to take care of creation and steward our resources well.

In materialistic terms we may be wealthier than the people we are working with, for instance in the developing world, but in terms of relationships, intimacy with God, an understanding of inherent worth and dignity in every human being, including ourselves, a sense of community, and stewardship over creation, we may be a whole lot poorer than the people we’re working with. Thinking in relational terms shifts the definition of poverty to all of us. It makes us see that we are all rich and we are all poor, and forces us to have a more holistic view on people and communities. It urges us to break away from a mentality Lance described as the god complex, a mindset that may not be blatantly obvious, but nevertheless finds its expression in more subtle ways, allowing us to think along the lines of “I’m rich. I can teach you” or “I’m Christian, so I have all the answers”.   

Asset-based community development logically follows from a relational definition of poverty. While a needs-based approach focuses on a community’s deficiencies that need to be fixed, usually by having outsiders come in to address them, an asset-based approach is built on the capacities and skills of the people actually living in the local community. The asset-based approach engages the local community in investing themselves and their resources into building the community, whereas the needs approach, denying basic community wisdom, removes the community from itself and leads the residents to believe they cannot bring about change themselves and that their well-being depends on the people coming in.

When we want to be part of a change for the better in a community, we ought to “start with living and by taking the small steps” Lance explained. He encouraged us to start looking at communities in relational terms, to view people and communities more holistically and first and foremost, to start within ourselves, by asking how we should change our own thinking and what we can do differently.      

Justice and the Character and Nature of God (Week Five)

Scott Freeman, who has pioneered and led the first Children at Risk Schools in Costa Rica together with his wife Leslie, taught us on the topic of Justice and the Character and Nature of God. He started the week by having us draw how we see God. People were incredibly creative in their drawings, depicting Him in a variety of different ways, including music, footprints in the sand, an open door and an intricate tree. In my picture I drew God as big and powerful, radiating light, but also gentle and loving, with His arms around me, bending down to kiss the top of my head.  After we’d each shared about our picture, Scott concluded that what we believe about God defines our lives. His statement made perfect sense. As followers of Christ we obviously believe there is a God, so logically what we believe about Him shapes our lives. It characterizes who we are. Scott went on to say: “This is what you know in your heads, and maybe some of you may know in your hearts, but for the rest of your lives you will try to reconcile your heart with your head”.

I’m not sure, but I think Scott was speaking in reference to the age-old question of the discrepancy between the state of the world and the just and compassionate God of the Scriptures (certainly a very relevant question for anyone working with at-risk children). Janna, our first speaker, encouraged us to ask questions, and not just in class, but in general, to be willing to wrestle with God about the difficult ones. It’s how we learn, by first admitting we don’t know. Even though this side of eternity we may have more questions than answers, we can choose to keep asking, to chew on the difficult ones, and to draw our hope from knowing who God is and what He is like.

We had our classes together with the discipleship training school and Scott had us do a couple of activities outside the classroom. On Tuesday morning we went to the Salvation Army in central San Jose, where part of the group stayed to sort out hundreds of donated shoes into pairs, except apparently for the most part the original pair was nowhere to be found, so the task was to find a left and a right shoe similar enough to be put together. I guess a pair of mismatching shoes is better than no shoes at all, but just think if that’s what you had to wear for example for a job interview, or as someone pointed out, you were a little child and those were the only pair you could wear for school.  Surely you’d hope the people around you had the grace to see past your shoes.

While some of the students worked on the mountain of shoes, the rest of us went to buy bread to give to the homeless. Finding people living in the streets was not hard. Many of them actually found us. Since I don’t speak Spanish, I wasn’t quite sure how to reach out to them, so I decided to at least sit down on the pavement so as not to be towering above the people we were supposed to be reaching out to. At one point, Robbie, who is one of our staff, motioned me to come over and asked if I’d like her to interpret for me, which I thought was very considerate of her. So I sat down with her and Hannah and the ladies they were having a conversation with, and both Hannah and Robbie interpreted for us.  

I know it would be so much more ideal to build long-term relationships and to at least be able to offer alternatives to living on the street. But then, I also know anything I do in Costa Rica can only be short-term, and I don’t think I should allow that to stop me from doing anything at all, especially if a window of opportunity opens up right before my eyes.  So I followed the example of my Lord and Saviour, who looked at the overlooked, touched (literally!) the “untouchable” (Mark 1:41) and fellowshipped with the despised. During His walk on earth He did not aim to climb higher but to reach lower, and I believe that is where we still find Him, with the poor and the overlooked (Isaiah 57:15).

The following day, Wednesday, we had an hour of quiet time in a huge park, Parque del este. Afterwards, we met up again to share what we felt some of the different aspects of nature had conveyed to us about God’s character.  Thinking back on the morning, I was reminded of a promotional video clip for a book called One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp (I’ve bought a copy, but haven’t read it yet). If you’d like to take a look at the clip, here’s a youtube link.   

I hope you have a good week! Blessed to be able to share my journey with you!

Behaviour and Behaviour Management (Week Four)

The fourth topic in the CRS, Behaviour and Behaviour Management, was taught by Michelle Grimes, who, having worked as a primary school teacher for fourteen years in an urban inner-city setting in the States, had a wealth of experience to share with us on the subject. We started by simply defining the concept of discipline and considering the differences between discipline and punishment. The difference in definition I found most significant was viewing discipline as child-centered, with the focus on the child’s best interest in helping him/her develop, learn and grow, whereas mere punishment would be adult-centered, focused on the adult retaining control regardless of the best interest of the child.

In addition to getting to know Michelle as a teacher, I also got to know her a little outside the classroom setting. One afternoon we started chatting over lunch and continued our discussion well into the afternoon. Michelle shared about her experience in not only working but also living in a community initially not her own, and I was intrigued to hear about her real-life experience in what Colleen had been talking to us about just a week or so earlier, coming into a community from the outside and engaging in it, living your life alongside the people on a day to day basis. I’ve been considering doing the CRS outreach in two different locations, first in Malawi, as I’ve promised, and then the second half in a different location in Africa, but after talking with Michelle, my heart really resonated with committing to do my outreach in one location only, our sweet little preschool in Malawi.