How Do You MOMbo?

Welcome to MOMbo TV, a global celebration of motherhood.  We gather here from far and wide to share with and learn from the experiences of mothers around the world.  We believe that there is wisdom to be gleaned from other mothers, especially those mothering in cultural contexts very different from our own.

The MOMbo team is comprised of stay at home moms, work at home moms and career moms.  We are married moms and single moms.  We are raising young children. We have raised adult children.  From our respective locations around the world, we bring our contributions to the MOMbo community. We come with an eye toward understanding and appreciation–and the desire to effectively model these values for our children.

We are a global community and as such extend to you the invitation to participate. Motherhood is a dance, and we look forward to learning more about how you MOMbo.

Paying the Price: Mothers In Iraq

by, Faiza Al-Araji 

 

Peace be upon you.

 

We are supposed to be rational creatures, who organize ourselves to live in harmony, so that peace will prevail for all.  The foolishness and greed of some, however, facilitate wars, bloodshed and the destruction of others.  Their countries are destroyed.  They are displaced from their homes. They live in thwarting conditions like poverty, hunger, moral decay and economic collapse. These things destroy the fabric of societies and embitter the lives of those living in them adversely impacting future generations. 

Now, after more than five years of war and occupation in Iraq, I want to tell the real stories of Iraqi women, Iraqi women, those still living in Iraq, those who immigrated with husbands and children to neighboring countries like Jordan and Syria and those who went ‘west’ to Europe and America.

As a featured contributor at Mombo TV, I will be writing for an audience of mothers around the world. I will be addressing readers from different countries, readers….whom I do not know and who do not know me personally. We are, however, bound by a sense of humanitarianism… if not by language, religion or culture. We share the same Earth…same sky and live under one Lord…God, who created us all…one God… who has no partners and no match.

Today I want to talk about Iraqi mothers and what they have suffered since 2003, when the first troops from America and other allied countries invaded Iraq under the pretext of liberating the country from the dictatorial regime.

 My neighbor in Baghdad lost one of her sons when he was killed by stray bullets. Her husband had a stroke and died due to grief over the loss of his son.  My neighbor had to leave her home and travel to the United Arab Emirates with only one of her sons, while the rest of the children sought asylum in Sweden.  They were young people, newly-graduated from university, and yet they were forced to live elsewhere as refugees.

The wife of the gardener who used to tend the gardens of our neighborhood in Baghdad lost one of her sons. An armed militia attacked them and drove them out of their house forcing the family to flee and live jobless in another village. The once employed gardener now has a heart condition that requires surgery. The family is in need of continuous financial aid because the husband was the family’s primary income earner.

These are just two stories about Iraqi mothers that I know.  More will be shared in the future. Perhaps their stories will shed new insight about what the Iraqi mothers have suffered as a result of the war and the occupation…. They used to live in their houses, facing the difficulties of the past life; the war and the embargo. Life was not easy for them, but at least they used to live peacefully in their homes, with their husbands and children. Now, even that security and settlement has become something of the past….

Million Dollar Moms: Purchasing With A Purpose

Ted Ning is the Director of the LOHAS Conference and Executive Editor of the LOHAS Journal. LOHAS is an organization that is working hard to encourage business leaders to be more responsive to the needs of socially-conscious consumers. Hi Ted, welcome.

 

TN: Hi Kemi, thank you for having me.

 

RM: Now Ted, I would consider myself to be a fairly active LOHASian, but I would imagine that there would be a lot of moms out there that are not familiar with the acronym. What is LOHAS and what exactly is a LOHASian?

 

TN: Well, it is a concept that really identifies the market that serves conscious consumers. This consumer base is really identified as being about 50 million people, but a lot of these people have no idea that they are identified as such, and it’s really more of a “psycho-graphic” identification as opposed to something that is very concrete, such as age, gender, and income bracket.

 

RM: Okay, and LOHAS—the letters stand for what, exactly?

 

TN: LOHAS is an acronym for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. What it is is broken down into… it talks about the market that I said before serves conscious consumers. We’ve identified that market as being a $227 billion market.

 

RM: So moms who, let’s say, purchase eco-friendly diapers or organic, pesticide-free baby food, these moms would be considered LOHASian?

 

TN: Absolutely. These are people who want to buy things that are in line with their values and are looking at products from a holistic point of view rather than just a “Is this the cheapest product I can find?” type of value.

 

A typical day in the life of a so-called LOHASian, would be something like this: They wake up in the morning. They maybe do some contemplation or meditation, do some yoga, perhaps. Then if they are a mother, they perhaps feed their children with organic foods. They are very aware of their kids’ education. They are involved with their children. They would drive their children to school in a hybrid vehicle and then maybe perhaps pick up a coffee from a coffee shop that would be Fair Trade and listen to NPR and be involved in a lot of social activities that serve the community as well as their children’s development.

 

RM: That certainly sounds like a lot of holistic moms. Now Ted, one of the things we are committed to here is empowering mothers by providing them with the information they need to make better, more-informed purchasing decisions for their families. In your work with the business community, how responsive have you found companies to be to the expressed desires of socially-conscious consumers?

 

TN: I think this is a new and growing concern for a lot of businesses. Clearly, with the changing landscape as it is today, with global warming being in the forefront, gas prices as being as high as they are, the current issues with obesity, there are many companies now who are taking much more of a proactive approach to this than being reactive to what is going on and being kind of behind the eight ball. So I think a lot of different companies are very interested in engaging these types of consumers.

 

RM: I recently had an opportunity to speak with Nancy Massotto, the founder and director of the Holistic Moms Network. One of the things that we talked about was the sheer diversity of the “holistic passions”, if you will. Do you mind sharing some of the research you have found or complied regarding market segmentation and the specific interests of conscious consumers? I mean, are all LOHASians the same?

 

TN: No, no. Like I said, it’s more of an identification of a psycho-graphic behavior rather than trends in terms of gender and income brackets and education and such. This is a type of belief that is held by a lot of different people, whether it is location, race, and all different kinds of things. So in terms of them, it is really something that these types of consumers are very, very interested in, putting their values in front of their purchasing process and purchasing decisions.

 

For example: There are people and products out there that are looking for a connection. The consumers are really looking for more of a holistic, worldly value placed into it. If there is a company that provides something of the story of their product and how they serve the environment, how they serve a smaller farm or a smaller sourcing community; that is something that is very important for these types of consumers.

 

RM: A recent study carried out by Nielsen, I believe, revealed that 85% of the time, moms were responsible for making the purchasing decisions in the family. In other words, moms have quite a bit of purchasing power. So Ted, what are some of the things that your organization is doing to encourage businesses to take seriously our desire for organic, eco-friendly and fairly-traded products? How does LOHAS work?

 

TN: Well, the ironic thing is that there are these different companies in different market sectors that are doing the same community, same consumer, but they are not talking to each other. For example, the solar company is not talking to the yoga company, who is not talking to the organic foods company, who is not talking to the aroma-therapist, acupuncturist or the spa. These are places their consumers all go to. All of these markets sectors are targeting the same consumer, yet the communication between these has not really developed as such as that it would be prevalent or really profitable for businesses. What we are trying to do is really promote the fact that you can be sustainable, can be healthy, and also provide a successful business model, as well as creating strategic relations within the different market sectors that create LOHAS.

 

RM: Great. So you have an annual conference and you publish a journal.

 

TN: Yes. The way we do this is we provide a lot of information on our website at www.lohas.com. We also have an annual business executive event in which we have high-end business executives come, as well as prominent media, to really strategize and expand LOHAS as a market. We also have our LOHAS Journal, in which we are able to provide some data and resources for businesses and individuals who are interested in getting involved in LOHAS and learning more about LOHAS business practices.

 

RM: Well that’s fantastic! Hopefully we’ll see more green, fairly-traded products into the market and hopefully we’ll begin to think seriously about social responsibility.

 

TN: I hope so.

 

RM: Well, Ted, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been great having you on.

 

TN: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

 

…

 

I’m here with Mary Morrison of the Fair Trade Resource Network. So Mary, what exactly is the Fair Trade Resource Network and how did it start?

 

MM: We are a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and we started in about 1999. The Fair Trade Federation, the organization I mentioned earlier, really is about supporting Fair Trade businesses. They are trade organization, so that is another federal-type of designation. The consumer education piece was what was missing, and so some people got together and said, “Let’s just focus on Fair Trade education” and so that’s how FTRN was born.

 

RM: Are there any pressing policy issues right now, for example, that our listeners should be made aware of?

 

MM: We are primarily dedicated to education as far as schools and consumers and businesses, so we are not involved in policy issues, per se, so I can’t really answer that question specifically. But our mission is really about organizing, creating and disseminating Fair Trade information so people can feel empowered, be empowered, actually talk with others about what Fair Trade is and act upon purchasing Fair Trade products. It’s actually about acting upon one’s values, what we say we believe in, and getting them to match them.

 

RM: Okay. So what are some of the things that the Network is doing to try and make trade fair?

 

MM: Great! One of our, I guess you would say, core competencies is creating publications. We actually have a couple. There’s “The Conscious Consumer: Promoting Economic Justice Through Fair Trade”, which is available on our website. We also have another publication called “The Retailer’s Guide.” That one is all about how to set up a Fair Trade business. “The Conscious Consumer” is all about: What is Fair Trade? You hear a lot, what is it? We actively go out and distribute that information. There are actually fund raisers involved. They are not very expensive publications, and it is something that for a nominal fee you can buy from our website or on Amazon.

 

We’re also the organizer for World Fair Trade Day. World Fair Trade Day started in Europe and we worked with the International Federation for International Trade out of The Netherlands. We work together with them to basically create educational materials for, again, people to be empowered—municipalities, churches, whoever wants to have an event around educating people about Fair Trade. We supply them the materials, the education kits in order to do that. That includes media kits, information about Fair Trade, a poster to advertise the event,

 

World Fair Trade Day is the second Saturday of [May] every year. I don’t have a calendar in front of me, but I believe that it is May 12 of next year. So we actively promote World Fair Trade Day to the US and we have some Canadian folks involved, too. You would come to our website and basically get the information about “What Can I do to Promote Fair Trade in my Community?” And we would give you the tools to do that.

 

RM: That’s fantastic! I was actually in London celebrating [World Fair Trade Day] this year.

 

MM: Wonderful! That must have been fantastic!

 

RM: Oh yeah, yeah it was great. Most of my personal acquaintances know that I am quite keen on purchasing fairly-traded goods, whenever possible. I do try to buy things from companies or organizations committed to ensuring that workers were not exploited during the process. I am often asked whether purchasing a fairly-traded handbag or chocolate bar or banana really makes a difference. How do you respond to that?

 

MM: It absolutely makes a difference. Again, the model has been around, this Fair Trade model has been around for over 50 years, longer than that. But as if you look at the history of Fair Trade, it started mainly in the craft industry through churches, church groups, missions, missionaries. That’s how it got off the ground and it’s come a long way. We have a long way to go, but it is definitely more mainstream.

 

You can be assured—I think one of the things we miss as far as “What is Fair Trade?” You know, Fair Trade means Fair Price. The person that produced, the cooperative—it’s generally a cooperative, a group of people producing products—it’s a fair price. One that’s developed through dialogue and participation. It covers the cost of production, it improves the standard of living for the producers’ family, cooperative, and community, and it supports environmentally-sound practices.

 

RM: How much of the money actually goes to producers of products?

 

MM: That’s an interesting question because that really … because with coffee, there is a social premium—there’s like Fair Trade price and then generally an extra nickel that goes to like, building wells in the community. It depends on the cooperative, the cost to buy, and the situation, but there is what the producer gets and then what goes into the community: What do they need for infrastructure? Do they need schools? Do they need walls built? There is generally a committee or someone locally deciding where that money goes. But there is actually an organization called World of Good, and they are quantifying… you can actually go on their website and look up how much. I haven’t been there in quite a while, but it’s a Fair Trade Pricing Tool. Basically, they are creating a new level of standardization in Fair Trade in the Hand Craft sector.

 

It varies because you’re dealing with Fair Trade. Fair Trade means within the context of the country. What’s fair in India is going to be different than in Tanzania.

 

RM: Sure. I think if the goal of Fair Trade was to make everyone in the world a middle-class American, then I would question the economic likelihood of such a proposal. But for me, Fair Trade is not just about economic, it’s about justice. It’s about making sure that the people who produce products that I buy for my family are not working in a way that precludes them from providing for their own.

 

MM: Exactly. It’s an equalizer. I think that there is an extraordinary opportunity for people to impact positively, not even positively because that is a kind of glossing over, but really transforming people’s lives all around the world by purchasing or being involved in Fair Trade. Whether you want to purchase products…

 

We’re not going to buy ourselves out of this problem of poverty, so I think that other people can get involved in promoting Fair Trade wherever they are, with their churches or setting up their own group within their community, to really get people aware about, although we are a consumer-driven country and we buy stuff every day, if we actually focused on buying stuff that supported people rather than marginalizing them, then this world would be very, very different than what it is now.

 

RM: Absolutely, absolutely. … Mary, I first became familiar with Fair Trade while still living in the United Kingdom. I lived in both London and Oxford, as I mentioned earlier; Oxford, being an officially-recognized Fair Trade City. They were two relatively-easy places to find Fair Trade products. But, as a mom living in the US, how would I go about finding Fair Trade products? I know you mentioned a couple of places earlier, but do you mind mentioning those again?

 

MM: Sure. Of course you can always go to our website if I miss anything: www.ftrn.org, and we have a resource link. We have resources not only for purchasing but also more information about Fair Trade. There’s lots of stuff for free, other things for nominal fees. We’re not a membership organization, but we do accept donations because we are tax-deductible. So we encourage people, if you find the information useful, to contribute so we can keep moving on our mission.

 

So purchasing: For example, traditional grocery stores like Safeway, larger retailers, do carry specifically Fair Trade products. Again, it’s more in the coffee, there is Fair Trade tea. There is chocolate, but you have to look for the TransFair label. It’s a black-and-white logo of a person holding kind of like a globe. For foodstuff, there’s also Fair Trade bananas, pineapple. What’s just come out recently—they just came out with this in Europe—but Fair Trade soccer balls or sports balls that are coming out in the US. Those are coming.

 

The easiest way to buy Fair Trade is to go online and do a search, or you can go directly to stores like Ten Thousand Villages, they have thousands of stores in the US. It may not be convenient if you’re a mom living in a rural area, and you can order from them online. Serve a Greater Gift—they also have a catalog that they mail out. You can go online and look at their products. There are so many. If you were doing a search for ‘Fair Trade Products”, you would find more than… you’d have way too many choices.

 

What you want to look for, again, the reputable ones that have the Fair Trade Federation logo on their website which would be saying “This is an authentic, reputable company,” has some type of standards that they’re reporting to the Fair Trade Federation; and again www.fairtradefederation.org would give you a complete list of stores which you can actually access through their website.

 

RM: Fair Trade products aren’t more expensive than other products, are they?

 

MM: It depends. The overhead, for example, can be different. I find products very reasonable. I won’t go shopping for a basket at Wal-Mart. If I need something, I will go to Ten Thousand Villages. They have beautiful hand-made baskets for $3 or $6. That’s a great deal! And I see the story. I see the face of the person, the story. For me, it was “Of course I’m going to support them.”

 

So it depends. Coffee is a little bit more expensive, there’s been this rumor about quality. [The] quality is exceptional. I mean, yes, in the very beginning, I think it was a very, very poor product, but there are so many wonderful ways to buy Fair Trade coffee. Again, the TransFair logo is very important in finding products. But another great way to look for coffee is through a cooperative in the US called Cooperative Coffees. I have one of my board members is in association with them. They are a great organization with about distributing Fair Trade coffee in addition to the TransFair logo. There are so many great resources out there, even if you just get online and start searching or googling or however you search, there are just going to be so many great resources to find great stuff, beautiful materials, handmade.

 

RM: To learn more about the work of the Fair Trade Resource Network, or to find out how you can become a Fair Trader, please visit the website. And Mary, again that address?

 

MM: www.ftrn.org

 

Bittersweet: Chocolate, Children and Ethics

Dr. Bama Athreya is Executive Director of the International Labor Rights Forum, an organization dedicated to achieving just and fair treatment to workers worldwide. Last year, I had an opportunity to interview Dr. Athreya for a Fair Trade Month Radio Mom Show episode.  Here is a transcript of that interview….

  

RM: Now chocolate is certainly one of the most loved commodities in the world, and with Halloween holiday approaching this month, I would think that October is a pretty big one for the chocolate industry here in the States, but Bama, how big of a business is chocolate?

 

BA: It is a huge business. Statistics that we’ve found estimate that Americans consume about $13 billion worth of chocolate candy a year, so there is a lot of money in it. The money is, by and large, concentrated in the hands of a handful pretty giant, multinational corporations—some of the names you know and love are Hershey’s, M&M Mars, Nestlé, and they are the biggies in the industry and bringing in billions of dollars a year in chocolate sales. Halloween season is the big holiday for them—this is when they sell the most chocolate.

 

RM: The primary ingredient in chocolate is cocoa, which, of course, is harvested in the form of the cocoa bean. But Bama, where are most of these beans grown? Where do they usually come from?

 

BA: Almost half of the world’s chocolate is produced in one country—Ivory Coast, in West Africa. Another 20% or so of the world’s supply is produced in Ghana, so you have really the majority of the world’s supply coming from West Africa and mostly from Ivory Coast, and the rest of it is scattered over many tropical countries—Indonesia, Ecuador, Venezuela. Ivory Coast is the country we have been most concerned about and it is the giant producer of this commodity.

 

RM: Who determines how much the farmers who actually harvest their beans are paid for their cocoa?

 

BA: The companies will tell you that no one determines it—they will tell you it is the invisible hand of the free market at work.

 

I should back up and say we got involved in this issue about seven years ago when we first heard reports of the trafficking of children in West Africa for use in the Ivory Coast cocoa harvest. We sent a researcher there—we have had a person go back and forth several times now—and we found that there was a very small handful of exporting companies that controlled the cocoa trade. Those names are not quite as visible as the ones I mentioned earlier—Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Barry Callebut, those are the big cocoa traders—and they have a huge say in the establishment of the price for the farmers.

 

RM: Is it safe to say, though, that the farmers are usually underpaid?

 

BA: The farmers are starving! It is very sad. We had staff people come back and report that the farmers were barely making enough to cover the [costs]. In some cases they were leaving cocoa on the trees because they couldn’t afford to harvest it once they had grown it. They are really living on the margins of subsistence, and considering how much the industry is worth and how much we are willing to pay for our chocolate, it is very, very tragic how much suffering there is in the cocoa farms of West Africa.

 

RM: I would imagine that being heavily dependent on the production and sale of cocoa and not being paid well for the cocoa supplied would contribute to wide-spread poverty. You are saying this really is the case in the Ivory Coast?

 

BA: It is the case. The farmers are poor and in most cases getting poorer. It doesn’t seem to matter how much the world prices go up and down, when you get to the level of a farmer that is very isolated in a remote part of the country, they are just dependent on these middlemen who trade the stuff, so they are just taking what they can get.

 

RM: Bama, what sorts of measures have farmers resorted to in an effort to eek out some sort of a profit despite the low sale prices?

 

BA: There is not much they can do in a country like Ivory Coast because they are quite fragmented. You’ve got a lot—and this isn’t just the case with cocoa, but it is a story you can see all over the world—many many small farms and small farmers and they don’t really have any control over their own economic livelihoods because they’re not, we think of them as independent farmers, but really they are not. You can think of them as labor on hire to these global traders who trade cocoa and other commodities and are merely employees. The problem for them is that because they are so isolated one from another, they have a hard time organizing to try to jointly push for a higher price.

 

One thing we have seen in Ghana in particular, but even in Ivory Coast, farmers are starting to form cooperatives. That is one thing they can do—one way they can take back some power. In particular—and one of the things we have been encouraged by—is farmers organizing into cooperatives that then opt out of the whole trading system and opt into a system called fair trade, which guarantees them a sustainable price for their cocoa.

 

In Ghana, I think there are tens of thousands of farmers who are at this point organized into Fair Trade cooperatives and are producing for that market. In Ivory Coast, it is something around 12,000 to 14,000 farmers that are organized and participating in the Fair Trade system. In a way, it is a drop in the bucket, but on the other hand, it is 12,000 to 14,000 farmers that are better off than they would be otherwise.

 

RM: Is there a correlation between the price of cocoa and poverty and the employment of children in the industry?

 

BA: There is definitely a correlation! What we first saw when we started doing this research was that it is almost impossible, as I said, to maintain a sustainable living wage off of harvesting the cocoa, so you want the cheapest possible labor inputs. We were seeing a lot of trafficking—and we are still seeing some, a little bit less than there was—but we are seeing children that are trafficked from one country to another to work on the cocoa harvest. It is because they are able to be controlled, be exploited, they are not paid for their labor, and that just makes the price of the commodity cheaper.

 

Honestly, we have spent a lot of time in West Africa. It is not as if the farmers themselves mean to exploit children but the prices they get are so low and they are trapped on their land, it is the only resource they have, they have to harvest that cocoa any way they can because it is the only means they have to bring in some cash and sustain themselves.

 

RM: What is life like for the children working in the cocoa industry?

 

BA: The only children we managed to interview were children who had escaped from the farms on which they were working and had run away and been given shelter by an NGO and that was how we were able to reach them and talk to them.

 

They had stories of being kept confined on the farms in barracks that had barbed wire around them so they couldn’t escape, being threatened with severe punishment if they tried to escape, having gotten wounds while they were harvesting the beans—they harvest the beans with machetes and tools that are very unsafe for kids to be handling—but they wouldn’t have their wounds treated, they would just be left there. So they are very dramatic stories of what happened. The kids were, very often, lured by false promises from middlemen who said they would be doing other things, who never told them what the real conditions of work would be and were tricked into working on the plantations instead.

 

RM: One thing I have heard in several conversations is that without access to employment, many children and their families would not be able to feed themselves. What do you say to the idea of Western do-gooders who do not understand the connection between the employment of children and their survival?

 

BA: Our basic position on this—and it’s not one that we are making up here in Washington, DC, it is one that comes from the activists that we work with in places like West Africa and South Asia—is that all children have the right to access to basic education.

 

I’ll tell you something, Kemi, I have spent a lot of time myself in very poor villages, mainly in India and southeast Asia, and met with people whose families have been in debt-bondage for generations, and one thing that is really amazing is that if parents have a choice to send their kids to school—if that is actually a real choice for them—they will do it. Nobody wants to have their kids to work, certainly no one wants to put their kids into debt-bondage or see them trafficked. Nobody does—it is universal, not just a Western value. Just ask a parent, they want their kids to get some more education so they can get a better job so they can have a better life and can, presumably, support their parents when they are older.

 

We have seen in these little villages in India, for example, schools and education programs set up and the parents become advocates—and these are parents who have no education themselves—and they will become advocates for education because they really want their children to be able to go to school.

 

We are talking about West African and Ivory Coast, when we went out to the cocoa-growing regions and met with some of these farmers who had no schools anywhere within miles and miles and they were thinking about their own children and they had no option to find a school to put them in. One thing that was a great story of what we saw happen was on one of these Fair Trade cooperatives—I mentioned that we work with farmers who had managed to find ways to organize and participate in a Fair Trade system. (What Fair Trade is is it provides guarantees of sustainable wages for the farmers and basic labor protections, labor conditions and social conditions. You can participate as consumers in the Fair Trade system by looking for the Fair Trade label.) But one thing we saw on Ivory Coast, when farmers had a little bit extra money working with this cooperative, they refurbished an abandoned school nearby. They put their own money into rehabilitating the local school so their kids could go to school.

 

RM: One thing here in the United States is that we do have a lot of educational options. Children are able to either receive schooling or not, and even if they do not, they have access to lots and lots of different materials and information—we do have access as parents—but can you say a little about why schooling is so important in developing countries?

 

BA: It is important because children need options for a future. We have been in regions where things are so bleak, you can’t imagine where, as I said, families have been in debt-bondage for generations. They have been serfs or slaves to landholders for generations. The only way they can get their kids out of that and have them escape from the bleak landscape of no options is for the children to learn how to read and write and to develop some skills that get them beyond having nothing they can possibly do themselves but the brute labor that requires nothing but the strength of your hands and your arms. So education is important because it gives kids a future.

 

RM: Now the kids who end up working in the cocoa industry, do they generally come to work voluntarily? What percentage have you found that are actually trafficked?

 

BA: There are no good statistics, so I cannot answer on percentages, but that’s not accidental, it’s intentional. It has been a real challenge, we’ll say, to collecting reliable information in the region and it’s a challenge that’s as much posed to us by corporations than it is by governments. But we have found anecdotally that the children that we have interviewed are sent by their families. But we went to one of the supplier countries—we went to Mali, which is one of the places these kids originate from—and the families are lured by middlemen who say that their children are going to work in a shop or doing something else. The families in Mali, again, wanting their kids to have more options, send them off without really realizing what the conditions are they are going to.

 

RM: But we have to say that some of the chocolate that is imported to the United States has actually come from cocoa that has been harvested by child slaves. Can we say that?

 

BA: We’d have to say that because the companies, for the seven years that we have been working on this, have refused to document and provide to us any proof that they are sourcing from “clean” farms.  So except for that little niche of Fair Trade chocolate, you’d have to just assume that all of it is tainted by child labor.

 

RM: Which companies buy this cocoa?

 

BA: All of the major chocolate producers, so we are talking about Nestlé, M&M Mars, Hershey, Kraft Foods—which is actually one of the biggest providers of chocolate products in the US—you’d really have to say that all the major chocolate producers are in some way complacent in this child labor, child trafficking problem.

 

RM: Well, Nestlé’s been involved in litigation regarding this issue. Are you able to say anything about that case?

 

BA: Yes. We brought suit against Nestlé because they are one of the few countries that have on-the-ground operations in Ivory Coast and they do cocoa processing in Ivory Coast. The other companies I mentioned are buying through traders, so they have one level of deniability, but Nestlé is there on the ground in Ivory Coast, they have offices, they have processing facilities, and, of course, they are on this end selling us Crunch bars and other confectionary products. We felt that Nestlé was the one company where we could bring a case and argue that they had direct knowledge and direct responsibility on the ground in Ivory Coast. That case is in the courts now—you know that legal cases move slowly, so we will have to see what’s next.

 

RM: Bama, what actions have been taken to try to ensure that the chocolate we consume here in the States was not made with cocoa that has been harvested by child slaves?

 

BA: We have been campaigning for a while now to get the major companies to do several things: We are asking them for transparency—to tell us where the cocoa originates, where are their farms? Now, I can tell you, because we have had a researcher out there, as I said, several times, we can get to their farms, we can figure out what farms are selling to who, but the major chocolate giants claim they can’t tell. They can tell—they just need to have a little motivation to tell us all, tell their consumers, where they buy their cocoa beans, what farms they buy from, and what steps they have taken to make sure those farms are respecting labor rights. As consumers, we can all ask all of the chocolate companies. We have sample letters on our website if people want to take a look at a sample letter they can send to Nestlé or any of the other major chocolate companies. Our site is laborrights.org.

 

Also, every Halloween, we participate in actions to support the growth of the Fair Trade-certified chocolate market by promoting Fair Trade Chocolate. I have been very pleased to see over the past few years each Halloween I am able to find more and more Fair Trade options in the stores, so we are able to give out to trick-or-treaters who come through our neighborhood Fair Trade Chocolate.

 

There is a Kid Action that actually one of our partners is proposing this Halloween called “Reverse Trick or Treating” and it might be something that your listeners are interested in. What they are suggesting is that reverse trick-or-treaters actually hand out Fair Trade Chocolate so that’s a way of educating people. Not only are you getting a treat from them, but you’re actually giving back a treat and they can look at it and ask, “Why are they giving me this piece of chocolate?” and so the group that is promoting that activity is giving out free Fair Trade chocolate to anyone who wants to participate in Reverse Trick or Treating. More information on that is available at ReverseTrickorTreating.org.

 

RM: Before we go, Bama, I want to ask you one question about the chocolate industry’s response to the request for transparency. Have they issued any statements over the years to try to, I guess, come in line with the request for transparency?

 

BA: No. They have issued quite a few public statements over the years to be sure, saying that they’re working on it and they are supporting various programs and they are trying to eliminate child labor in the supply chain, but I’ve been in a number of meetings over the years directly with chocolate industry representatives and have asked the question many, many times. If all these programs work, and if the farms clean up their act and they’re clean, will you guarantee that you will source from the clean farms? And the answer every time has been “No, we can not make that promise.” So even if the farmers of West Africa do the right thing and are able to clean up their supply and make sure they’re not using child labor or other abusive labor, the companies won’t commit to buy from them.

 

RM: Why is that?

 

BA: It’s about price. I hate to be a cynic, but it’s about the fact that the system as it operates now gets them the cheapest possible cocoa, and there’s no way around it. A certified system—a clean system—costs a little bit more. Not a lot more—we estimate that the average cost of switching over from conventional cocoa to Fair Trade cocoa would be about .02 cents per chocolate bar. So it’s not a lot. But I guess when you amalgamate that and you’re Nestlé, you look at the bottom line for your CEO and your board members and you say, “No, we’re not paying it.”

 

RM: Bama, how can moms get involved in what you’re doing in the chocolate industry? How can we help?

 

BA: One simple little thing that everyone can do—we all are going to be entertaining trick-or-treaters this year—is, if you can, look for some fair trade chocolate to give out to the trick-or-treaters coming through your neighborhood. That’s a very simple, easy thing for all of us to do that will make a difference, because it will send a signal to the big chocolate giants that you’re not buying their product, you’re buying fair trade product; and if they want your business then they’d better convert as well.

 

The reverse trick-or-treating action that I described is a real fun one; it’s one adults can do if you’re going to have a Halloween party, you can just give out fair trade chocolate to the guests of your Halloween party. One thing that I’ve done—I have a 7-year-old now and a 5-year-old, and I’ve gone to their school and have given out materials at their school, encouraging kids to get involved in the issue and to understand the issue. Kids are just great—kids are amazing, because they’ve got a natural sympathy for these issues, and they want to do something; they want to help if they can.

 

RM: Bama, thank you so much for joining me today on The Radio Mom Show. It has been great talking to you.

 

BA: Oh, it’s just been great. Thanks so much for the invitation to participate.

Special Report: Mothers Behind Bars

Sarah From is the Director of Public Policy and Communications for the Women’s Prison Association. The WPA has been working for a long, long time to help women with criminal justice histories realize new possibilities for themselves and for their families. Sarah joined me last year for a Radio Mom Show segment dealing with the subject of ‘Mothers Behind Bars.’ Here is a transcript of the interview…..

 

 

RM: A couple of weeks ago, there was a story in the news about a mother who had been jailed and separated from a two month old nursing child. This mother was eventually released and reunited with her son. But I would imagine there are many stories out there that don’t have such hopeful endings. Sarah, how many moms are currently in prison?

 

SF: This is a number that has really just skyrocketed in the last 30 years. There are currently over 200,000 women in prison and jail. We know that 2/3 of them are mothers of children under the age of 18. We also know that the growth has really just been astounding. From 1977 to 2004, the number of women in prison has grown by 757% and again, the majority of them are mothers.

 

RM: Do you know how many women are in fact pregnant when they enter the prison system?

 

SF: Well, the best estimates we have are that about 6% of women are pregnant when they enter prison. But when you include women who have had a baby within 1 year of their arrest, that number jumps to almost 1 in 4.

 

RM: Now this might be a silly question to ask, but do women end up in prison for the same reasons that men do?

 

SF: Some of the reasons are the same, but a lot of them are different. The number of women in prison for violent crimes, for example, is smaller for women than it is for men. Women tend to be in prison, about a third of them are there for drug crimes; about a third for what are called property crimes, which includes things like theft and fraud; and about a third for violent crime.

 

But when you really start to unpack both the violent crimes and the property crimes, you often find substance abuse, trauma, and mental health issues behind those crimes as well. We know that women in prisons have higher rates of mental health issues, certainly of past trauma including sexual abuse, physical abuse, domestic violence, and substance abuse than their male counterparts. For women, these factors really contribute to the crimes that they commit and to ultimately their involvement in the criminal justice system.

 

RM: What impact does the gender of the incarcerated parent on the children and their arrangements for child care?

 

SF: We know that of the mothers in prison, 2/3 of them were the primary caretaker of the child before they went to prison. When the mother goes to prison it really is a big issue about where the child goes. When men go to prison, at least in New York State when a man goes to prison, 88% of the time the child goes to the mother. But in the mother’s case, when the mother goes to prison, only 20% of the time does the child go to the father. We know that the majority of children wind up with female relatives of the mother, usually a grandmother, sister, aunt, and then about 20% of the children do wind up in the foster care system.

 

RM: Sarah, I know that you’ve just returned from a visit to a parenting facility in a maximum security prison. Do you mind sharing a little bit about your experience?

 

SF: Sure. I actually had the chance to visit two parenting centers; one at a men’s maximum security prison, and one at a women’s maximum security prison, both in New York State.

 

It’s worth noting that in the men’s prisons, there are a lot of efforts to really work on parenting skills and maintain connections with children on the men’s side as well. But in terms of what I saw with the mothers, New York state is lucky in that we have some of the model programs in the country for connecting children with their mothers while they’re incarcerated. Even so, it is a really rough road for the mothers.

 

Some of the barriers that they’re facing are simple geography. Most mothers are incarcerated up to 100 miles from where their children are. This means that the visits to the prisons can be, just in terms of time but also in terms of how much it costs to visit, can be really prohibitive. As a result, women don’t get a lot of visits at all, especially from their children. It can be really expensive and can eat up a week’s grocery money to transport a grandmother and two children to a prison that may be hundreds of miles away from home.

 

There are also a lot of barriers in terms of communication. Many states impose inflated phone rates for collect calls from prison. What this turns into is really a backdoor tax on the families of the incarcerated, so when Mom calls home from prison, the family has to decide whether or not they take the call versus whether they pay that electric bill because the calls can be upwards of $30 for just a few minutes, and those charges add up really quickly.

 

There are also a lot of issues from simple burned bridges. The women who are in prison, a lot of them have had past histories of substance abuse. They may not have been the best moms in the past. Even if they get to the place where they’re really working on their parenting and trying to maintain connections with their children, sometimes that’s not welcomed by the caretakers that are on the outside. So from top to bottom, there are a lot of issues, as well as the legal issues that go into maintaining custody of a child while you’re incarcerated, which are very complicated.

 

RM: What types of programs or services are generally provided to the mothers in prison?

 

SF: It really varies form state to state and from facility to facility. There is no constant across the board. One of the easiest things that prisons can do—and would be great if more women’s prisons and men’s prisons did this—is to set up more family-friendly visiting areas. Again, when a family is traveling, often from far away, they may have young children in tow and then they arrive at a visiting room which is crowded, it’s noisy, and all there is a table and chair available to a family to visit with their mom. That’s not a great situation for the child. The child may be bored, it’s already an uncomfortable situation, and the visiting rooms can get a little hectic.

 

So what some facilities have set up with great success are family areas and children’s areas of the visiting room, which is literally a separate room off the visiting room or even just a corner or separate area where there are rugs, and toys, and books where the kids can play. In the best case scenario, the kids—it’s not a babysitting center, but the kids are there, and they play with their moms. The mother gets to interact with her child in a really natural way that really simulates what they would be doing if they were playing at home in a home environment. That’s where you really can get the best and richest interaction between mother and child.

 

There are also some other programs that have been set up in Bedford Hills, the New York state facility, which are really model programs. One is a summer camp program where the children’s center actually pays for the children to come from all over the state and even from out-of-state for one week during the summer to spend time with their mom. The kids are hosted by local families, and then transported to the prison every day and spend time with their moms, each day has a theme. They do animal day, they do a day of making masks, they do a lot of playing outside in the outside area of the children’s center at the prison. It’s a really unique and really valuable bonding time for the mother and child.

 

RM: Sarah, tell me a little bit about the work of the Women’s Prison Association. What are some of the core areas that you provide services in?

 

SF: We’ve been around for over 160 years. We were founded by abolitionist Quakers back in the 1840s, and we work to provide services and advocacy for women who are at any stage of criminal justice involvement. Though we do work both in the community and in correctional facilities, our work is really focused on reducing reliance on incarceration and finding ways for women to succeed in their community. Whether they haven’t gone to prison, they are in prison and are returning to the community, or they’ve actually already returned to the community.

 

We provide a slate of reentry services for women who are coming home, helping them obtain jobs, and housing, and health care, and reunite with their kids. We also run an alternative-to-incarceration program where women who would be serving relatively long sentences in upstate prisons instead are sentenced by the court to come live at our alternative program which is located in the heart of New York City where they leave during the day to go to drug treatment and therapy and job training and complete a pretty rigorous program. After they’re done, they report once they’re in the community back to us a couple times a week. It saves a lot of money to taxpayers because it’s a lot less expensive than prison. Women get what they actually need, which is an education, help with their resume, help getting their health stabilized and their family relationships stabilized.

 

We also do work in correctional facilities helping women prepare for release and supporting the efforts of women who are inside to advocate for themselves and support each other through the process of incarceration. Those are just a few of our programs, but we really do work with women who are at all stages of involvement in the criminal justice system.

RM: You specifically work in the area of public policy. Are there any current pieces of legislation or policy agenda items that our listeners should be made aware of?

 

SF: One of the most prominent pieces of legislation which has passed the house but hasn’t yet gone through the senate is the Second Chance Act. This is the first federal piece of reentry legislation that gives money to states to set up reentry programs. It’s a great start at looking at this issue.

 

However, I would point your listeners to looking at the front end of the problem, which is, while dealing with people when they get out of prison is very important, I would argue that we need to look at why we’re sending so many women and so many people to prison in the first place. So laws around sentencing reform, which many states are taking on and trying to do better; mandatory minimum sentencing laws—which a lot of states have actually rolled back because they’re keeping people in prison for so many years for mostly drug crimes in ways that are very expensive and don’t do anything to curb the root issues of the problem—are things that listeners should be aware of.

 

There is also some federal momentum to reduce or equalize the disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine in the federal sentencing law. Currently, crack cocaine gets you a much harsher sentence for a much smaller amount than does powdered cocaine.

 

We haven’t talked about racial disparity, but this is one driver of racial disparity in the system. These laws were set up at the height of the drug war, and have resulted in the vast overpopulation of the prison system by people of color.

 

RM: Can you say a little bit more about that?

 

SF: Sure. In terms of women, women’s prison population is nearly 2/3 women of color. What’s interesting is that in the last six years, the number of white women in prison has actually risen quite dramatically, as has the number of Hispanic or Latina women. At the same time, the number of African American women has actually dropped. However, this has had some effect but not much on the racial disparity because still, the imprisonment rate of an African American woman is over three times higher than that of a white woman. And the imprisonment rate of Hispanic or Latina women is nearly twice as high as that of white women.

 

RM: Sarah, can you suggest some ways that mothers listening today, who most likely are not in prison, might help to support mothers who are incarcerated?

 

SF: I think that there are a number of ways. First is to see what’s available in your community. There are organizations in many communities. As the prison population increases, there are more and more community organizations that are working with people who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated. I really just encourage your listeners to think of women in prison as people and as mothers who may have made bad choices under tough circumstances—many of whom just want to be good mothers and do want to get better and turn their lives around for themselves and their children. To the extent that there are organizations in listener’s communities, I would encourage you to reach out to those organizations and see if there’s help that you can provide, maybe by teaching a class or becoming a mentor to a woman who is coming out or to a child whose mother is currently incarcerated, or any other way that you can help these organizations.

 

Another way is to reach out to the women’s prison in your state and find out: do they have family-friendly visiting area? And if not, is there someone in the system who works on women’s issues or someone who works on parenting issues who you might be able to work with to help make that happen. And if there is already a parent [area], do they donations? Do they need books? Do they need someone to come in and help supervise visits or volunteer in the parents’ center? Those are some things listeners can do.

 

I would also encourage your listeners to check out our website which is www.wpaonline.org. That’s one way to keep abreast of what’s going on with Women in Prison in this country.

 

 

Child Safety: What Every Mom Should Know

Joining me on the show this week is Nancy McBride. Nancy is the National Safety Director at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Some of you may know that last year I did a show and I talked a little bit about my meeting with Erin Runnion, the mom of Samantha Runnion. This week on the show we are focusing on the issue of child safety, talking a little bit more about last week’s conversation about a book that I picked up about how to talk with your children about strangers.

 

A little bit more research this week led me to Nancy.

 

RM: Hi Nancy. Welcome.

 

NMB: Hi Kemi, thanks for having me.

 

RM: Well, Nancy, for years, loving parents have told their children to stay away from strangers with the hope that this advice would reduce the likelihood of something awful happening to them. But in this day and age, how helpful is that advice?

 

NMB: It is not really helpful at all. I think “Stranger Danger” needs to be retired, along with a lot of other messages we have used in the past. The reason for that is because kids just don’t get it. They don’t understand who a stranger is. We as adults don’t practice it and we also know that the danger to children is far greater with someone they or you know than with a totally random individual. Those are the three main reasons that we really need to talk to our children about recognizing and avoiding potentially dangerous situations.

 

RM: Let’s talk a little bit about “Stranger Danger”. Do children even define the term in the same way adults do?

 

NMB: No, they really don’t. If you talk to a little kid about who a stranger is, they will probably tell you that it is someone ugly or mean-looking or big or dirty. They really don’t understand that this could be a very nice-looking person. Kids also feel that if they have seen somebody more than once or if they have talked with somebody a couple of times, that person really loses Stranger status. Sex offenders and predators are counting on that. Most of them use that benign type of enticing approach rather than an aggressive approach.

 

RM: Nancy, one of the things that I have wrestled with as a mom is a message that I often hear being communicated to children and that is, “Be obedient, respect authority, and adults are always right.” I think maybe the reasons that I have wrestled with it is because that message could actually be harmful to a trusting child on the verge of being victimized. Have you found any relationship between these two things?

 

NMB: There really is, based on the information we’ve gotten over the years. Because we know that kids do want approval from adults and they are told to be respectful. The message we really need to give our kids—and keep it as simple as possible—is when you are in a situation that you feel is scary or is making you uncomfortable or confused, the only thing you need to remember is to get out of it as quickly as possible and to tell a trusted adult. You don’t have to be polite as a child to this person who you don’t know or who is making you feel this way. The rules go out the window as far as being polite. The only thing you need to know is to get away quickly.

 

RM: Nancy, at what age should parents begin teaching their children about safety and how to handle situations like that?

 

NMB: Basically, as soon as kids can start putting words together and make some sense out of them, you can really start doing some basic safety training—things like checking first. What that means is checking before you do anything or going anywhere. That can be translated to staying with mom or dad or whoever that trusted adult is whenever you go out, making sure you don’t wander away. Also making sure kids know from an early age that you are there for them—no matter what, they can tell you anything, you will still love them and you are there to help and protect them.

 

RM: Does the message vary at all depending on the age of the child? Is the approach to safety education the same with preschoolers and school age children or teenagers? Or does it vary?

 

NMB: We start with the foundation I mentioned—check first, stay with a friend, as kids get older, you will become a little bit more sophisticated in the messaging, but basically the rules stay the same. We are telling the older kids, “Don’t go out alone; stay with a friend. Let someone know where you are going and don’t be afraid to say no to somebody who is trying to get you to do something that makes you feel scared or uncomfortable.” That messaging stays pretty consistent over time.

 

I think where a lot of it might change is when we are talking about the Internet. Certainly the rules for younger kids online are different and they require more supervision from adults than older kids who really want to exert their independence. They want their freedom and they might not understand the repercussions of some of the things they are doing. So the messaging does change as they get older.

 

RM: I know that a lot of moms listening to the show today would really appreciate just a few more tips, some of the steps and simple precautions we can take to help protect our children. Do you mind walking us through a few more?

 

NMB: I do not mind at all. As a matter of fact, this is a great opportunity for me to stress how important it is that the trusted adults in a child’s life know who has access to their kids. By that, I mean, who is the coach after school? Who is the Sunday School teacher? A lot of these people are volunteers and we think that because they are volunteers they are all great people—most often they are—but there are also times that predators look for access and opportunity.

 

It is interesting I just did an interview for Good Morning America about ice cream truck drivers who are registered sex offenders. That is really scary, but what a great profession for somebody who wants to gain access to kids? Know who these people are and be sure that you, the trusted adult, are providing that appropriate supervision even as your kids get older.

 

I know that a lot of parents and guardians like to think, “Okay, my child is 12 or 13, we have gone over the rules. They are really smart and mature. They’ve got it.” Well, you know, they are in situations when they get older where they are making more decision on their own and they are put in different situations where they have to make choices. That supervision continues over time.

 

The most important rule of all is to keep open lines of communication with your children so they will come to you if anything is bothering or troubling them, as opposed to somebody else waiting in the wings to step in. A lot of predators or offenders look for kids who look like they are more vulnerable or susceptible to those kinds of tricks.

 

RM: What about things like code words or stuff like that? How effective are those things, having a family code word?

 

NMB: I am not a big fan of code words. There are a couple of reasons I don’t like them.

 

The first one sounds kind of funny, but it is true: some kids just can’t keep a secret. You give them a code word and they are going to tell people. You have to really gauge whether your child is a good candidate for that. The other thing that troubles me is that the offenders and the predators out there know about code words and the one thing we do not want is for kids to engage in conversations with someone like that where they might be tricked.

 

My messaging for all the parents and guardians out there is to teach your kids just to get away. They don’t need to know a code word, there are no gimmicks or tricks or anything that will help in that situation other than your child knowing that they need to get out of that situation quickly and also knowing that they need to tell a trusted adult about what is happening.

 

RM: I know that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children offers a wealth of safety resources for parents. Can you talk about those and how moms can get a hold of them?

 

NMB: We are thrilled for people to visit our website: missingkids.com. All of our materials are available to download free of charge and you can also order online. Summer is coming up, so now is the time to really take a look at two publications I wrote—it is in the “Know the Rules” series and they are “Summer Safety Tips for Parents and Guardians” and “Summer Safety Tips for Children”. We know that kids are out longer, it stays lighter longer and we kind of let down our guard a little bit in the summer, it is a different kind of time. So it is a good opportunity to go over the rules with your children. Make sure they know the boundaries of their neighborhood—where they can and cannot go—whose homes they may go into, and if they know what to do if they are home alone.

 

If you are going to leave your children home alone, I have another publication about that that you can go over the rules to make sure your kids understand them and to make sure that your kids have safety nets in place so that if something happens and they cannot reach you, they can reach somebody else.