Sergio Ciancaglini de La Vaca

Today we continue an interview with Sergio Ciancaglini, from La Vaca cooperative.  For the past decade Global Exchange Reality Tours have included La Vaca on our rich educational itineraries. Learn about the work and mission of La Vaca during this interview conducted by our summer assistant Kathleen Reynolds.

Kathleen: What has been your experience with groups that have come from Global Exchange?

Sergio: My experience with the people who have come has been very exciting. I noted that there had been very good communication because Delia Marx was always there doing very good translation. This allowed me to explain things, that in English I could not. The experience has been very good. There have been many people with an attitude that is very interested in living new experiences and I think these experiences are very beautiful.

Group members enjoying the Iguazu Falls

In terms of improving the experiences, I think in these places and with these people, having these types of encounters provide a person with the key to understanding this very important phenomenon. It is like when you go to a museum and see a piece of fabric that has a particular color, but you don’t know it until you see it and read the explanations. You come to better understand what you are seeing and see the value in something as if it were new. These experiences are new and original experiences and that’s why the people of Global Exchange come. The travelers were interested in these types of experiences that we try to replicate as journalists. They are new, original experiences from the point of view of human rights, the problem with the environment, the problem with production, but also from the point of citizenship and democracy. For me these new expressions that are portals to the future. Where citizens assemble and meet and discuss how they as citizens can preserve the environment; to discuss their plan of action so that the mining or petroleum companies don’t bombard the mountains, so that they don’t cut down the forests, to defend their life – this is democracy in a different way. No longer is it democracy like the one we know as a representative system, but rather, people taking on the responsibility of their own destiny and peacefully so. At the same time, they are intervening to be heard, but also taking into account how they are expressing themselves in a concrete place where the things are happening. For me, this is a new phenomenon. Twenty years ago, Mr. Francis Fukuyama said, that, ‘we are in the end of history’ and today we are seeing we aren’t. History continues with the possibility to democratize democracy.

Visiting a School in Buenos Aires

After the economic recession happened here in the United Sates, social movements have been forming and people are mobilizing and coming together to reform society, to create a new system.

Kathleen: After the crisis happened in Argentina and people mobilized together to create a new system of work like the workers taking over the factories, what recommendations could you give the people here in the US to mobilize and promote real democracy from a grass roots level?

Sergio: Yes, we just published the latest version of the MU.  Claudia Acuña, is a member here in the cooperative and did a great report in the latest version MU, and she was in New York talking on exactly this topic you’re talking about. This new movement of people in the streets, the problems with people getting evicted from their homes…the report will talk about this. It is in the current edition of MU magazine.

Kathleen: In the line of work in defending human rights, how can International Solidarity groups support the social movements of Argentina and South America?

Sergio: I think that these movements or experiences that happen with La Vaca itself are experiences that have already existed for many years and are going to continue existing. There are people who do their work looking for resources, looking for money. We do what we do, because we love our work and it gives us much pleasure to do it. In terms of determining what help that could be utilized for the movements in terms of resources, etc,… it is always important that this be determined with the greater aim that the movements continue doing what they are doing. I want to tell you this, for example, I know there are many international campaigns on different topics. It seems like there is a lot of money floating around in foundations and different institutions to promote issues. In our case, we are going to continue working on the topics of the environment, human rights, citizenship, communication, freedom and equality. They are topics that to us are central for the present and future. Those who want to help us and/or support these types of processes can always help us, but at the same time understanding that the most important is that these projects and productions continue maintaining autonomy of work and diffusion.

As I am very old, I realize that we are in the presence of a birth of, it seems to me, a new type of paradigm of social intervention, of political intervention. It is a new paradigm of thinking and new paradigms of action. It is exciting to be seeing how this exists and it is very important that it be able to flourish and I would say grow. As I said before, it is my intuition that we are being shown the paths of what is to come in the future.

For us, these experiences, this moment are very beautiful. It is an opportunity to always feel that what one is doing is having impact and is creating networks of new concepts for thinking about situations in our world. For us, our door will always be open for you.
Thank you Sergio for the years of effort and energy that you have put into organizing La Vaca and welcoming our Reality Tours delegates to La Vaca and Argentina!  Next week we will delve further into the power of those exchanges.

TAKE ACTION!
Experience for yourself: Join our “Building Economic Justice from Below” trip next March  and learn more about the 200 ‘recovered’ co-operative factories in Argentina.

Sergio Ciancaglini de La Vaca

Today we feature an interview with Sergio Ciancaglini, from La Vaca cooperative.  For the past decade Global Exchange Reality Tours have included La Vaca on our rich educational itineraries. Learn about the work and mission of La Vaca in this two part interview series conducted by our summer assistant Kathleen Reynolds.

Kathleen: Perhaps we can begin with a brief history of how La Vaca began and your work with La Vaca?

Sergio: La Vaca is a work cooperative that was born in the year 2001, which was a time of much crisis in Argentina where money disappeared and there were lots of social movements that had to take responsibility of their own life. They had to take on the responsibility to invent work and survival. In this year 2001, is when the La Vaca began as an information agency through Internet – it was one the first of its kind in Argentina that tried to reflect this new universe of actions we saw in large quantities of social experiences. From that moment, for example, we published on the Internet our reporting, our articles and later we began to work on books.

Our first book was, Sin Patron.  Sin Patron is about the recuperated factories in Argentina and it is available in the US. We presented it in Counter Union in New York with Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis. It is book that is written originally in Castellano Spanish by us, but later more versions were printed in English in the US, Italian and later in Portuguese in Brazil. We then wrote seven more books and the latest one is Argentina Originara. It is a book about native peoples of Argentina. With the passing of time, we started a newspaper, a monthly magazine called MU, which is a magazine published every month that we started five and half years ago. Out of the roots of the work we do, each piece of work gives us a new idea. From the work we had been doing, it occurred to us to do a radio program. You can listen to it via Internet at www.lavaca.org. It is a radio program that is broadcasted on 109 radios throughout Argentina. It is broadcasted through all university, community and local radio stations throughout the country.

It is a program created as an alternative form of social media and it is important to say that like many other commercial radio stations, this radio program also reaches all areas of the country. We do training courses for department chairs universities and high schools on social autonomy and we have a cultural center that is also a bar called MU Punto Encuentro Buenos Aires where there are conferences and sell leading independent editorial books. Here in Argentina, we drink el mate, our typical drink. Here it is made with herbs from cooperatives that are not sold in traditional supermarkets. The entire project of La Vaca is work of communication, of culture, of cooperativism and social economics.

Kathleen: What is the work you do in the cooperative and how did you begin to work with La Vaca?

Sergio: I have been a journalist for many years. I have always worked on the topics of human rights. For example, I covered the trials on the military junta in 1985, which was the first time in the democracy it was possible to try people who had raped, tortured and killed during the dictatorship. I have always worked with the most important media in Argentina for example, the newspaper Diaro Clarín, the newspaper la Razón and the newspaper Página Doce,… I worked as editor and reactor. In the year 2001, the experience of La Vaca began with all the people who were around me and so I joined. Now I work writing many articles of the monthly MU magazine. At the same time, I run the radio program that is broadcasted on 109 radios around the country and I am the President of the cooperative.

Thank you Sergio for the years of effort and energy that you have put into organizing La Vaca and welcoming our Reality Tours delegates to La Vaca and  Argentina!  Next week we will delve further into the power of those exchanges.

TAKE ACTION!

Experience for yourself: Join our “Building Economic Justice from Below” trip this November and learn more about the 200 ‘recovered’ co-operative factories in Argentina.

Aung San Suu Kyi is now free, over 6,000 political prisoners have been released, and sociopolitical change is slowly engaging the nation.

Community organizations and businesses are encouraging travelers to support the democracy movement and the national economy now that the travel boycott has ended.

Finally Reality Tours can travel to Burma in good conscience and engage with people as citizen diplomats. We hope you will consider joining us in 2013.

Some of what you’ll experience on a Reality Tour trip to Burma:

• Journey to important historical and cultural sites (Shwedagon Pagoda, the pagodas of Pagan, the ancient cities around Mandalay, U Bein Bridge, etc.).
• Dialogue with opposition leaders and former political prisoners, human rights advocates and members of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League of Democracy.
• Engage with artists, craftspeople, farmers and educators to hear their hopes for the future.  Our local guides will offer unprecedented access to local people and groups.
• Explore how Burma will face a burgeoning tourism industry, and question who will reap the benefits of a vibrant tourist industry.

Ethical tourism can offer a much needed boost to Burma’s economy while contributing to community development. We will explore this issue by partnering with The Ethical Traveler on this trip, and one of its representatives will help facilitate these important relationship building tours.

Hope to experience Burma with you!

We hope you are able to join us on our first year of building people to people ties in Burma. A trip-of-a-lifetime just waiting to happen.

Delia and Delegates in Argentina

In the first of a two part series, Delia shares with us in an interview conducted by our intern Kathleen Reynolds, the significance of the 2001 financial crisis and what lessons it provides for us today.

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Kathleen: Can you explain the significance of the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina?  Grassroots worker-run cooperatives radically changed the debate. How did they shift the focus from the cost of labor to the cost of owners?

Recuperated Factories, “of the People”, 2003

Delia: Well I’m sure you are aware that in the end of 2001 the whole economy in Argentina collapsed. It was a true collapse in the sense that nothing was working. There was literally no more money. There was no pay, there were only empty promises. Different provinces in Argentina which are like states here (in the U.S.) started to make their own currency. There was no credit for individuals or for businesses.

Business works on credit. There was no credit to be had. Nothing. The banks literally closed. These are banks like Citibank, Bank of Boston… Supposedly they all had the backing of the United States, not so. When the time came they simply closed and that was devastating for everybody. It was impossible to do anything so people took to the streets!

At that point there was a lot of political turmoil. I think there were four central governments that wanted to default. It was a total collapse. People could not even withdraw their own money from the bank because the banks were all closed. Some people were banging literally with hammers, banging on the closed doors of the banks. Everybody took to the streets. People were trying to get anything that they could get their hands on to make noise, pots and pans, banging with their hands, just making noise and saying the words everybody needs to go!  Everybody meant everybody politically.

Exchanging with Community Organizations

When people realized that their place of work wouldn’t even give them the promise of payment they began to rise up. Bankruptcy was widespread. Workers recognized that they were not going to be able to do anything to feed their families. That’s when they began to realize that they needed to find a solution for themselves.

The solution did not depend on the big picture, not on the politicians, the rules, the laws or the economic situation. It was a local issue. It was the smaller community that needed to come together. We had the movements and the assemblies, which were simply people that were meeting on the street corner trying to figure out how to help one another in the smallest sense of the neighborhood. They were called neighborhood assemblies and some of them organized broader markets in the work place.

Workers realized that they were still there, the machinery was still there, only the bosses were missing because they had declared bankruptcy. They were gone. So people decided to keep the shop open. And that’s when they started to do this movement that was later called recuperated factories, recuperated from bankruptcy.  But that wasn’t so easy because of the police of course. People were literally occupying their workplaces. The word “occupy” now has a different meaning.

In Argentina, people were simply saying ok we’re going to stay. We are not going to allow our bosses to take away the machinery to sell it out. We are going to keep and protect the machinery as well as the work place and we are going to keep it going. Of course at first they realized, wait a moment we don’t know anything about administration because the administration was in the hands of the bosses. That’s when the whole society somehow found a way to come together. Students from the university of economics came around and taught the workers how to keep the books and they realized that they could run this themselves. There’s no magic in management. We can manage ourselves. We can do it. And that’s when they decided, we can keep on going, and we really don’t need the bosses.

Cooperative Factory-Struggle, Work and Culture

The big advantage was that suddenly all of  the surplus that usually went to pay the higher salaries of the management was brought back into the factories as actual production. Now I think there are about 300 occupied factories still functioning.

Factory is not the proper word. It’s workplaces. (There are many different types of businesses;) cooperative hotels, clinics, and alll kinds of factories. For instance, one of them is a hotel where we stay with Reality Tours. We had the firsthand experience of seeing how it’s run. It’s a big hotel in the middle of town. Of course there was no guarantee but it all came together in a very positive way.

Some (groups) like La Vacca, the journalism cooperative that we work with, started to regroup. They began to form networks so that cooperatives could organize and buy from one another. One of the things I find very interesting is going back to visit some of these places, I can see the progress. It’s incredible to see how things evolved. In some instances people wanted to maintain a true horizontal management or decision-making process. Decisions are made by consensus. Other people decided that it was too time consuming and they selected representatives to form a commission. The commission would make day-to-day decisions, consulting only now and then with the full assembly.

They all have pros and cons. It’s very interesting to talk with different people about their experiences. For instance people who organized committees said that it was amazing how very soon afterwards there were marked differences.

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Thank you Delia for the years of effort and energy that you have put into organizing and facilitating our Reality Tours to Argentina! 

TAKE ACTION!

Experience for yourself: Join our “Building Economic Justice from Below” trip this November and learn more about the 200 ‘recovered’ co-operative factories in Argentina.

In the second of a two part series about Global Exchange’s history in Ireland, our co-founder, Kevin Danaher shares the inspiration behind our delegations during an interview with Reality Tours intern Kathleen Reynolds.

Kathleen: What were your most memorable events on a Reality Tour to Northern Ireland?

Kevin: There were a lot of them… So we go in this one place it was actually called the Felons and to be a member of this club you have to have been a convicted felon, so you think whoa this is a bunch of tough guys. So we walk in there are a few guys over at the bar they look at us and they wave at me they call me over they say you’ve got the head of a Celt are you Irish I said my father was born and raised in county Limerick. For four hours these guys just regaled us with stories about this and that. These were just two working class guys but their knowledge of Irish history was incredible… if you put them up against normal Americans knowing American history it would be no contest. You could see the political element of it because so much had been taken away from them that at least the history was something they could hold onto and feel fervent about. It is almost like the way some guys follow football teams, or soccer teams, or baseball teams and they know all the details. That’s the way these guys were with history.

Kevin Danaher, Co-Founder of Global Exchange

We kept meeting these kind of people over and over again you know just regular people.  It resonated with me because my father was that kind of guy.  He was functionally illiterate he had no schooling to speak of, was too poor had to work and yet he was probably the smartest guy I’ve ever known. He was a good man,  just the kind of person who was a friend. If you need a shirt he’ll take his off. That’s pretty easy to do. Everybody could do that if they wanted to, if they set their mind to it. Irish are really good role models and we engage good decent working class people.  These are the kind of people based interactions that make up my favorite memories.

Kathleen: What about pressing issues in Ireland today?

Kevin: The reunification of Ireland is a big deal because you’ve got centuries of separation and barriers. The Irish free state invested a lot of money in its’ education system. It created a very well educated work force that was also a low wage work force so it attracted a lot of transnational corporations, credit card processing the Intel computer type companies… you had this well trained workforce that would still work for low wages and it was part of the EC. They used to call Ireland the Celtic Tiger because the economy was growing like crazy in the early 2000’s. The main issues that I stress people examine now are economic independence and local green economy.

With this 2008 crash a lot of people got screwed. Now there are a lot of young Irish people who are leaving. They’ve got good education and skills but they can’t get jobs in their country. Look you can get your political independence if you don’t get your economic dependence and control your economy the political independence doesn’t mean much. Boom and Bust is the nature of Capitalism it’s a cyclical system.

Thanks to Kevin and Kathleen for sharing a bit or the story behind Reality Tours to Northern Ireland.  Many of our delegations were set up to examine the history of colonialism, peace and conflict resolution, economic development and coincided with the West Belfast Arts Festival.  They continue today. If you are interested in an alternative journey to Ireland, check out last weeks Blog What Inspired Reality Tours to Ireland and a past participant’s story To Belfast and Back with Global Exchange.
TAKE ACTION! Learn how to customize your own Reality Tour trip to Ireland today.

Kevin Danaher, Co-Founder of Global Exchange

In the first of a two part series about Global Exchange’s history in Ireland, our co-founder, Kevin Danaher shares the inspiration behind our delegations during an interview with Reality Tours intern Kathleen Reynolds.

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Kathleen: What inspired the Reality Tours delegation to Ireland?

Kevin:  My father was born and raised in South West Ireland, county Limerick, so I had a very personal interest in getting trips to Ireland started. We focused on Northern Ireland because of the politics at the time. When people see a little town in Northern Ireland where the British military base is constructed in such a way that it breaks the architectural unity of the town square… They built the military base purposely so that the corner of the base intrudes and breaks the architectural unity of the town square. When you’re walking on the sidewalk you have to step out in the street to get around the corner of the military base. It was a way of saying structurally, we’re in your house you can’t do anything about it and we’re going to be here forever, look how permanent this structure is. Well, as a matter of fact that military base is gone now and the British are leaving Northern Ireland. That’s the end of an eight hundred year process. The first Norman Invasion from England was 1169. The Irish put up a good fight.  They kept out the Roman armies, which is an amazing achievement because they were such crazy fighters but the British subdued them.

If you look at populations, the only country I know of that has half the population today that it had 150 years ago is Ireland.  Most people when asked that question respond- Ethiopia, Rwanda whatever, no it’s Ireland! So many people died or were chased away, like my father at the age of 21. He was the only one (in my family) who had the opportunity. An aunt offered to take him to the US and he jumped at the opportunity, but he cried every day of his adult life. He was homesick for Ireland. He didn’t really want to leave which is true of most immigrants. People don’t leave out of desire to go see the bright lights of LA. It’s family necessity. It’s to try to earn an income and send money back. In the 1930’s my father was making 30 dollars a week and he sent 5 dollars of that back to Ireland. It really made the difference for that family. It helped the children to survive. I had a real personal empathy for what had gone on in Ireland. Ireland is a country with people who took English, the colonizers language and made it into an articulate tool of resistance. Some of the greatest writers in English happen to be Irish. Very fun loving people, it’s easy to make friends. Another thing too, there’s a very deep sense of history. Everything else was taken away from them but they held onto their history. There’s a quote from someone… after one of the rebellions in the 1800s he said “you fools you’ve left us our Fenian dead but as long as we hold these graves Ireland un-free will never be at rest.” That sense of standing on the shoulders of those who gave up their lives in the struggle. After 800 years the British are leaving and Ireland will eventually be unified.

Kathleen: Bobby Sands died in the Maze prison of Northern Ireland some 31 years ago. Can you explain the significance of Bobby Sands’ legacy?

Kevin: They used to call it going on the blanket. Political prisoners took off their clothes stopped eating and just wrapped themselves up in a blanket. People were willing to give up their lives consciously by starving themselves to death and it would draw these massive support movements to support people like Bobby Sands. People like Bobby Sands understood that it’s the mass mobilizations, mass movements that make revolutions, it’s not individual leaders or genius, it’s large numbers of people. In order to get them motivated sometimes leaders have to take arrows in their back.

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Since 1997 Global Exchange has offered departures to Northern Ireland. Many of our delegations were set up to examine the history of colonialism, peace and conflict resolution, economic development and coincided with the West Belfast Arts Festival.  They continue today. If you are interested in an alternative journey to Ireland, check out a past participant’s story To Belfast and Back with Global Exchange.

TAKE ACTION! Learn how to customize your own Reality Tour trip to Ireland today.

Many of our Reality Tours Costa Rica alumni will remember the brilliant educator and activist, Marta Sanchez.  Marta has organized and facilitated our Global Exchange open and customized groups since 2005. Today Marta shares her story with us.  Learn how she became part of our Global Exchange family!

I got involved with Global Exchange Reality Tours after my enrollment in the Palestine-Israel delegation  about 10 years ago.  That intense experience unveiled to me an excruciatingly painful reality I was short to imagine. Although far from attempting a comparison, this experience turned on many lights in my understanding concerning the reality of my own country and the “convenient blindness” we people use to suffer from.

By that time, Costa Rica was in the middle of a historical process: the eventual signing up of the  Central American Free Trade Agreement.  Like most of the population, I was unaware of  the serious implications of CAFTA against our Social State of Law  which we “Ticos” always took for granted!

Given this historical context, Andrea  my daughter, who happened to be the Central America RT coordinator at GX by that time, organized an RT program for Costa Rica.  I promised her to find someone who could trip lead the first delegation, but my best candidate failed the last minute, and I had to take up. Here began a series of living experiences that taught me a lot about the myths and realities of my own country. As an illustration, the first of these experiences came from a  meeting with Costa Rican former president Rodrigo Carazo. Carazo was a passionate anti-CAFTA fighter and, in his home, the GX delegates and myself received  first-hand information about the uncertain future of  Central American economies if Costa Rica ended up signing the treaty — Costa Rica was the last country in Central America to submit to CAFTA. This meeting was illuminating in unusual ways. For example, the delegates could not believe a politician of such an exceptional moral stature, like Carazo had displayed this special deference towards us by inviting us to his home!

GX delegations now visit Costa Rica from coast to coast. The living experiences our delegates can tell are many and varied, and the resonance of these encounters are still there. One of the tours, for instance, made it possible for a community to count on attractive alternatives for kids and  their mothers  to rescue both even from prostitution. Back home, one of our delegates pulled  the necessary strings to  provide funds, so that ASOMUFAQ, in the Central Pacific, could finish a theater project  and a  restaurant. Today that community has a theater group for kids that now participate in annual national contexts (and Global Exchange delegations can count on a delicious restaurant that serve typical dishes prepared by these women…)

I´m sure the living experiences GX Reality Tours have brought  to me and the many people involved have affected us one way or another. The reality of a tourism-dependent country such as Costa Rica can only be revealed by conscious tourism, and this only justifies  the meaning of this program.  Now I only organize the itineraries on a pro bonus basis but, from the comments by the delegates, I can say that the Mission and Vision of Global Exchange Reality Tours  is amply accomplished in Costa Rica.

Interested in meeting Marta and traveling beyond the normal ecotourist path in Costa Rica this year?  Join us and explore Ecotourism and Sustainability on the Northern Pacific Coast in November.

Thank you to Reality Tours staff alumni Andrea Valverde for sharing our mission and for introducing us to your mom. We have been blessed to have her host our members.

Special Thanks to our Reality Tours intern Kathleen Reynolds for conducting this interview.

Gandhi and the Spinning Wheel

Back in 1997 Reality Tours wanted to offer a tour of a lifetime to India that would inspire our members.

When we met Dr. Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, and learned about the important work he was doing in the US and India we knew we had a wonderful partner.  We developed a plan; Arun would educate our participants about the philosophy and teachings of Gandhi as we journey to historic and cultural sites important in Gandhi’s life, while also witnessing his living legacy in the work of cooperatives, ashrams, schools and NGO’s throughout India.

Exploring Gandhi's Legacy

We’ve been partnering with Arun ever since. Together our Reality Tours have brought to life the importance of Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence and self sufficiency.  For 15 years we’ve worked together on what Gandhi referred to as trusteeship.

Arun taught participants and Reality Tours trip leaders that each one of us has a talent that we have acquired or inherited, and that we can use this gift to achieve our goals, for personal gains or in service to others.

Last month, Arun let us know that moving forward the Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute (GWEI) will be organizing The Gandhi Legacy Tour on its own, apart from Reality Tours. Though a bittersweet moment it was to hear this news and it will be quite a change for us, we recognize that GWEI has grown and built the capacity to support all the administrative details and logisitcs it takes to organize a tour.

Arun and Gandhian Legacy Tour Delegates Bringing in the New Year

Arun and the GWEI have the expertise and the experience to handle the tour.  Reality Tours thus congratulates the GWEI! May the next 15 years of the Gandhian Legacy continue to educate and inspire all who participate to truly “be the change we want to see in the world”!

With almost 100 departures a year, it is easy for you to Meet the People, Learn the Facts, and Make a Difference on a Reality Tour this year!

Creating the Tassa Tags at the Regina Center

Do any of you intrepid Reality Tours travelers need a new luggage tag? If so we strongly recommend you purchase a Tassa Tag. Here’s why:

TassaTag is a special luggage tag that helps you claim your luggage more easily and is a visible voice against child sex tourism for the travel industry.

Tassa Tag is a project of ECPAT-USA and stands for Travelers Take Action Against Sex Slavery and Trafficking. TassaTags are big, bright  4”x6” hand-woven cotton, fair-trade luggage tags.

The TassaTag project raises funds (in the US) for the following purposes:

• To train people in the Travel Industry to take an active role against sex tourism.
• To Inform the public that sex with children is against the law everywhere, and if caught the person will be prosecuted and extradited to their home country, if necessary.
• To mobilize congress against child sex tourism

Five colorful TassaTags

While the mission is compelling enough today it is the motivation behind the tags and the personal passion of  the founder of the project, Brenda Hepler that we wanted to share with you.

When asked what motivated the her to get involved Brenda states:

“ The horror of a child being a sex slave was so horrendous to me, I could not turn away.  So I created the TassaTag, was led to the Regina Center where the women perfected the prototype, and then gave them to ECPAT-USA where I continue to volunteer as the director of the TassaTag Project.”

TassaTags provide work with dignity for women at the Regina Center in Nongkai, Thailand and funds the pre-schooling for their children.

At Global Exchange we know the power of Fair Trade and advocacy. When you support Tassa Tag you support ECPAT-USA’s work to raise awareness of the sexual exploitation of children in the travel industry and the community they employ in Nongkai.

TAKE ACTION!

• Become a visible voice against the sexual trafficking of children while finding your bags easily by picking up a TassaTag of your own;
• Learn more about efforts to combat human trafficking on an advocacy Reality Tour!

Fair Harvest in the Dominican Republic

8 years ago here at Global Exchange Reality Tours we began incorporating the fair trade story into our annual departures to address disturbing truths about the global economy.  Millions of farmers around the world are facing poverty and starvation because global crop prices have continued to plummet to all-time lows, a worldwide crisis exacerbating problems including malnutrition, family farm closures, and in some cases increased drug cultivation.

In today’s world economy, where profits rule and small-scale producers are left out of the bargaining process, farmers, craft producers, and other workers are often left without resources or hope for their future. Fair Trade helps exploited producers escape from this cycle of poverty.

The tourism industry has seen a growth in both “voluntourism” and philanthropy-based travel, and in 2003 Reality Tours launched its first Fair Harvest tour. The goals; to share the story of fair trade with travelers, to offer a service learning opportunity, to support local community-based tourism initiatives as a promoter of socially responsible travel, to meet and exchange with fair trade certified cooperative farmers, and to inspire our alumni to return committed to supporting the fair trade movement in their own communities and to support our Global Exchange Fair Trade campaigns and Fair Trade craft stores.

Global Exchange Reality Tours highlight the importance of fair trade on commodity crops such as cocoa, coffee, olives, and tea as well as textiles and crafts, and contextualizes the debate between “fair trade” and “free trade” crops and products in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Ecuador, Palestine, India, Nepal, Rwanda and many other countries. Reality Tours provide the opportunity for participants to learn firsthand how:

• fair trade producers receive a fair price – a living wage;
• forced labor and exploitative child labor (and modern day slavery) are prohibited;
• buyers and producers have direct long-term trade relationships;
• producers have access to financial and technical assistance;
• sustainable production techniques are encouraged and mandated;
• working conditions are healthy and safe;
• equal employment opportunities are provided for all;
• all aspects of trade and production are open to public accountability.

The Fair Trade system benefits over 800,000+ farmers organized into cooperatives and unions in over 48 countries. While the complexities of each country are unique, what fair trade means for communities is often very similar. Fair Trade profits help fund basic education, health care, and general infrastructure in communities, amplifying the dignity of communities who get to stay on their land. Reality Tours fair trade themed trips provide the opportunity for farmers to share their stories with participants. Reality Tours participants who have witnessed firsthand the benefits of fair trade return from their journey inspired by the experience.

Nicaragua Woman Harvesting Coffee Beans

A Cup of Fair Coffee?
Let’s take a commodity or two as an example. The United States consumes one-fifth of all the world’s coffee, the largest consumer in the world. But few North Americans realize that agriculture workers in the coffee industry often toil in what can be described as “sweatshops in the fields.”

Many small coffee farmers receive prices for their coffee that are less than the costs of production, forcing them into a cycle of poverty and debt. Fair Trade is a viable solution to this crisis in Nicaragua, assuring consumers that the coffee they drink was purchased under fair conditions. To become Fair Trade certified, an importer must meet stringent international criteria; paying a minimum price per pound, providing much needed credit to farmers, and providing technical assistance such as help transitioning to organic farming.

Fair Trade for coffee farmers in Matalgapa means community development, health, education, and environmental stewardship. Our Fair Harvest programs to Nicaragua provide the historical context for this social and economic vulnerability and absolutely impact people’s purchasing decisions. We’ve been honored to work with the Fair Trade Cooperative CECOCAFEN for years and know that when our delegates return many choose fair trade in their cups. What if that one-fifth of global coffee drinkers all put their purchases where their values are? That would have global repercussions!

Sweet, Sweet Chocolate

Fair Cocoa Harvest in the Dominican Republic

Next, let’s look at chocolate. The six largest cocoa producing countries are Ivory Coast, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, and Cameroon. Cocoa has significant effects on the economy and the population in these countries. In Ghana, cocoa accounts for 40% of total export revenues, and two million farmers are employed in cocoa production. The Ivory Coast is the world’s largest cocoa producer, providing 43% of the world’s cocoa. In 2000, a report by the US State Department concluded that in recent years approximately 15,000 children aged 9 to 12 have been sold into forced labor on cotton, coffee and cocoa plantations in the north of the country. A June 15, 2001 document released by the Geneva, Switzerland-based International Labor Organization (ILO) reported that trafficking of children is widespread in West Africa. (For ILO definitions of these labor violations, see ILO Convention 182 on Child Labor ILO Convention 29 on Forced Labor.)

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) followed up these reports with an extensive study of cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, directly involving over 4,500 producers. The results were released in August 2002. An estimated 284,000 children were working on cocoa farms in hazardous tasks such as using machetes and applying pesticides and insecticides without the necessary protective equipment. Many of these children worked on family farms, the children of cocoa farmers who are so trapped in poverty many make the hard choice to keep their children out of school to work. The IITA also reported that about 12,500 children working on cocoa farms had no relatives in the area, a warning sign of trafficking.

Child laborers face arduous work, as cacao pods must be cut from high branches with long-handled machetes, split open, and their beans scooped out. Children who are involved in the worst labor abuses come from countries including Mali, Burkina Faso, and Togo — nations that are even more destitute than the impoverished Ivory Coast.

Vicious Circle of Poverty

Rwanda Women's Coffee Cooperative Sorting Beans

Parents in these countries sell their children to traffickers believing that they will find honest work once they arrive in Ivory Coast and then send their earnings home. But once separated from their families, the young boys are made to work for little or nothing. The children work long and hard — they head into the fields at 6:00 in the morning and often do not finish until 6:30 at night. These children typically lack the opportunity for education, leaving them with no way out of this cycle of poverty. The IITA noted that 66% of child cocoa workers in the Ivory Coast did not attend school. About 64% of children on cocoa farms are under age 14, meaning that the loss of an education comes at an early age for the majority of children on cocoa farms. (Watch The Dark Side of Chocolate, a powerful documentary on this issue).

Producer income remains low because major chocolate and cocoa processing companies have refused to take any steps to ensure stable and sufficient prices for cocoa producers. World cocoa prices fluctuate widely and have been well below production costs in the last decade. Though cocoa prices have shown moderate increases in the past few years, cocoa producers remain steeped in debt accumulated when prices were below production costs.

Producers typically also get only half the world price, as they must use exploitative middlemen to sell their crop. The effects of insufficient cocoa income have been exacerbated by deregulation of agriculture in West Africa, which abolished commodity boards across the region, leaving small farmers at the mercy of the market. This economic crisis forced farmers to cut their labor costs. The outcome was a downward spiral for labor in the region, and a surge in reports of labor abuses ranging from farmers pulling children out of school to work on family farms to outright child trafficking and slavery. These small farmers and their children remained trapped in a cycle of poverty, without hope for sufficient income or access to basic education or health care.

 We Can Change It!
For years, US chocolate manufacturers have claimed they are not responsible for the conditions on cocoa plantations since they don’t own them. But the $13 billion chocolate industry is heavily consolidated, with just two firms — Hershey’s and M&M/Mars — controlling two-thirds of the US chocolate candy market. Surely, these global corporations have the power and the ability to reform problems in the supply chain. What they lack is the will.

At Global Exchange, we know there is a solution – supporting Fair Trade cocoa and chocolate. Fair Trade chocolate and cocoa products are marked with the “Fair Trade Certified” label. Fair Trade cocoa comes from Belize, Bolivia, Cameroon, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Ghana, Nicaragua, and Peru. Thus Reality Tours has a Cocoa Fair Harvest program in the Dominican Republic. Every year, we encourage chocolate lovers from around the world to join with our local partners from Grupo CONACADO to explore benefits of Fair Trade cocoa and sustainable harvest, renewable technology in the Dominican Republic.

Palestine Fair Olive Harvest, Group with Farmers 2009

Fair Trade Tourism is a growing segment of our socially responsible travel program here at Global Exchange. Our third Fair Harvest destination was announced in  2007 to Palestine where participants worked side by side Palestinians harvesting olives. The Fair Trade story continues to evolve and we look forward to expanding our Reality Tours programs in the years to come.  There is an opportunity for those of us in the tourism industry to make a positive change in the world. Tourism can be a force for good. We can ensure tourism dollars stay to benefit the local economies of our hosts. We can highlight the stories, the struggles and aspirations of the communities we visit. Together with Reality Tours trip participants, we can be a force for fairness.

This piece was originally written by Malia Everette  for Tourism Review, Tourism Magazine Review October 2010 issue.