My Project

When I embarked into the project of researching and boycotting companies that use or benefit from forced child labor (slavery), I did not consider how often we, as consumers, ignore the type of labor used in making products available to the market. It has been clear to me that our ignorance encourages more companies to continue to employ that type of labor. For example, my purchase of Nestle products (the company I researched in my last post) contributed to enslaving more children to work in the cocoa field of the Ivory Coast. So I now wonder how many children Nestle was able to enslave with the money I spent in buying their products.

My goal with this project is, first of all, to take a more active approach in searching and boycotting companies that use or benefit from forced child labor. Secondly, I would like to encourage you to consider joining me in researching the type labor employed in bringing to the market the products you consume. I believe that progress will be made in stopping and discouraging companies from using forced child labor if you just do the research. I would like to leave you with a quote,
“We discovered that the simplest daily purchases Americans make can contribute to keeping people in bondage. It turns out that all of us are responsible for perpetuating slavery by buying, wearing, eating, and using products of slave labor, from cell phones and laptops, to the fruit and vegetables on our tables, to the clothes we wear.” (Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter, The Slave Next Door. p16-17.)