Centuries ago, the African coastlines were raided by slave traders, stealing people to put to work in factories for Western benefit. It is still happening, quietly, and a Prince George group is trying to get the world to hear the 27 million enslaved voices calling out for mercy.
Twenty-seven million is the estimated number of those currently victimized by human trafficking and the slave trade. West Africa is a particularly dark region for this black market, with the chocolate industry at the centre.
Allison Fedorkiw is one of the founders of 27 Million Voices, a grassroots set of volunteers raising money to set at least some of these victims free. The Prince George woman has just returned from her third trip to the region at first as part of her UNBC studies but now also because she is partnering with West African organizations there already doing this work. The nation of Ivory Coast is where much of the relief efforts are centred.
"They can be as young as four but what we see most are kids nine and older," she said. "A lot are young boys who work in the plantations and the girls are used as domestics."
A child typically has to work three days to produce enough cocoa for one chocolate bar. The only mainstream chocolate bar to be guaranteed as slavery-free is Cadbury's Dairy Milk bar, or any at alternative food stores bearing the Fair Trade logo.
They come to these slave jobs a number of ways. Recruiters go out to the greater region (Nigeria, Togo, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Liberia, etc.) and find impoverished families. They tell the families that if they send their boys along with them, they will take them to work for the cocoa companies and wages will be sent home to the families. However, once they are on the trucks back to the plantations, they are never seen or heard from again.
Other youths hear the rumours of plentiful work in the cocoa industry and make their own way there, only to be snapped up by these black market companies that force them to work without wages or escape.
"A lot of these kids don't even know where they are, and they don't have any idea where they have come from," said Fedorkiw. "There are agencies who try to get them back to their families, and the best way to trace them back home is linguistically. There are clues about where home is in the way they speak. But not always."
If kids escape the slave fields and are placed with these help agencies, they often can't be traced to a home region. That triggers a need for housing, food, foster families in the host community, and education so they can at least have a future in their adopted new homeland.
Building a centre to do this work is what 27 Million Voices hopes to do, all the way from Prince George. A two-phase construction plan has been established with a credible Ivory Coast-based agency to erect a permanent a safehouse.
Due to the ongoing political instability across the entire region (West Africans do not, in daily practice, pay much notice to the borders on the map), there is also a backup plan devised.
"We are working in a conflicted area," said Fedorkiw. "So many agencies from the West have pulled out of there. We are a small piece of the puzzle, we know that, but it kills their spirit if we also pull out. No matter what, the centre will be built. If there is war, and we temporarily relocate to Ghana, so be it. We will be able to go back into the Ivory Coast at a later date, but we will still be situated on the main human trafficking travel route, and the work will be the same. The victims will be the same."
A gala event, the first major fundraiser for 27 Million Voices, happens at the Kinsmen Hall on December 4 for $75 per ticket or a table of eight for $550.
Before it even occurs, the group has already secured funding for the safehouse directors' wages (about $2,000), a vehicle for the centre, and five hectares of land have been donated by the mayor of Ayame (the Ivory Coast town where the centre will be built).
A summer student, Kate Russell, was also hired in Prince George to do preliminary development here, thanks to a grant from TD Bank.
As a Christmas season event, Fedorkiw said she hopes the Prince George community can "give the gift of freedom" and contribute to the upstart group's initial steps.
"I think it is important to start small, only take on what you are realistically able to do, and momentum will build," she said. "We can never take on the whole world but we can be active in one community and there will be another community later, and then more will join."
For more information go to www.27millionvoices.org or check out their Facebook page.
To buy tickets to the gala, call 250-981-1635 or [email protected].
