I met Carol Metzker through the generous Trust Committee of her Quaker Meeting, Willistown Friends Meeting, which recently granted funds to our Fair Trade committee for educational materials. Carol is a writer, frequent speaker and coauthor of the book, Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn. An encounter with an 11-year-old girl rescued from slavery sparked her quest and projects to help survivors of modern slavery.
Here are Carol’s words…………..
A Child, A Monster, and a Hero
When I met Maina, she was 11 years old. She had been rescued from slavery in the circus two weeks earlier. As a slave — not a figure of speech, but an unpaid worker held by violence or threat of violence — she was forced to twirl high above the ground, dangling from a rope she held in her teeth, without a safety net below.
It’s hard to believe that the monster of child slavery still exists overseas and in the United States. One cause is hunger — from poverty, natural disaster or loss of home or family. Hunger leads to vulnerability. People who are desperate to survive are easily deceived and can unknowingly trade the means to survival for their freedom. Hungry, vulnerable, wandering youth are too easily abducted by watchful predators.
When I met Rajneesh in 2010, he had already rescued more than 2,000 slaves, adults and children. He had conducted hundreds of raids, each lasting no longer than 20 minutes. He took survivors to centers specially designed to treat the medical, physical and psychological effects of slavery. This hero led them into the care of other heroes, who rely on another circle of heroes to support survivors of slavery in other ways.
Will you become another hero? 3 actions you can take today:
- Switch to Fair Trade coffee and other Fair Trade products.
- Join an anti-slavery group or start one. A few to consider: through an action group of Rotarians or Free the Slaves’ university chapters. If you are in the Philadelphia area: Philly-area Quakers’ End Modern Slavery Working Group or Malvern Prep’s anti-trafficking club.
- Talk about it – let people know that child slavery still exists.
[And back to Elizabeth………..] A Buddhist speaker brought to my attention that ignorance is really “ignore-ance”. And, yes, it is so tempting to ignore yet another heavy issue. We are all carrying so much already. So, thank you for reading this far, caring. and taking action.