A Trip to the Mall Could Kill the Slave Trade

A trip to the mall during the holiday season usually consists of crowded stores, noisy shoppers, and a run to the food court to load up on french fries and soda.  Among the bustling stores and holiday decorations you can usually find advertisements for iPhones and giant posters of the band One Direction. Knowing all this, I was shocked during winter break to find a booth set up in the middle of the Burlington mall giving information on poverty and world hunger and asking for donations.

World Vision booth in the Burlington Mall

So out of place did this booth depicting starved children seem amongst the dozens of other booths begging you to buy their overpriced products that I just had to stop and check it out. It turns out an organization that works to fight poverty called World Vision was being advertised. After I went home I looked it up at www.worldvision .org and found out that it enables anyone to sponsor a child living in a poverty stricken community through regular gifts of money.

Whether it is giving a child access to good food and clean water, education, healthcare, or even religion, donations made through World Vision help to get children on a good track so that they will someday be able to sustain themselves. Through World Vision sponsorship, children can also receive job training so that in the future they can earn money and get their families and communities out of poverty.

 

In history class this year we learned a lot about slavery, both in the past and present day. Throughout our slave trade unit it became evident that one of the major causes of slavery was and still is poverty. When a family has no money and therefore cannot survive, oftentimes selling a child of their own into the slave trade becomes one of the only options they can see to get the money they desperately need.

Although World Vision was not created directly as a way to prevent modern day slavery, in working to get rid of poverty it serves as one. With fewer families having to make the painful choice to sell their own kin as product in order to get life sustaining money, slave trade dwindles.

As we learned in history class, it is estimated that there over 27 million people enslaved today, more than there ever have been in the past.  Alongside this number stand over three billion people in poverty. I believe that through the work of organizations like World Vision, which give children and whole communities the resources and teachings they need to get out of poverty, both of these numbers can be cut down.

Who would have thought, a trip to the mall with the intentions of spending money on unneeded material items could have led to learning how to fight for those who don’t even have the means to survive, those who could potentially have their own freedom sold.

For more information about what you can do to help prevent poverty and slavery through sponsoring a child, please visit www.worldvision.org!

Note: All personal photos taken at the Burlington Mall.