Club President, Michelle Jansen, attended Vision Generation's "How you can be part of combating the global trafficking of men, women and children?" seminar on 9 April 2008.

The following covers some of what was discussed:

Vision Generation are the youth arm of World Vision and they used the seminar to launch their Don’t Trade Lives campaign here in Queensland.

Order of events:

1. Youth (Vision Generation) role played stories of people trafficking
2. Video of Tim Costello’s visit to the Ivory Coast and Ghana.
3. Tim Costello spoke 
4. Video of World Vision’s “Child Trafficking: A Snapshot”.
5. David Batstone spoke
6. Questions

In launching the Don’t Trade Lives campaign, Vision Generation and World Vision have drawn from the key lesson learnt by William Wilberforce which was “to make it personal”. As such, they have selected chocolate as the commodity because most people have chocolate in one form or another on a periodic basis. Their argument is that 70% of the world’s cocoa beans are from plantations in West Africa, with Ivory Coast and Ghana among the biggest producers with many using trafficked children to harvest them. The Don’t Trade Lives campaign asks you, the consumers, to:

1. Step 1: Write a letter to chocolate manufacturers.
2. Step 2: Put the pressure on retailers. Hand the coupon from the Don't Trade Lives website to the retailer where you buy your favourite chocolate and mention why you are doing it!
3. Step 3: Tell a friend.. Under no circumstances are they suggesting you boycott buying chocolate, as this will hurt the poor farming families and trafficked children more. The have resources on their Don’t Trade Lives website to help you do this.

David Batstone (heads up Right Reality, author, anti-slavery activist and Professor of Ethics) outlined what he is doing with students across the United States starting from his hometown of San Francisco.

Through a pilot he ran with students at his university, David launched the Not For Sale campaign. Basically, students at the University of San Francisco learned that their city was a major centre for trafficking in human beings. They have a 30-minute documentary online that tracks their personal discovery of modern slavery, their successful efforts to gather evidence against local traffickers, and their passion to fuel a student movement. The methodology they used is being repeated across the USA and they are asking other student organisations to replicate the same methodology. Their method in no way tries to put students at harm but it uses them to build a investigative research force who can then turn their findings over to the police and other appropriate authorities to take to the next step.

The seminar was very well run, was extremely interesting, and also provided attendees with solid ways in which to raise awareness of human trafficking and how to help reduce it.