From Bonds of Injustice
How Urbana's Offering will Help Free Slavesby Shannon Whiting
If you dropped money in a bucket at Urbana 03 or Urbana 06, you contributed to the fight against unjust child imprisonment in the Philippines.
Over the past two conferences, International Justice Mission (IJM) has put their allotted portion of the offering money toward their human rights work in the Philippines. Today, the country’s law against placing youth in adult prisons is stronger, and is more firmly enforced by the national government.
“There’s no [child imprisonment] case for us to work on anymore” said Alicia Leite, IJM’s student ministries program manager. Though the legal issue hasn’t disappeared entirely, the work of IJM and other contributing groups has spurred enough change that the organization has moved its focus to areas of greater need: sexual violence and human trafficking.
This type of sustainable change is the end goal toward which each of the 14 IJM field offices works worldwide.
This year, IJM will receive a portion of the Urbana offering toward their work in Chennai, India, combating forced labor slavery.
The Problem of Bondage
Alesha Guruswamy, program specialist for IJM's offices in South Asia, said money lenders in Chennai have long been taking advantage of the city’s poor. Villagers are given small loans for basic needs, then offered the option to pay off the loan by working the lender's rice mill, rock quarry or brick kiln. Once there, workers are often beaten, sexually abused and forced to work 15 to16 hours a day without pay.
In a recent case, one Chennai resident made such a pact for the small amount of $10. Though seemingly easy enough to pay off, accounting fraud and lack of income kept his debt growing.
"He began accumulating more and more debt so that he was never actually free from his debt," Guruswamy said. At the time of his rescue, the individual owed $325 – a fortune to him.
Breaking Chains
Chennai's office works in teams of investigations, legal and aftercare. They work on finding illegal situations and connecting with legal authorities to release laborers and hold perpetrators accountable to India's laws. Once the victims are freed, IJM provides a two-year program to help get them back on their feet.
Since 2004, IJM's Chennai office has rescued 1,593 forced laborers.
Though they work to liberate one victim at a time, the Chennai team has a much larger goal. After celebrating its ten-year anniversary in 2007, International Justice Mission is beginning to focus more on structural transformation in addition to individual casework.
"We would eventually love to see the public justice system as a whole addressing the problem of bonded labor without IJM’s help," Guruswamy said. Yet that "eventually" does not happen easily. A large piece of the work will include raising local awareness about the issue.
Holding a Vision
Chennai's office currently hosts 50 staff, about 40 of whom are Indian nationals. The remainder is made up of expatriates and long-term interns or "fellows" (many of whom have been involved with InterVarsity, according to Leite). The interns, Leite said, often play an important role in encouraging the office’s vision with their fresh perspective and energy.
Each investigative and legal case this team takes on comes with more than just hard work and vision – a high price is included in the undercover investigations, legal representations, trial fees and the two-year aftercare and training.
Urbana hopes to make a dent in those high prices by giving IJM Chennai a portion of the 09 offering. Guruswamy and Leite are hoping Urbana will also contribute more young visionaries for IJM, though there hasn't necessarily been a shortage of them.
"That's the amazing thing. This generation cares about this issue," Leite said. "They care immediately when they hear about it, and typically the response is, 'what can we do about it?'"
IJM will help to answer that question along with World Vision and Sojourners through Urbana's Advocacy and Poverty Track.
The high costs of IJM's work also comes with high rewards. Currently, IJM sees 96% of their freed clients avoiding a return to slavery, and the majority of their interns' worldviews being altered.
"When you're confronted with poverty face to face - the poorest of the poor - it’s hard to go away from that experience unchanged," Guruswamy said.
Find out where else your 06 offering was invested.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
Print
Email
Comments
Be the first one to add a comment.
To post a comment, please login or register