Conversations with Shame

The next exciting announcement for Bella and I is a four-day conference in April on the topic of shame.

Please read the details on our website, share the word around, and consider attending.

We are bringing two people over from the UK who have extensive experience working with shame in the prison system, as well as bringing from New Zealand one of the world’s leading figures in restorative justice.

The first day is a symposium for everyone to learn about the dynamics of shame from multiple perspectives. That’s followed by a three-day intensive workshop for professionals who help people who carry a lot of shame.

Surrender Conference and Coffee & Conversations

Bella and I had a wonderful road trip down to Melbourne last week to join in the Surrender Conference.

Bella was part of the social enterprise panel session at the conference. She described the way we have used coffee sales to raise funds for various projects, and how that sustainable social enterprise model allows local community building to intersect with global development needs.

The trip also allowed us to lead Coffee & Conversations in Tumut and Ballarat, as part of a series of small gatherings in which we lead discussions on the various things we are passionate about.

We are most excited to facilitate new thinking about the importance of mercy in our increasingly polarised and aggressive society, and about human trafficking (also called modern slavery). You’ll find more about both of those topics on this website. There are various documents here about our research work in human trafficking, and of course, you will have heard about our recent book Disrupting Mercy (available now from Amazon, Koorong and elsewhere — there’s even an audio version).

But these conversations could be about many other things too, like …

• The upcoming referendum on enabling an indigenous voice to parliament

• Sustainable social enterprises: using small business for social good

• Navigating a journey of faith in the light of a growing disillusionment with the tradition model of church

• The intersection of religious faith and technology

• The Anabaptist tradition and its focus on community and non-violence.

If you would like to host a gathering around any of those topics, or need more information, please call Bella on 0409 50 88 99 (in Australia), or email rossinibella@gmail.com.

Book review: Addressing Modern Slavery

“Addressing Modern Slavery” book cover

In my last update I mentioned the book Addressing Modern Slavery, by Justine Nolan and Martijn Boersma, and that I had written a review of that book. That review has now been published in the Journal of Human Trafficking.

Apart from summarising Nolan and Boersma’s book, my review also includes a critique of the strategy that currently dominates the anti-slavery movement. The book reflects the same strategy that lies behind Australia’s recent anti-slavery legislation, namely checking supply chains to identify and deal with any labour exploitation. I am sceptical about the effectiveness of that strategy and suggest that we need to spend more time considering the motives of slave owners and traffickers.

You can see other stuff I’ve written about slavery at Matt’s Opus.

—Matt

Modern slavery from the perpetrators' perspective?

Lots has happened since my last update in July. Thanks for your ongoing encouragement, financial support and advice.

Bella in Perth

In September, we both flew to Perth to attend the symposium "Perspectives on Modern Slavery" at the University of WA. There we heard a large variety of perspectives and had some fascinating conversations. The talks reinforced for me that through a lot of anti-slavery work there is a weird, unstated assumption about the intractability of perpetrators. What I mean is that people talk as though slave owners and human traffickers are cocooned in a black box that we can never engage with. We do not know what goes on inside that box, and our current anti-slavery interventions are limited to imposing various pressures to constrain the box from the outside, because we assume it is impossible to change what happens inside that box.

Questioning that assumption has become one of the core challenges of The Freedom Keys Research Project. We keep asking the people who are already working against modern slavery what they are doing to change the mindset of the people who perpetrate slavery-like abuse. They all say "We aren't doing anything about that, but it's a valuable idea – good luck!"

Nelson Mandela spreading his love over Pretoria

I asked the same type of question in South Africa in October, when I met with people from Hope Risen, Love Justice, and Small Voice Human Trafficking. Those three organisations all do great work. You might like to look at the Small Voice website in particular because they provide an excellent service tracking news about slavery and case studies.

In Perth, we met some of the people involved in producing the Global Slavery Index – which provides the world's best estimate of modern slavery. A couple of weeks later I also had a lengthy Skype conversation with Dr Davina Durgana, who is the principal statistician for the Global Slavery Index.

“Addressing Modern Slavery” book cover

One of the speakers at Perth, Justine Nolan, recently published the book Addressing Modern Slavery. Having read that book I was again struck by the limited vision of what strategies could be used to stop modern slavery. The book's focus is on the importance of auditing global supply chains. That reflects the dominant thinking in anti-slavery work at the moment but it is a strategy that has yet to prove itself. Once again, it completely avoids any consideration of the perpetrator side of the problem. I wrote an extensive review of that book, and the review will be published in the Journal of Human Trafficking next year. (Let me know if you’d like to read a pre-print of that review.)

During this period we also applied for a significant chunk of funding from a source that I was quite hopeful about. Unfortunately that wasn't successful. We are receiving enough from our small support community to cover the expenses of our current networking phase, though at the moment I am essentially working for free. As we move into the next phase we will certainly need to find more money ... so please let us know if you know of any philanthropically-minded people, socially-conscious businesses, or grants that we could apply for.

—Matt & Bella.

Belated update

Have you been wondering about the length of time since our last update? In this case no news has not been good news.

I had planned to write in detail about what we discovered during my trip to Nashville and our visit to Fiji, but Bella returned from Fiji so sick that she was in hospital for two weeks and we are only just getting back on top of things.

So here are the headlines, with a promise for more details later:

Nashville: I spoke at both the Holy Trinity Community Church and the annual Theology and Peace conference about modern slavery. Both talks were well received and I think I have made a handful of contacts with people with whom we will collaborate in the future. The Theology and Peace conference was especially energising because I was part of a group who were all on the same page with regard to violence, faith, and the importance of restorative options for perpetrators.

I thoroughly recommend clicking on this image to hear Naomi Tutu's talk from the conference, in which she describes the African philosophy of ubuntu.

Fiji: Bella and I visited good friends Peter and Jill Schultz in Suva. The main purpose of our trip was to experience the prison rehabilitation work they have been doing for the last 14 years, and to ponder whether their programs could be adjusted for the rehab of trafficking perpetrators.

We also visited Homes of Hope, which offers sanctuary to girls in need, including teenagers trafficked for sex.

After that we planned three days in a tent under a coconut palm soaking up the sun. But by then Bella was quite sick … and it rained!

When we returned to Oz, Bella's health deteriorated to the point that she was hospitalised. A tough bout of flu lead to pneumonia and other infections. Fluid built up in and around her right lung, requiring surgery to drain it, and she is still on the slow road to a place called Recovery.

I intend to write more about what we’ve been learning and how it affects the future of the project soon.

—Matt & Bella.

Six months already!

June is a very exciting month for us. Six months into the project we have already held discussions with a variety of other anti-slavery organisations -- groups such as A21, International Justice Mission, The Mekong Club, and the University of Nottingham's Rights Lab.

During this month, Matt will be speaking about slavery at the Theology & Peace conference in Nashville, and at the Holy Trinity Community Church in Nashville. As soon as he returns, he and Bella are spending a few days looking at a prisoner rehabilitation program in Fiji to see whether the program could be adapted for trafficking offenders.

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

On the fund-raising side, we are now receiving regular donations from some amazing supporters and Bella's coffee customers have been chipping in too. Some artists in Maitland ran an exhibition and donated a percentage of sales to the project. This Sunday we are running a movie night to give locals another chance to donate.

Nevertheless, we are still a LONG way from our target of $130,000.

With the end of financial year just around the corner, could you please consider donating to help us end slavery? Our web site has links to accept TAX DEDUCTIBLE donations via credit card, PayPal or direct deposit. If you are not concerned about tax deductions, please contact us so we can explain a more direct way to contribute.

—Matt & Bella.