PERREAULT Magazine August 2014 | Page 18

Perreault Magazine - 18 -

DAVID

BATSTONEE

David Batstone created "Not For Sale" campaign (NFS)

(see: www.NotForSaleCampaign.org) in 2007 and has surrounded himself with a dedicated team of professionals, committed to resolving the issue of human trafficking. They are actively working on determining and diminishing the problems in affected areas, along with lowering the risks of having more people becoming trafficking victims and raising awareness about this serious problem.

Areas in which "Not For Sale" organization is working in are: Romania, Peru, Thailand, Netherlands, USA. NFS’s objective is to prevent human exploitation and actively raising awareness, stressing that anyone can become a victim of malicious deceit and become exploited for sex or labor. Human trafficking holds the second place as the most vicious and progressive criminal activity, right behind the drug trafficking, which is still at the top, as the first largest criminal industry.

The worst is that there is no place that anybody can say is 100% safe and secure. Trafficking is conducted in restaurants, in hotels, in rural and urban areas, and on the streets. Anyone can become a victim of human trafficking, as criminals are attracting their victims with perfectly built stories, having their strategy based on deceit, abduction, fraud, force and other methods of deception, more often promising employment opportunity abroad, modeling career, and the list goes on.

A REAL PATHWAY OUT OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING

BYCREATING

EDUCATIONAL AND ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES

BP:You have been involved now for 7 years. Do you see changes and are you hopeful?

DB:Because I have seen real transformation, I am very hopeful, I am very inspired. One of the first projects and experiments we did was in the Red Light District in Amsterdam. We have a team who works on the ground with the girls behind the windows, and we discovered that 75% of them come from Eastern Europe mainly from Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. They also come from very poor, high-risk communities where there isn’t much rule of law. Instead of doing the typical work of a non-profit (start a medical or legal service facility, etc.), we decided to invest in creating our company: a SOUP company, and catered to the women behind the windows.

By selling them the ‘Soup Of The Day’ for 3.5 Euros, we were able to start a client-customer relationship with them and as it began to grow, we started establishing a relationship with the largest grocery retail chain in the Netherlands and Belgium called HEMA. They began the commercialization of our soups!