picture by Malia Everette

Boreth Sun's visit to Global Exchange in San Francisco, California

This is the second in a two-part interview by Global Exchange Reality Tours Intern Sue Sullivan with our Cambodia and Thailand program officer, Boreth Sun. Follow along to discover what it means to be an in-country representative of Reality Tours and our partnering organization Not For Sale.
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This past October, Reality Tours’ in-country program officer for Cambodia and Thailand, Boreth Sun traveled to the Bay Area to speak at the 2011 Global Forum on Human Trafficking.

Reality Tours has been honored to work and partner with Boreth since 2007 and we took advantage of his visit to show him the office and take him for a brief tour of San Francisco…after all, a few of us here at Reality Tours have traveled with him throughout his beautiful country.  We also had the opportunity to interview him about his experiences working with us and facilitating Reality Tours.

Boreth’s perspective is informative, compelling and inspiring. Learn more about what it means to be an in-country partner and why it is important for the international community to visit and learn first-hand about life in South East Asia in the second in this two part blog.

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Sue: What has your experience been as an In-Country Program Officer in Cambodia?

Boreth: It has been a learning experience for me because I have had a chance to meet with a lot of people from the US and elsewhere through Reality Tours. I take it for granted that everyone should know about these issues; about community issues, human rights issues, human trafficking, poverty, the community struggle for people to improve their livelihood, to manage their own resources, about the big fight against corporations coming to take over their land, I thought people should familiar with all these issues, but Reality Tours, you realize that through people coming in that sometimes, its their first time they are seeing things and looking at things from a different perspective. For me it has also been good to help show people, link people and promote cultural change, a change of mindset to look at things from different perspective. It really is rewarding for me that some of these participants, from the delegation Reality Tours, the Reality Tours have changed their life, it has changed their career, and they’ve become more socially aware and conscious. They even started working to promote social issues; to begin to look at issues far away form their community, far away from their homes. What they’re doing in the US can have big impacts elsewhere in the world. So for me, it’s rewarding to see that. Some of the people who participated on the tour also went back to Asia, went back to Thailand, went back to Cambodia and they are providing some support to local NGOs. Its not that they just went back and offered support, they went back, they learned more and then they give more and they can become sort of an agent of change, promoting, spreading news of what is happening elsewhere in the world that some people sometimes take it for granted.

USF Cambodia Customized Reality Tour 2007

Sue: What are some of the most impactful moments you have witnessed while facilitating GX Reality Tours?

Boreth: Some of the most impactful moments were when the first time I showed people around, some students from the University of San Francisco, they were young, energetic, willing to learn and experience new things, we took them to a dump site where they see lots of people and kids as old as two years old up to teenagers scavenging for whatever in the dump site they could make a few dollars and also make their living.  I think at that moment, in the students you could see the mind shift and how people react to these types of issues. Some of the students have come back and start working for Not for Sale Campaign to promote children’s rights, basic rights of people who don’t have access to education and school… I think that’s what gets me going..to see that we can make a difference. A visit like that can make a difference. A visit like that can help people change because nothing is more powerful than going to experience things, see things and then doing things afterwards. Its not just organizing a trip for people to learn, to see to experience, but to actually transition people into taking some action and doing what they believe is right. I think that’s what gets me going and why I’ve been doing work with Global Exchange since 2007 and I’m still doing it now.

Sue: What are the most compelling issues that Global Exchange members and travelers should learn about?

Devotion at Ankor Wat, Reality Tours Delegation August 2010

Boreth: You see, a lot of people in the US, they know about Cambodia mostly for the killing fields. They know about the Vietnam War, they know about the genocide in Cambodia, the killing fields in Cambodia and Angkor Wat, one of the oldest temples in Cambodia. But there’s more to it than that. The most compelling issue in Cambodia is mostly looking at poverty. After many years of war, poverty is the biggest issue. People are desperate, the majority of people are still poor, and that’s why they’re vulnerable to be trafficked; to be bought, sold and traded into different entertainment industries of the world. So those are the most compelling issues. But we should not focus on the symptom or the survival of the issue, we need to address the grassroots of the issue, which is poverty and food securities. Right now because of climate change, you look at Southeast Asia, you know Thailand and Cambodia; Cambodia is underwater now. People are going to loose their crop, their pig, their chicken, their duck, everything, their livestock. So the people are being affected by the climate change, by this flood and this pushes them further and further into poverty. So people become so desperate, they will do anything to survive. I think another big issue in Cambodia is environmental degradation. A lot of corporation companies from around the world, mostly Chinese are going there to destroy a lot of Cambodian resources. Deforestation is big, land concession is big, they take away people’s land and give the right to the corporation to grow different crops soybeans muang beans as part of the corporations trying to make big money. Also minerals, they extract minerals from the ground and again they are destroying the resources. In the future, in Cambodia, I think the biggest compelling issue, the biggest challenging issue will be environmental degradation because it impacts food security and people’s livelihoods, and destroys the social fabric, the social structure of community villages throughout the country. That’s going to be the biggest challenge. You can see that’s what’s happening now. The flooding is just the beginning of what’s to come I think.

Sue: Is there anything else that you’d like to share about your experiences as a Global Exchange in-country program officer?

The Power of Recycling and Reclaiming- A visit to a dump and meeting with SCARO, a Cambodian NGO working with garbage collectors.

Boreth: What I just want to say is that I think what Reality Tours and Global Exchange are doing in Cambodia and Thailand is great. I think we become a bridge between the West and the East and Asia. I think we build a bridge for change. We exchange information, we exchange experiences, we exchange skills, the know how, the technologies. We are connecting the world and I think this is great work that Global Exchange is doing. And linking with the institutions such as NFS and the socially responsible NGOs and enterprises. We are helping build the bridges. In doing this, we become some sort of agent of humanities and change. When we do this, we can build the world to be a better and more peaceful place for everybody, not just the rich and powerful.

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Past Cambodia Reality Tour trip participant Photo by: Tammy Gustafson

Special thanks to Sue Sullivan, Reality Tours’ intern for conducting this interview with Boreth.

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Find out about how you can travel to Cambodia and Thailand on a Global Exchange Reality Tour.

 


Boreth Sun Visiting Global Exchange in San Francisco

This is the first in a two-part interview by Global Exchange Reality Tours Intern Sue Sullivan with our Cambodia and Thailand program officer, Boreth Sun. Follow along to discover what it means to be an in-country representative of Reality Tours and our partnering organization Not For Sale.

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Sue: Could you tell us about your work in Cambodia and how you got involved with the Not for Sale Campaign?

Boreth: I started working with Global Exchange in Cambodia in 2007, for the first time when I organized a trip for a group of students from USF through Global Exchange. We helped students learn about the reality on the ground what happened in Cambodia, meet people, see people, learn from the people, share stories with people and all of that.  That’s what NFS has been doing along with Global Exchange. I started organizing the trip one time and then after Global Exchange sent me an email asking me to continue leading the tours, help linking people with different agencies, different institutions, community leaders, government officials and all of that and the next thing I know I got stuck.

Sue: What is your current role with Not For Sale in Southeast Asia?

Boreth: I am the coordinator for Cambodia, helping coordinate all activities from the other side of the world with Alessandro Isola and with Malia Everette. Recently, NFS has asked me to help with some networking in Cambodia as part of their work in trying to access some quality material and products from Cambodian social enterprises. They are importing some (stuff) from Cambodia through a garment factory called, STOPStart. STOPStart I think is owned by Not for Sale and some individuals. They want to try to tap into some resources. So I’m going to help them for only the next several months to link them with the right people, custom people, licensing, tax people, legal issues and also help linking them with some NGOs that can tap into some quality sale products or just handcraft products; bags T-shirts and all of that. That’s why I got involved. So again, very similar to a Reality Tour, helping people linking to the right institutions, development agencies, community leaders, villages, all that kind of stuff.

A Visit to Ankor Wat, Reality Tours August 2010

Sue: Could you tell us a little about the work of Not for Sale in Cambodia?

Boreth: In Cambodia, NFS, really doesn’t have a lot of direct activities, what NFS does is through me in Cambodia linking NFS US with different hr NGOs to fight against human trafficking. Basically, NFS does this to link people with different institutions who are fighting human trafficking. My goal is to link them with the right agencies that are doing a lot of great work, but also helping Stop Start, a garment factory who is promoting Fair Trade and hiring some people who are victims or survivors of human trafficking to work there. I link them with different agencies like Nymo.

Welcoming Sign at NYEMO, Cambodia

Nyemo is an agency, an NGO who is working with survivors of human trafficking to make quality products, handicrafts and different fabric design and all of that. NFS is linking with them now and tapping into their products to import them to the US to sell them in different parts of the US.  Its not direct support but linking to the right social enterprises, to responsible enterprises to help promote change in Cambodia.

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We here at Reality Tours are grateful that Boreth got “stuck”. We are excited to continue deepening our relationship and working together to organize broad educational tours, customized delegations and Not For Sale advocacy journeys in the years to come to Cambodia and Thailand. With our passionate partners all over the world, we are able to ensure that tourism is ethical, socially responsible, respects human rights, and is conscious of the local environment and culture. Thus we extend a special thanks to Boreth for working with us to “Meet the People, Learn the Facts, and Make a Difference”!

 

Past Cambodia Reality Tour trip participant Photo by: Tammy Gustafson

 

Take Action! Find out about how you can travel to Cambodia and Thailand on a Global Exchange Reality Tour.


Originally posted at www.earthrights.org/blog

After nearly two years of work and consistent opposition from big oil, substantive provisions of legislation initially introduced by Senators Lugar (R-IN) and Cardin (D-MD) as the Energy Security Through Transparency Act (ESTT), were signed into law by President Obama as Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act on Wednesday.   Offered by Senator Leahy (D-VT), the provision will require both US and internationally-based companies registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to publish what they pay to governments for the commercial development of oil, gas, and minerals, while creating a new international standard for transparency in the extractive industry.

The provision, which will apply to 90 percent of the largest internationally operating oil and gas companies, made the cut during an all-night House-Senate conference committee meeting over the Wall Street reform bill.  

   

The bill will have significant impacts in countries like Burma, where a lack of transparency has contributed to corruption, authoritarianism, and gross human rights violations, directly linked to the natural gas industry. According to EarthRights International’s new report, “Energy Insecurity: How Total, Chevron, and PTTEP Contribute to Human Rights Violations, Financial Secrecy, and Nuclear Proliferation in Burma (Myanmar), the lack of publicly available information on revenues received by the military junta in Burma has facilitated the misuse of these funds, including massive diversion of resource-related public monies.

In fact, data from a leaked IMF report indicates 70 percent of Burma’s foreign exchange reserves are from gas exports and that gas-related payments from corporations, amounting to billions of dollars, contributed only one percent of total budget revenue.  That means that less than one percent of the largest source of income for the Burmese state actually enters the state budget. Had these revenues entered the state budget, they would have accounted for 57 percent of the total 2007/2008 budget.  The majority of the gas revenues are believed to be held in offshore banks, with reports indicating that hundreds of millions are channeled into the personal bank accounts of individuals closely associated with the ruling military junta in two offshore banks in Singapore.

When this new transparency bill takes effect — likely in 2012 — companies including Chevron, Total, the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation, the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation, and others will be forced to disclose how much they pay the regime in Burma, something they have been resisting for years. For communities and civil society inside and outside of Burma, this information can be used in attempts to hold the authorities in Burma accountable for how these monies are spent.

The reach of this bill is truly global. Communities in Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Algeria, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Russia, Columbia, Thailand, and around the world will know how much their governments receive from corporations including Shell, BP, Chevron, Exxon, Newmont Mining, and most of the other energy and mining majors operating in their countries.

EarthRights International was active throughout the legislative process, lobbying the U.S. Congress directly while providing public education, letter writing, advocacy, and training to other organizations in support of the transparency provision as a member of Publish What You Pay United States, a coalition of 32 nongovernmental organizations that advocated for the legislation. 

This bill takes aim squarely at the “resource curse,” the documented pattern in countries rich in natural resources where this wealth leads to negative development outcomes. Senator Lugar (R-IN), one of the main supporters of the transparency provision summarized the importance of this measure quite well, saying: “History shows that oil, gas reserves, and minerals can frequently be a bane, not a blessing, for poor countries leading to corruption, wasteful spending, military adventurism, and instability, and too often oil money intended for a nation’s poor ends up lining the pockets of the rich, or is squandered on showcase projects instead of productive investments.” 

While a major victory for communities in resource-rich countries, there are still several stages before the legislation is implemented and companies begin to report their payments. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) must issue proposed rules that provide detailed guidance for companies covered by the bill. This process will take up to one year to complete. Groups like EarthRights International and our Publish What You Pay US colleagues will play an active role in this rule-making process, ensuring that critical information on payments is available in an effective, timely, and complete manner. Once the final rules are issued, companies will be required to disclose payments in their annual filings to the SEC going forward.

We expect that Big Oil will continue to resist these efforts as they did with the legislation. The American Petroleum Institute (API), a national trade association representing about 400 corporate members, including major oil and gas companies, made several misleading claims in a letter to members of the Senate in 2010, stating:  “API feels that requiring only U.S-listed extractive companies to disclose revenues creates a competitive disadvantage for these companies in the global energy marketplace.” Members of the US Senate were not persuaded by this specious claim, with Senator Cardin calling API’s claims, “a red herring.”

This bill may be the beginning of the end for the cloud of secrecy and corruption associated with resource extraction around the globe. With other countries like the UK considering similar measures, there is a great hope that revenue transparency becomes a norm for the industry, and we can begin to see the responsible use of these critical revenues for the benefit of local and national communities.

For more information on the transparency bill, visit www.earthrights.org

In honor of International Women’s Day coming up on the 8th, we are featuring a few of the women artisan groups that we work with at Global Exchange. Women make up a large part of the artisans involved in the Fair Trade world and largely benefit from the positive impacts that Fair Trade brings. When trying to figure out which groups to feature, we had a lot to choose from so it was hard to decide.

So, to narrow it down, we picked an item that has been catching our eye lately. A GX store staffer has been waiting for a birthday to come up so she can give someone this Saori wallet. These wallets are a product of the Saori Group, a project started by Mitsuo Kawestco, the founder of the Buddhist Maya Kotamee Foundation. The project came about in the aftermath of the tsunami that rocked Thailand in December 2004 in hopes to help survivors who saw their lives devastated by the tragic event. The Saori Group has sought to be a healing environment for the victims helping the cope through providing an atmosphere where they can pick up where the tsunami left off and reconnect with their communities.

The Saori Group has helped over 150 women since its inception. The women come together to craft wonderfully colorful crafts out of leftover material ranging from thread from fabric manufacturers to scraps of plastic. With this leftover material, they are able to weave and bring life to new crafts. It is somewhat symbolic of their lives where they are picking up pieces from the past and giving it a new path. The women of the Saori Project have been empowered because they are able to provide an new life for themselves and start anew.

[photo: www.tshirtaxid.blogspot.com]

Pictured above, our new mulberry paper producer partners pose in front of a pile of their mulberry paper screens.

During our direct buying trip to Southeast Asia, Jenie and I visited the Saa Paper Village in Chiang Mai, THaihland. Since we go through so many gift bags throughout the year, (hundreds alone in our Fair Trade Action Kits!) we decided to source a 100% eco-friendly alternative. We settled on Saa paper, also known as mulberry paper. The mulberry tree grows in abundance in Thailand, and the village we visited specializes in nothing but mulberry paper products. During the visit, though there was no production at the time, Jenie and I got to learn firsthand the process of production, from boiling down the mulberry to pouring out the material onto screens for the paper to form, before the paper sheets are literally hung out to dry in the yard. My favorite part of the gift bags….the handles. Also made from mulberry, they are very sturdy and rope-like, so hopefully people who receive the bags will want to use them over and over again. The colors are great and the bags are sturdy, so the landfills will have to look elsewhere for excessive amounts of gift bags to fill them up! We’ll also be offering sets of gift bags (three sizes per set) on our website to customers who want to use them as an alternative to wrapping paper. Global Exchange will be introducing our new gift bags this Fall, so keep a lookout!


Written by: Tex Dworkin, Manager of the Global Exchange Fair Trade Online Store

Pictured above, Hmong tribe weavers work on their crafts, while Tex chats with Thai Tribal Craft Manager Harry Wathittayakul.

Global Exchange Fair Trade Store Senior Buyer Jenie Farinas and Store Manager Tex Dworkin traveled on a three week buying trip to Northern Thailand and Luang Prabang, Laos. The items purchased during this trip will be available on our website beginning in Fall 2007. During their travels, local NGO Thai Tribal Craft hosted a trip to visit with one of their Hmong Tribe producer groups. Thai Tribal Crafts (TTC) was established in 1973. Its main objective is to provide opportunities for improving the quality of life of the tribal people in the Northern Thailand. Seven Hill tribes of Northern Thailand are involved in the project: the Akha, Hmong, Karen, Lahu, Lawa, Lisu and Mien groups, as well as many women working in Chiang Mai. To achieve their objective they have the following goals.

  • To be a non-profit but self-sustaining agency

  • To operate under the principle of fair trade

  • To preserve the traditional arts and crafts of tribal people

  • To provide advice and training for the producers on quality control as well as creating new designs.

To learn more about TTC, visit the Thai Tribal Crafts website.