urbanresource.net

Author: Stephanie Land, Idealist.org

Publisher: Perigee Trade (2009)

Binding: Paperback, 288 pages

Review: From the world’s largest nonprofit networking website—a resource that gives readers the tools they need to make a difference.Part career guide, part activist’s handbook, The Idealist.org Handbook to Building a Better World provides tools and inspiration for anyone who wants to make a difference but doesn’t know where to start. Inspired by Idealist.org’s 600,000-member online community and their ongoing search for work that gives back to the world, this practical reference walks readers through the different ways they can get involved and the range of possibilities for applying one’s interests and skills to meet their community’s needs. Idealist.org’s staff gives a comprehensive understanding of the issues, options, organizations, and resources so readers can be proactive, whether it’s through one’s current job, volunteering, donating, personal spending, board service, starting an organization, or changing careers.

Author: Susan J. Ellis

Publisher: Energize, Inc (2002)

Binding: Paperback, 156 pages

Review: Susan Ellis has literally crammed this book with every suggestion and recommendation on the subject of recruitment developed over her 20-plus years in the volunteer management field. She first shows how to design the best assignments for volunteers as the initial step to finding the most qualified people. What follows is a wealth of information on topics ranging from how your organization's image affects your success in recruitment to where to look for new volunteers, including your own backyard.

Author: Various Contributors

Publisher: Amazon Remainders Account (2005)

Binding: Paperback, 288 pages

Review: "Today, this very day, 5,500 Africans will die of AIDS. If this isn't emergency, what is?" -Bono (U2) The aWAKE Project, Second Edition is an updated collection of stories and essays geared toward educating and mobilizing Americans to help with the AIDS crisis in Africa. Action is needed for a continent on which five people die every minute from the deadly AIDS virus. aWAKE stands for: AIDS-Working toward Awareness, Knowledge and Engagement. Compiled of articles written by significant speakers on the AIDS issue, ranging from Nelson Mandela to Kay Warren, The aWAKE Project provides poignant stories and compelling statistics, encouraging the reader to care and even take action to battle this horrific crisis. A significant portion of the proceeds from sales of The aWAKE Project will be donated to non-profits helping those in Africa.

Author:

Publisher: Oxfam Publishing (2002)

Binding: Paperback, 96 pages

Review: This book explores areas of human experience that are highly complex and which evoke powerful and contradictory feelings among those attempting to understand them. The institution of slavery has a long and terrible history, and many view it as a purely historical phenomenon. Yet slavery remains widespread today, taking many forms, often clandestine. One aspect of modern slavery that elicits particular revulsion is the trafficking of women and young girls and boys into the sex industry, and this is the focus of many of the authors in this book."Gender, Trafficking, and Slavery " examines the operations of trafficking and other kinds of "modern-day" slavery, from a gender perspective. It explores the relationships between gender relations, poverty, conflict, and globalization that are driving today's slave trade. The authors provide an overview of what trafficking and slavery are, their magnitude, and their complexity. They introduce the key debates, competing definitions, and conceptual divides within this controversial subject. The search for solutions exposes the weaknesses in national and international legal frameworks intended to protect bonded workers and trafficked persons, and analyzes the attempts of development and human rights organizations to support those at risk, to create alternative livelihood options for them, and to help those who escape to rebuild their lives. The book includes case studies drawn from the Baltic States, West and Central Africa, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Middle East, North Africa, and Western Europe.

Author: Victor Malarek

Publisher: Arcade Publishing (2004)

Binding: Hardcover, 320 pages

Review: On the black market, they're the third most profitable com- modity, after illegal weapons and drugs-the only difference being that these goods are human, though to their handlers they are wholly expendable. They are women and girls, some as young as 12, from all over the Eastern bloc, where sinister networks of organized crime have become entrenched in the aftermath of the collapse of Communist regimes. In Israel, they're called Natashas, whether they're actually from Russia, Bosnia, the Czech Republic, or Ukraine, no matter what their real names may be. They're lured into vans and onto airplanes with promises of jobs as waitresses, mod-els, nannies, dishwashers, maids, and dancers. But when they arrive at their destinations, they are stripped of their identifi-cation, and their nightmare begins. They are sold into pros-titution and kept enslaved; those who resist are beaten, raped, and sometimes killed as examples. They often have nowhere to turn; in many cases, the men who should be res- cuing them-from immigration officials to police officers and international peacekeepers-are among their aggressors.

Author: Nattaya Boonpakdi, Chutima Janthakeero, Siriporn Skrobanek

Publisher: Zed Books (1997)

Binding: Paperback, 144 pages

Review: This moving but unemotional account of the rapidly-expanding international traffic in women reveals it as a global issue. Using original, carefully-documented field studies from Thailand, it explores the nature and extent of the problem worldwide. It demonstrates how the traffic in women and forced prostitution are aspects of transnational migration, now estimated to involve 70 million people worldwide. As agents of slavery, these women also suffer grave violations of human rights. Avoiding rhetorical condemnation and simplistic solutions, the book shows how women themselves can be empowered to end the traffic and ends with detailed recommendations for change.

Author: Edward Tivnan, Francis Bok

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (2004)

Binding: Paperback, 304 pages

Review: In this groundbreaking modern slave narrative, Francis Bok shares his remarkable story with grace, honesty, and a wisdom gained from surviving ten years in captivity.May, 1986: Selling his mother's eggs and peanuts near his village in southern Sudan, seven year old Francis Bok's life was shattered when Arab raiders on horseback, armed with rifles and long knives, burst into the quiet marketplace, murdering men and women and gathering the young children into a group. Strapped to horses and donkeys, Francis and others were taken north, into lives of slavery under wealthy Muslim farmers. For ten years, Francis lived alone in a shed near the goats and cattle that were his responsibility. Fed with scraps from the table, slowly learning bits of an unfamiliar language and religion, the boy had almost no human contact other than his captor's family. After two failed attempts to escape-each bringing severe beatings and death threats-Francis finally escaped at age seventeen, a dramatic breakaway on foot that was his final chance. Yet his slavery did not end there, for even as he made his way toward the capital city of Khartoum, others sought to deprive him of his freedom. Determined to avoid that fate and discover what had happened to his family on that terrible day in 1986, the teenager persevered through prison and refugee camps for three more years, winning the attention of United Nations officials and being granted passage to America.Now a student and an anti-slavery activist, Francis Bok has made it his life mission to combat world slavery. His is the first voice to speak for an estimated twenty seven million people held against their will in nearly every nation, including our own. Escape from Slavery is at once a riveting adventure, a story of desperation and triumph, and a window revealing a world that few have survived to tell.

Author:

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (2008)

Binding: Paperback, 240 pages

Review: Twenty-seven million people are estimated to be held in slavery around the world today. This collection of first-hand accounts will raise awareness and show how slavery is thriving in the twenty first century. From poverty-stricken countries to affluent American suburbs, slaves toil as sweatshop workers, sex slaves, migrant workers, domestic servants, and chattel slaves. This groundbreaking collection includes accounts written by ten former slaves and slaveholders in Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the United States. From Micheline, a Haitian girl who wound up as a domestic worker in Connecticut, to Abdel, a Mauritanian slave owner turned abolitionist, these are stories that will heighten awareness of a global human rights crisis that can no longer be ignored.

Author: Kevin Bales

Publisher: University of California Press (2005)

Binding: Paperback, 222 pages

Review: Although slavery is illegal throughout the world, we learned from Kevin Bales's highly praised exposé, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, that more than twenty-seven million people--in countries from Pakistan to Thailand to the United States--are still trapped in bondage. With this new volume, Bales, the leading authority on modern slavery, looks beyond the specific instances of slavery described in his last book to explore broader themes about slavery's causes, its continuation, and how it might be ended. Written to raise awareness and deepen understanding, and touching again on individual lives around the world, this book tackles head-on one of the most urgent and difficult problems facing us today. Each of the chapters in Understanding Global Slavery explores a different facet of global slavery. Bales investigates slavery's historical roots to illuminate today's puzzles. He explores our basic ideas about what slavery is and how the phenomenon fits into our moral, political, and economic worlds. He seeks to explain how human trafficking brings people into our cities and how the demand for trafficked workers, servants, and prostitutes shapes modern slavery. And he asks how we can study and measure this mostly hidden crime. Throughout, Bales emphasizes that to end global slavery, we must first understand it. This book is a step in that direction.

Author: Craig McGill

Publisher: Vision Paperbacks (2003)

Binding: Paperback, 288 pages

Review: The stories of illegal immigrants from four continents who have embarked on dangerous journeys in trucks, boats, and even underneath trains are told in this investigation of the personal, economic, and legal dimensions of the international trade of people smuggling. Interviews with immigrants reveal the deceptive expectations perpetuated by smugglers, which are dashed by the immigrants' experiences with sexual slavery, long hours in sweatshops, or living without access to health care, legal housing, and education. Case studies compare the fate of illegal and legal immigrants to examine why immigrants choose this option and who profits from their suffering. Members of the underworld in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia who organize this illicit movement of people are also interviewed.

Author: Kevin Bales

Publisher: University of California Press (2004)

Binding: Paperback, 324 pages

Review: Slavery is illegal throughout the world, yet more than twenty-seven million people are still trapped in one of history's oldest social institutions. Kevin Bales's disturbing story of contemporary slavery reaches from Pakistan's brick kilns and Thailand's brothels to various multinational corporations. His investigations reveal how the tragic emergence of a "new slavery" is inextricably linked to the global economy. This completely revised edition includes a new preface.

Author: David Batstone

Publisher: HarperOne (2007)

Binding: Paperback, 320 pages

Review: Award-winning journalist David Batstone reveals the story of a new generation of 21st century abolitionists and their heroic campaign to put an end to human bondage. In his accessible and inspiring book, Batstone carefully weaves the narratives of activists and those in bondage in a way that not only raises awareness of the modern-day slave trade, but also serves as a call to action. With 2007 bringing the 200th anniversary of the climax of the 19th century abolitionist movement, the world pays tribute to great visionary figures such as William Wilberforce of the United Kingdom and American Frederick Douglass for their remarkable strides toward framing slavery as a moral issue that people of good conscience could not tolerate. This anniversary serves not only as a commemorative date for battles won against slavery, but also as a reminder that slavery and bondage still persist in the 21st century. An estimated 27 million people around the globe suffer in situations of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation from which they cannot free themselves. Trafficking in people has become increasingly transnational in scope and highly lucrative. After illegal drug sales and arms trafficking, human trafficking is today the third most profitable criminal activity in the world, generating $31 billion annually. As many as half of all those trafficked worldwide for sex and domestic slavery are children under 18 years of age.

Author: Kimberly A. Mccabe

Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing (2008)

Binding: Paperback, 159 pages

Review: Over 700,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year. Of those, the U.S. Department of State estimates that between 14,500 and 17,500 are trafficked into the United States. Today, the U.S. and other nations are beginning to recognize the magnitude of the problem and attempt to address the victimization caused by human trafficking. This book investigates the types of human trafficking, and discusses U.S. and international responses to combat and end all forms of this criminal activity. With discussion-provoking questions at the end of each chapter and specific examples of trafficking activity, this book is appropriate for criminology courses, classes dedicated to victims and/or child abuse, and classes focused around the themes of international crime and international law.

Author: Catherine Paris

Publisher: Claddagh Ltd. (2007)

Binding: Hardcover, 348 pages

Review: Modern Day Slavery: Human Trafficking Revealed brings to light the reality of human trafficking in today's world. There are currently 600,000 to 800,000 persons being trafficked each year. The United States government estimates that human trafficking is close to tying with the second most common industry, arms dealing, which is just second to drug trafficking. Criminals are making billions of dollars each year on the blood, sweat, and tears of trafficking victims. Modern Day Slavery: Human Trafficking Revealed discusses the various laws, agencies, countries, and protocols dealing with human trafficking. Case studies have been included in this book, along with pertinent news items, and the latest information available from our government. Victims of human trafficking are enslaved, subjected to limited movement, isolation, or had their documents confiscated. Children are used for labor in sweatshops, migrant farming, construction, factories, fisheries, panhandling, janitorial jobs, hotel or tourist industries, restaurant services, domestic servitude, child camel jockeys, child soldiers, and for child sex tourism. Children who are victimized by human traffickers are often mistaken for prostitutes, runaways, migrant farm workers, or domestic servants. It can be difficult to pick up on the subtle signals, however, if you look closely and ask the right questions, you may uncover children who are being exploited. Children who are exploited for labor are usually hungry or malnourished to the extent that they are poorly developed and may never reach their full height or development. Children who are forced into the commercial sex trade may show signs of having sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, kidney problems, and urinary tract infections.