We are more than excited about the upcoming Freedom Summit, a conference on slavery and human trafficking! We have an incredible team of our students and Abundant Life members working hard to put this together. It has been so fun to see our students take ownership and come alive in planning this conference. We have incredible speakers coming, including pastor Francis Chan from Cornerstone church near LA, David Batstone with Not for Sale, and Bethany Hoang from International Justice Mission. Not for Sale and IJM are two of the biggest and best organizations in the country fighting human trafficking! In putting this conference together, we have learned so much and met so many incredible people who are working full time to fight this massive injustice in this world.

One example of someone we have met who is working hard to fight this injustice and will join us at the conference is Nathan George (and his small team of employees) who started a for profit business called Trade as One a few years ago. Nathan worked in the UK in business for 20 years before he felt led to start this business in the United States. He started by spending a lot of time travelling around the world to places where there is a lot of poverty, AIDS, and/or human trafficking. He found large and small businesses who were employing people living with AIDS, in dire poverty, or coming out of forced prostitution or labor. He said the one main thing that all of these people wanted was help in marketing and selling their products. So he set up Trade as One to buy products from these businesses and sell them in the States. Last year, they sold $700,000 worth of products and it was only their second year in operation! They are not only running an eithical business in which ALL of the products they sell are 100% slave free, but the very existence of their business is responsible for sustaining and creating jobs for many thousands of people living with AIDS, in dire poverty, or coming out of human trafficking. Now that to me is an example of creative Kingdom business that delights God's heart!!



Nathan is so passionate and optimistic that the "Fair Trade" movement in America can take off and change the world dramatically. This is how: If a lot people begin to truly care enough about this issue to change the way they spend their money by buying only fair trade products wherever possible, then the companies who are certified "fair trade" because they have NO slave labor in their supply chain will begin to do really well, setting an example for other companies. Even if prices need to be a few dollars higher (since they might have previously been getting free labor way down the line in their supply chain, allowing them to have lower prices for the finished product), companies will realize that people care enough about this issue to not only keep buying their products if they are a few bucks more, but actually buy more since they are "fair trade." It is kind of like how the organic movement took off five or six years ago, except this issue of slavery is WAY MORE IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT IS DEALING WITH THE LIVES OF PRECIOUS PEOPLE, MOSTLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN, MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD! People are willing to pay more for organic because the food is healthier, animals are treated better, it is more environmentally friendly, etc. How much more should fair trade companies take off and succeed since they are ensuring good, fair treatment of every worker in their supply chain! Now that I know what I know, I cannot with integrity keep buying products that are not fair trade. Of course at this point, there are not a lot of things that are certified fair trade, but I know that will change soon. And in the meantime, I will just be a responsible consumer wherever possible and buy stuff from businesses like Trade as One! Trent and I were wondering why every church in America wouldn't have a "trading post" in their church where they sell fair trade products. They don't seem to have a hard time having book stores to sell their own books.

Please go to our website for more info on this conference: www.freedom-summit.org. It is going to be incredible! We are really hoping to mobilize the body of Christ to take action on this issue, because there are ways we can do so! We know that God is waking up the church in America to put their money where their mouth is, put love into action, and care about the things that He cares about. We are His hands and feet, and we want to take that role very seriously for our King!