REBBL Contributes $1 Million Dollars in Cumulative Donations to Not for Sale
We are proud to announce that REBBL has surpassed $1 million dollars in cumulative donations to our nonprofit partner Not for Sale (NFS)! This is a huge milestone in our partnership with NFS, our co-founding organization.
REBBL and NFS were also recently honored as finalists in Fast Company’s 3rd annual ‘2019 World Changing Ideas’ awards, in the Social Justice category. Our recognition was focused on the impact sourcing of Brazil Nuts in Peru (featured in our Banana Nut Protein Elixir), and its uplifting effect on the local community.
The REBBL and Not for Sale partnership is the definition of symbiosis; where business and nonprofits work together to give us all a chance to thrive with dignity.
In addition to working with NFS on impact sourcing projects, REBBL contributes a percentage of every bottle sold back to Not For Sale to help fund its projects around the world, rehabilitating survivors of trafficking, and preventing it before it happens by developing sustainable social projects globally. NFS has 12 projects in countries across the world, and they have supported nearly 35,000 survivors and at-risk individuals through long-term care, housing, education, vocational training, and healthcare to people that have been affected by modern-day slavery. Below is a deeper look into the each country-specific project, funded in part by REBBL’s donation.
Not For Sale: Vietnam
Up until 2016, Vietnamese authorities refused to acknowledge the cases of trafficking and exploitation for men and boys.
Not For Sale partnered with Blue Dragon to create the first housing for young boys that had been sexually or otherwise exploited in Vietnam. They provide support for the street boys in Hanoi who frequent internet cafes, cafes where they are contacted by traffickers and abusers. NFS offers crisis care to kids on the street 24/7, from emergency shelter and healthcare, to food and clothes.
Not For Sale: Thailand
Not For Sale Thailand supports more than 100 children each year through shelter, long-term housing, healthcare, food, and education. NFS Thailand concentrates on the education of stateless children. The Akha communities in Northern Thailand are among the focus communities.
Due to the difficulties in enrolling in any official Thai school while being stateless, these children struggle to get an education and are aggressively targeted by human traffickers.
NFS constructed and expanded a children’s home to offer shelter and long-term housing for youth rescued from exploitation. They provide the children safety, stability, nutritious meals and medical care. All children are enrolled in primary, secondary, or university education. The home includes a library and computer center and provides opportunities for experiences such as growing an organic farm.
Not For Sale: Netherlands
NFS Netherlands offers professional culinary training to survivors of human trafficking in Amsterdam. Trainees are taught to prepare soup that is sold to women working in the brothels of the surrounding Red Light District. During their culinary internships, survivors gain valuable job and life skills that will help them to find dignified work opportunities. After the women graduate from the culinary training, NFS works to place them in jobs or paid internships throughout Amsterdam.
Not For Sale: Peru
Several thousand people are estimated to be subjected to trafficking within Peru, including forced labor in mining, logging, and agriculture. Many of these people come from impoverished regions of the Amazon.
Not For Sale developed a scholarship program to provide housing, school fees, supplies and emotional support for vulnerable children in rural parts of Peru. NFS created community gardens, as well as a fish farm, to invest in healthy nutrition.
Through help from contributions from REBBL, NFS has built a school, developed a scholarship program, installed community gardens, and are developing clean water systems. This is in addition to the impact sourcing work we do with the Brazil nut project in the Madre de Dios region of Peru.
Not For Sale: Uganda
More than 30,000 more people have fled to the Kyangwali Settlement in the past year. Schools, housing, and food programs are unable to accommodate such a quick influx of refugees, and many children are left behind. Not For Sale Uganda works in Kyangwali to prepare every person for a better future. They support education, a shelter, an internship program, and job training for refugees.
Their work is rooted deeply in the belief that dignity and freedom is a deserved right for everyone.
Not For Sale: South Africa
NFS South Africa fuses surfing with mentorship to ensure that children have the opportunity to leave street life behind. The children enrolled in our programming start thinking of themselves as surfers – not street children.
This program has had wild success, creating a wave of young black surfers for the first time. This is something new in the world, especially in South Africa. During apartheid, the beaches were restricted to whites-only.
One young woman (a participant in the program), Sne, has a shot at the world championships, and might soon compete in the Olympics. She could be the first in black woman from South Africa to compete.
Not For Sale: Rwanda
After the genocide in the 1990s, Rwanda is working to rebuild and care for their children – many of whom were left vulnerable and without options for a safe future. Traffickers abuse the Rwandan people with false job offers, and treat them as property in both forced prostitution and forced labor. NFS is committed to ending this kind of exploitation, before it starts. Education is the key to interrupting this cycle.
Education creates entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs create jobs, which create opportunity within Rwanda. Education also spreads awareness about the tricks traffickers use to lure someone into exploitation. We are investing in schools, teachers, anti-trafficking training and awareness, and heatlh clinics, so that Rwandan children can be prepared for a bright future and building their country together, with dignity.
Not For Sale: Bulgaria
The political corruption and high prevalence of crime in Bulgaria has resulted in a greater prevalence of exploitation of those desperate for jobs, particularly in the labor industry.
Not For Sale Bulgaria is beginning to combat this vulnerability through Farmhopping, an online endeavor where farmers can sell their products at their own price to consumers interested in supporting local farms. Hopefully, with the addition of Farmhopping, there will be more people involved in creating their own businesses, and less of a desperation and vulnerability that results in trafficking.
Not For Sale: Romania
Not For Sale Romania rehabilitates and repatriates survivors trafficked from dozens of countries. We provide short and long-term housing, extensive medical care and counseling. Through legal support, we help survivors obtain identification documents or immigration status and assistance taking action against traffickers in court.
At our children’s home, we work to prevent up to 100 children from poor, marginalized and at-risk communities from being recruited and trafficked. We offer them a stable, supportive and transitional environment.
Not For Sale: Bay Area, California
In 2013 Not For Sale conducted an exhaustive research project called Slavery in Silicon Valley. Two of the major findings of our research was that survivors are predominantly from the US in the domestic commercial sex trade, and that the majority of the the young women age out of services at 18 without the skills to access gainful employment.
In response in late 2014 Not for Sale launched their Bay Area program. This program work with 70 to 100 domestic survivors of human trafficking, all hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area to gain either ongoing educational opportunities or employment. Through NFS’s Bay Area program, they prepare disconnected youth (18-24) affected by trafficking, exploitation and related traumas for work in the Bay Area’s booming industries.
