Blog, Film Reviews, Human Rights, Maternal Health, Maternal Health in the US, maternal mortality, sex trafficking, Women and Girls

New Documentaries About the Maternal Health Crisis, Sex Trafficking Coming to VOD This Year

When I want to learn more about a subject I always turn to documentaries. They provide a quick way to get the facts and crucial information about an issue I am interested in and then if I want to learn more I turn to other resources including books, news articles, research papers, and the like.

While I know a considerable amount about two new documentaries coming to video on demand (VOD) this year, I know some don’t and can use these as jumping points to learn more about the maternal health crisis in the United States and sex trafficking around the world.

Jennifer JamesFebruary 23, 2022February 23, 2022Leave a comment

featured, Haiti, Haiti Reporting Trip, Human Rights

Thoughts on the Passing of Dr. Paul Farmer

When I decided to concentrate on global health in 2011 and started Social Good Moms I learned immediately about Dr. Paul Farmer and the nonprofit he co-founded, Partners in Health. It is absolutely impossible to miss the immense contributions he made to the disciplines of global health, health inequality, and human rights for others to admire and aspire to, including me. He is the reason I decided to go to Haiti on my own to see the work other NGOs and nonprofit hospitals were doing for Haiti’s poor.

Jennifer JamesFebruary 22, 2022February 22, 2022Leave a comment

Addis Ababa, Africa, Ethiopia, featured, Human Rights, World Food Programme

Ethiopia’s Tigray Region Is still Under Attack

If you have followed my travels or have read my blog over the years you know that Ethiopia is my favorite country in the world. There is something about the people, the culture, its beauty and the sheer size of the country I love. Even though I love Ethiopia I have never been under a grand illusion that it is a unified country. There have been mass arrests and killings in Oromia, journalist and freedom fighter imprisonments, and now a civil war with mass atrocities and forced starvation against the people of the Tigray region. In fact, just this week reports of an airstrike on a market near Tigray’s capital Mekele killed at least 64 people and wounded over 100.

Even as war is still happening in Ethiopia’s northernmost region, its national election officially wrapped on Monday without voting in Tigray, of course. Now, ballots are being tallied across the country with the likelihood that the current prime minister Abiy Ahmend will be reelected.

Women selling baskets in Hawassa, Ethiopia.

Jennifer JamesJune 25, 2021October 26, 2021Leave a comment

Africa, Blog, Children, Fair Trade, Fairtrade, featured, Food, Human Rights, Products With a Purpose

Dutch Company Now Offers Slave-Free Chocolate Bars in the US

I love all kinds of chocolate. I love dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, chocolate with caramel, chocolate with nuts, you make it and I’ll eat it. This company, Tony’s Chocolonely, however, has decided to make the delicious desert the right way. Until yesterday I had no idea there was still slavery in the world, and I definitely didn’t know slaves harvested cocoa beans in Ghana and the Ivory Coast to provide me with the sweet treat that I love so much. And to make it worse the slaves harvesting these cocoa beans are children! Can you believe that? It is 2017 and there are still people in the world who are treated like dirt so we can enjoy a small bar of chocolate that only provides a short period of happiness.

SONY DSC — Six Flavors of Delectable Chocolate

That’s why this new chocolate company I’ve discovered is so important. Teun van de Keuken, a Dutch journalist, discovered that large companies in the chocolate industry were buying cocoa from plantations that had child slavery which is unacceptable! He ate twelve chocolate bars and then decided to turn his back on the tainted sweets and created his own chocolate company to combat the cocoa slave industry. So Tony’s Chocolonely was born.

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Annlyel JamesMay 5, 2017February 7, 20221 Comment

Asia, Blog, Human Rights

Keeping the Rohingya Voice Alive

Intermittently the media has covered the plight of the Rohingya people in and out of Burma (now known as Myanmar). You may have seen stories of boats full of refugees escaping the country and of other countries refusing to take them in, but awareness is scarce. Even finding information for this article has proven to be a challenge with an absence of consistent coverage and lack of statistics.

The Rohingya are a minority group of Muslim people who make up approximately 5% of the primarily Buddhist Burmese population. Their history and the conflict surrounding them is extremely complicated with both roots to the British annexation of Burma in 1826 and religious/political issues. There is also disagreement about just how long the group has existed. Some say for several decades, while others say for several centuries.

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