Abolition for the Next Generation: Shop Tree Hollow Toys

If you're here at Change.org reading about human trafficking, chances are that you are already awesome and wish to see the end of modern-day slavery. Each month, I will focus on ways we can teach the next generation to care about this issue. By guiding our kids toward thoughtful consumer decisions, we can help create for our future a collective consciousness that doesn’t allow exploitation to exist.

This month, shop at Tree Hollow Toys!

My 4-year-old once went through a long phase where whenever she saw a new toy, she asked, “Mommy, who made that?” Appraising the sparkly material of a doll’s dress, or slick black exterior of a plastic truck, her voice was filled with the appropriate amount of wonderment.

Flipping the toy over and seeing the inevitable “Made in China” stamp, I wondered what exactly to say. “Well, honey, unfortunately that toy was probably made in a country far away, by a girl with a fake ID who is really too young to hold down a job, much less one where she works more hours than two daddies combined?” And from there, should I even get into wages, factory conditions, sleeping arrangements and the crap that’s served for dinner?

I know. I take kids’ questions too literally sometimes. And, the issue of factory labor in China is not without controversy: Some see it as slave labor, while other see it as empowering. For a small child, a satisfying answer to the question of “Who made it?” will obviously be much simpler, and it could be anything. “The magic fairies that live in the forest behind the toy store" would suffice. But wouldn’t it be nice to transfer the air of magic over to a real person in the child’s mind and say truthfully, “A toymaker in such-and-such country made it” -- knowing in your own mind that the worker was paid fairly and treated with respect?

By shopping at Tree Hollow Toys, you can. Not one of the products on this website was made in a sweatshop. Offering a combination of fair trade and sweatshop-free toys, as well as toys made in the USA and Europe, each company under the Tree Hollow Toys umbrella cares about who makes their items.

Additionally, the toys are just plain nifty. Wooden castles and trains, silk scarves and dress-up clothes, handmade dolls and play food for a kid’s kitchen are a few examples. Notably, many of the toys are eco-friendly as well, made with the health of both your child and the earth in mind. You’ll also find a range of prices on the site, allowing compatibility between fair-trade values and thrift.

Tree Hollow Toys offers products you can be honest with your kid about, giving new meaning to supply-chain transparency.

Photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography