JOIN US!
If you are interested in participating in our blogging and twitter campaign, want to volunteer or are a member of the press please send an email to:
Simba Russeau at: 24sevencampaign@gmail.com, Janie Shen at: janie.shen@gmail.com or Nisreen Kaj at: nisreen.kaj@gmail.com
The movement has been in the works for some time. In 2009 Taste Culture organized a food festival at the Souk el Tayeb as a means of sharing culture through food and to see migrant workers from Africa and Asia as respectable business men and women rather than servants. For the past two years Taste Culture has organized various events including discussions with migrant community leaders, vigils and various other activities.
Last year we teamed up with the founder of the Visual & Performing Arts Association (VAPA), Kiki Bokassa who conceptualized the campaign.
Since last year was such a great success, we thought why not make it happen again in 2011! This year the campaign will once again be launched with its online component, which will include Twitter, Bloggers and Facebook, is aimed at raising awareness and starting a global dialogue about the issue of racism, migrant domestic workers and labour.
We are joined this year by the Migrant Workers Task Force who is spearheading events on the ground. 24/7 would like to give a special thanks to MWTF Coordinator, Janie Shen for initiating this process.
Our aim is to alter the servant stereotype, established between an Asian/African person and a Lebanese person. We want to show a more creative, powerful, proud, self-reliant, and intelligent face to migrant workers, as business women and representative of rich and sophisticated cultures.
We are demanding migrant workers’ right for good working conditions, starting with the minimal right for at least one day off a week.
The Lebanese Government approved last year a unified contract for all migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, in addition, several Human Rights agreements, which are signed by Lebanon, and the Lebanese constitution supposedly protect human being in Lebanon from slavery and slavery like conditions. So far this has not prevented employers of migrant domestic workers from treating their employees as slaves.
Perhaps the most significant example would be the fact that these employees work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They are given a few hours of sleep, but even then they are on stand-by as employers reserve the right to wake them at any moment of the night for any reason imaginable.
