Polaris Project claim to be a humanitarian organisation dedicated to combating human trafficking but as Brett Hetherington reports, their choice of sponsors and support draw questions about their real motive as a humanitarian organisation.

Marie Claire magazine recently ranked them at number four in their 10 Best Charities but do exploiting their workers, including the use of 11-hour shifts, and have faced accusations of sexual harassment and allegations of racist treatment of minorities. Home Depot has also sparked considerable community outrage at their aggressive, Starbucks-style pushing out of small competitors as well as for their continued sale of rainforest and old growth timber products.

Another major financial backer in the Polaris Project is the Japanese branch of the giant software corporation, Oracle. They have been touted as “the next Microsoft,” expanding their business by swallowing up as many rivals as possible and sacking thousands of workers when they felt it to be economically expedient. Another corporate donor of Polaris Project is the Iconix Brand Group, the licensing company behind clothing labels such as Joe Boxer, Mossimo, Mudd and London Fog. They reported a net income of approximately $44.5 million for just nine months of last year. In doing so, they broke U.S. anti-trust laws in October 2007 and had to pay $550,000 to settle related charges.

Polaris Project has also been keen to publicise awards they have received from a number of companies, who have passed-on money with the award. One of these is the children’s volunteering website: www.DoSomething.org, who recently gave them an ‘Honour for Innovation and Effectiveness.’

Polaris’ decision to align themselves so closely with Do Something is more than surprising because young visitors to their website cannot avoid seeing flashing logo’s for a number of “Sponsors that rock.” These include Doritos, accused by food scientists of lying about their damaging food additives and Pepsi Cola, who used rapper Ludacris to promote their product, amidst the controversy that his song caused, where he threatens both violence to a girlfriend as well as road rage against anyone getting in his way.

Another prominent advertising link on the Do Something site is for Karma Tycoon, who promise that they “rock the gaming world by offering you a thrilling ride through the world of social entrepreneurship as you earn Karma in virtual communities across the US.” JP Morgan Chasewhich calls itself “a leading global financial services firm with assets of $1.5 trillion and operations in more than 50 countries” is also a paid-up supporter of Do Something, as is Polaris’ controversial partner, The Home Depot.

But Polaris Project has other connections that it also boasts about. On their website they proudly proclaim that they earned a “Strength and Spirit Award” from a magazine called Redbook. This publication, as part of the huge Hearst media empire (that includes award-giver Marie Claire) is one that continually focuses on women’s body image. While this is not unusual for many other women’s magazines, the editor Stacey recently commented in one of her nauseating >‘Something About Stacey’ blogs blogs that: “every person really must find the ways to get “unplugged” so you can fill your brain with emptiness. I felt calmer, thinner, happier and more me when I got on the subway to come to work after this weekend alone.” Redbook has come under heavy condemnation for digitally altering a cover photo of already-slim singer Faith Hill to make her appear to be significantly thinner and younger than she actually was.

In its most recent case of self-promotion, Polaris Project boasted about its selection by The The Catalogue for Philanthrophy as ‘‘exemplifying excellence’ in its field. One of the people also acknowledged and thanked at the same time for their “support and commitment” of this catalogue is Stephen Ward, a former vice president of government relations for Shell Oil Company for 11 years. As The Ethical Consumer Guide to Everyday Shopping has pointed out, Shell is another fellow union-basher. In addition, it was forced to admit that they had supplied guns to the brutal and oppressive Nigerian government and was involved in the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other anti-oil protesters in that country. As a genuine humanitarian organisation, if you were working in the Polaris Project you could only feel ashamed to keep company like this.

But Polaris Project glow with pride when congratulated by some of the world worst big business. They happily state that Rachel Lloyd, a member of Polaris’ Advisory Board, is a “Recipient of a Reebok Human Rights Award” in 2006. The Reebok sportswear brand is now well known as using sweatshop labour. Polaris could of course give back all these awards and earn publicity for the cause they are supposed to be about, but it appears that they prefer to act with hypocrisy. They hold out their hands for donations from the public despite this double-standard and despite being partly funded by numerous governmental bodies including the U.S. Department of State; the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance and their Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from the District of Columbia; the Government of the U.S. Congress and the [Washington] DC Metropolitan Police Department.

Unfortunately, the pretence of supporting the underdog does not end there. Polaris’ Advisory Board acknowledges on their website that their Advisory Board also includes “HM Queen Noor Queen of Jordon” [sic] (meaning Jordan.) This is a country that has a very mixed human rights record, particularly in their recent lack of recognition of the many thousands of Iraqi, Kurdish Iranian and Palestinian refugees who have entered the country. The Human Rights Watch organisation believes their policy can be characterised as “the silent treatment.” In other words, the ruling Jordanian royal family do not want to talk about it. They would rather get good press by being involved with an organisation like Polaris Project who will be happy to turn a blind eye to this issue and help them look like they actually care about the rights of the oppressed and the exploited.

What emerges here is a pattern. In example after example, Polaris Project is working hand in hand with businesses, organisations and individuals diametrically opposite to the principles that Polaris claims to be about. If Polaris Project wants to avoid being a hypocritical organisation it should immediately cut all ties with those companies and institutions it has stooped to take awards and big bucks from.

In February, Steven Spielberg said his conscience would not allow him to continue working as an adviser to this year’s Beijing Olympics because of China’s involvement in the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Polaris Project could learn from this kind of act.