These Health Drinks are Also Fighting Human Trafficking

The anti-human trafficking nonprofit Not For Sale has been working with victims around the world–from Thailand to Uganda to Peru–for nearly a decade, but after years of effort, its staff realized they weren’t helping solve the problem at its core.

“It really struck me that I could be building 10,000 shelters and I wouldn’t really address the root causes of trafficking, nor would I make a dent in the 30 million-plus people who were caught in the practices of human trafficking around the world,” says Dave Bastone, the nonprofit’s co-founder. “So I said, why don’t I come up with a more viable business strategy?”

In Lima, Peru, many of the children they met who had been thrown into the sex industry had come from the Amazon, where indigenous families were struggling as illegal logging and mining threatened their livelihoods. If the economy was stronger, Bastone thought, kids would be at less risk of trafficking. A brainstorming session led to an idea to spin off a new startup: Rebbl, a drink company that sources ingredients from the Amazon, and, later, from other impoverished parts of the world. “We wanted to create a profitable venture that would bring back viable economic platforms in the Amazon,” says Bastone.