The Western New York Sweatshop Awareness Project is a collaborative effort between CEJ and the Western New York Council on Occupational Safety and Health. WNYSAP's mission is to educate high school students on issues of globalization and labor rights while at the same time training activists in organizing techniques to pass Sweat-Free purchasing policies at their high schools. Such procurement policies lay the foundation for high school administrators to buy products from vendors who do not use sweatshop labor.

WNYSAP has been growing steadily over the few years of its existence and thanks to a new partnership with the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, there are now five group chapters at Buffalo area high schools.

A major feature of WNYSAP is an annual youth delegation to Mexico where students have the opportunity to see first hand the effects that free trade policies are having on the lives on Mexican workers along the border. These delegations promote cross-border solidarity and are coordinated by the New York State Labor Religion Coalition in collaboration with workers' rights organizations in Mexico.

In 2004, two high school students, Jennifer Walsh and Salma Mirza, took part in the delegation. Salma writes of how the experience changed her life, "The delegation to the border of the U.S. and Mexico changed me more than I had dreamed was possible…It changed my perspective from that based on cold facts and statistics to living, breathing, courageous people who will never give up fighting for their dignity and their economic, political, and cultural rights so long as they are threatened by multinational corporations."

WNYSAP has also been busying exercising some of its creative energies. During the summer, students worked with local artists and community members to paint an anti-sweatshop mural on the side of a Fair Trade Latin American handicraft store in the city of Buffalo. The mural is a colorful and beautiful example of how art can be used for social change.

A movie has also been in the works. Over the past months, WNYSAP members have been putting together an educational film that refutes popular myths about sweatshops.
Lastly, students at Lancaster High have been busy lobbying their school board to pass a Sweat-Free initiative and are currently in discussions with the Lancaster school board on how best to move forward on the issue. Due to the hard work of WNYSAP's student activists, it is anticipated that Lancaster will soon join City Honors as the second public school to adopt a Sweat-Free purchasing policy in Western New York.