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#EndSlaveryNow_SecondEdtition2016

This document is an introduction to a compendium that summarizes over 90 sessions from a working group focused on combatting human trafficking and modern slavery. It provides background on the working group, called the Nexus Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery Working Group, which was launched in 2014 with the goal of leveraging the skills and networks of its members to end human trafficking and modern slavery through policy changes, partnerships, social impact investments, and other means. The compendium compiled here summarizes information from the working group's weekly conference calls and webinars with over 100 speakers in the anti-trafficking movement. It is intended to educate and mobilize readers to join the fight to end modern slavery.

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#EndSlaveryNow! A Discussion with Activists, Survivors, Influencers & Visionaries in the Modern Anti-Slavery Movement Second Edition 2016 Edited By Melissa Jane Kronfeld Editorial Team Juanita Adames Chloe Chang Simone Ispahani Megan Legband Jenna Manders Molly Mintz Kathryn Sommers Michelle Sucameli The Nexus Working Group on Human Trafficking & Modern Slavery
This compendium is dedicated to the more then 45 million people enslaved around the world…. … who one day shall be set FREE.
PREFACE The Nexus Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery Working Group (Nexus HTMS) was launched in New York City during February 2014 with the goal of exploring the issue of modern day slavery and human trafficking in an effort to leverage the unique skills, talents, and access of the Nexus Youth Summit members to change domestic and international policy, promote partnerships among and between civil society and governments, explore options for social impact investments in this space, and end the plight of slaves and human trafficking victims. According to the United States Department of State, modern slavery is a crime, which includes forced and bonded labor, migrant labor debt bondage, sex or human trafficking, involuntary domestic servitude and child soldiering. Human trafficking, or the trafficking in persons, is when someone obtains or holds a person in compelled service. According to United Nations, human trafficking is a form of modern slavery that subjects children, women, and men to force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor. The Nexus Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery Working Group aims to mobilize resources and individuals to invest in high impact solutions that address the root causes of human trafficking and combat modern day slavery. We want to help advance the mission of organizations combating trafficking and modern day slavery; inspire next-generation donors and millennial activists to combat human trafficking and modern day slavery; and bridge knowledge gaps, silos and lack of resources with communities of dialogue and wealth to combat human trafficking and modern day slavery. In pursuit of our goals and in support of the movement, myself and my co-chairs Patrick Gage and Diana Mao have hosted 25 months’ worth of weekly information conference calls and webinars featuring more than 90 sessions and over 100 different speakers focused on how we will and can end modern slavery in our lifetime. The following volume compiles the full breadth of information acquired during the course of this project. Each session is featured as a one-page summary, including background on the associated organization and/or presenter. We hope you find it as inspiring as the past year and a half has been for us. Extra special thanks must be given to amazing women of the editorial team – Chloe, Molly, Juanita, Simone, Megan, Kathryn, Michelle and Jenna – without whom the project would have never come to fruition; to the founders of the Nexus Youth Summit - Rachel Cohen Gerrol and Jonah Wittkamper - for their guidance and inspiration; to the speakers featured in this compendium for participating in this unparalleled project; and to all the members and supporters of the Working Group who continue to fight tirelessly and ceaselessly against slavery each and every day. I hope the wealth of knowledge contained in the following pages educates you, stimulates you, but most importantly mobilizes you to join our fight to end modern day slavery once and for all… Because if not us, then who? Melissa Jane Kronfeld Founding Member & Co-Chair July 2016
INDEX Ernie Allen International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children Page 1 Christina Arnold Prevent Human Trafficking Page 2 Dan Austin 88 Bikes Foundation Page 3 Brooke Axtell Allies Against Slavery Page 4 David Batstone Not For Sale Page 5 Bazzel Baz The Association for the Recovery of Children Page 6 Ryan Bealer & Anna Jaeger Caravan Studios & Safe Shelter Collaborative Page 7 Robert Beiser Seattle Against Slavery Page 8 Ryan Berg The Aruna Project Page 9 Betsy Bramon U.S. Department of State Page 10 Jeffrey Brown, Jane Charles & Seirah Royin The Cast & Crew of the Film SOLD Page 11 Mary Caparas New York Asian Women’s Center Page 12 Guy Cave Geneva Global Page 13 Ambassador Lou C.deBaca U.S. Department of State Page 14 Gerardo Reyes Chavez, Laura Germino, Sanjay Rawal, Smriti Keshari & Christie Marchese The Cast & Crew of the Film Food Chains & The Coalition for Immokalee Workers Page 15 Kay Chernush & Michele Clark ArtWorks For Freedom Page 16 Father Leonir Chiarello Scalabrini International Migrant Network Page 17 Britten Chroman, Genevieve Kimberlain & Tish Lara David Lynch Foundation Page 18 Lori Cohen Sanctuary For Families Page 19 Brooke Crowder The Refuge Page 20 Mary David Human Rights Advocate Page 21 Justin Dillon Made In A Free World Page 22 Reverend Que English The New York Faith-Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking & Domestic Violence Page 23
Nathaniel Erb Worthwhile: GO & Dashing Emancipation Page 24 Judge Laura Safer Espinoza, Laura Germino & Sean Sellers Fair Food Standards Council & The Coalition for Immokalee Workers Page 25 Thomas Estler Freedom Ladder Page 26 Tim Fain & Jacob Marshall Violinist / Composer & MORE Partnerships Page 27 Terence Fitzgerald International Justice Mission Page 28 Katie Ford Freedom For All Page 29 Alison Friedman U.S. Department of State Page 30 Tina Frundt Courtney’s House Page 31 Patrick Gage Carlson Hotels Page 32 Cara Gardner & Stacie Reimer Amara Legal Center Page 33 Sarah Gardner Thorn Page 34 Ensemble Cast Girl Be Heard Page 35 Pearl Gluck Writer & Director of the Film The Turn Out Page 38 Molly Gochman The Red Sand Project Page 39 Sarah Godoy & Rebecca Sadwick UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation Page 40 Elca Grobler Red Alert (India) Page 41 Nick Grono The Freedom Fund Page 42 Laura Hackney AnnieCannons, Inc. Page 43 Fergus Hanson Global Fund To End Slavery Page 44 Brooke Hathaway End Slavery Now Page 45 Lima James LifeWay Network Page 46 Duncan Jepson Liberty Asia Page 47 Patricia Jurewicz Responsible Sourcing Network Page 48 Siddharth Kara Harvard University Page 49 Mara Kelly United Way Worldwide Page 50 Emily Kennedy Marinus Analytics & Traffic Jam Page 51
Kevin Kish Bet Tzedek Legal Services Page 52 Vandana Kripalani Bombay Teen Challenge Page 53 Meghan Lazier & Robin Newman Say No More Page 54 Laura Lederer Centurion Global Page 55 Jimmy Lee Restore NYC Page 56 Rachel Lloyd Girls Educational & Mentoring Services Page 57 Danielle Lohan & Amanda Weikel The Samaritan Women Page 58 Stephanie Lorenzo Project Futures Page 59 Diana Mao Nomi Network Page 60 Dr. Shawn MacDonald Verite Page 61 Ed Marcum Humanity United Page 62 Peter Mihaere Stand Against Slavery Page 63 Jessica Minhas I’ll Go First Page 64 Kenneth B. Morris Jr. Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives Page 65 Sarah Jane Murray & Benjamin Nolot The Nefarious Trilogy Page 66 Dr. Padmini Murthy New York Medical College Page 67 Brad Myles Polaris Project Page 68 John Nehme Allies Against Slavery Page 69 Michele Newsome Florida Baptist Children’s Homes Page 70 Lisa T.D. Nguyen The Senhoa Foundation Page 71 Consolee Nishimwe Rwandan Genocide Survivor, Author & Activist Page 72 Yvonne O’Neal Episcopal Diocese of New York Task Force Against Human Trafficking Page 73 Emily Pasnak-Lapchick U.S. Fund for UNICEF Page 74 Morgan Perry Exodus Cry Page 75 Gerardo Porteny Young Minds for Gender Equality Page 76 Andrea Powell FAIR Girls Page 77
Alezandra Russell Urban Light Page 78 Raleigh Sadler Let My People Go Page 79 Sophia Sanders Stolen Youth Page 80 Conchita Sarnoff The Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking Page 81 Joe Schmidt ENDCrowd Page 82 Eric Shih Spendrise Page 83 E. Benjamin Skinner Tau Investment Management Page 84 Curtis Sliwa The Guardian Angels Page 85 Nina Smith GoodWeave Page 86 Carol Smolenski ECPAT USA Page 87 Vincent Stanley Patagonia Page 88 Ehb Teng Diginido Labs, The Wren Initiative & ATHack! Page 89 Allison Trowbridge Just Business Page 90 Ray Umashanker Save the Children Page 91 Jeremy Vallerand Rescue: Freedom Page 92 Andrew Wallis Unseen Page 93 Jody Weiss The Sports Pledge Page 94 Shandra Woworuntu Sex Trafficking Survivor & Advocate Page 95 Lynn Zovighian The Zovighian Partnership Page 96
1 Ernie Allen Founder, International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children Ernie Allen has worked for over 30 years fighting for the rights of missing and exploited children. He founded the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children heading a global missing children’s network of 22 countries. Having served in government and organizational operation for decades, Ernie continues consulting in the abolitionist movement. Ernie’s introduction to human trafficking and modern slavery began some 30 years ago. While serving in government in Kentucky, he began hearing of children disappearing from group homes and shelters. Law enforcement largely ignored the issue, while social services organizations were limited in their capacity to help. With high profile cases like that of Adam Walsh and others gripping the nation, then President George H. W. Bush sent Vice President Dan Quayle to Atlanta, highlighting the significance of the problem and the commitment of our government to solving it. At the request of the Justice Department, Ernie consulted on the murder investigations. In 1981 Ernie assisted in facilitating a national conference on the crisis of missing and exploited children. Creating a 29-point action agenda, they pursued a plan that would address a whole range of problems associated with this issue. In 1982, Congress enacted the Missing Children's Act, which enabled the entry of missing child information into the FBI's National Crime Information Center database. Two years later, The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was founded. After thirty years, Ernie says that although we have stronger laws and a more organized response to these events, there is still so much more to do. The single greatest challenge is that human trafficking remains a business throughout the world. Still dramatically under-recognized and underreported, Ernie says it is in part because of myths that perpetuate stereotypes about this crisis such as: trafficking only happens overseas or in high crime areas; victimized children are criminals wish to pursue sex work; or that traffickers are easily discernible from ‘good’ members of society. As a result, the public and law enforcement agencies often do not understand the nuances that perpetuate this industry. Government shelters are inadequate to deal with this problem. They do not have the services or the capacity to assist victims trying to escape. Another huge issue facing abolitionists is that sex- trafficking victims are subject to prosecution as sex workers in many areas around the country. The threat and reality of jail for these men and women can inhibit their speaking out. Ernie stresses that the public needs to understand the migration that is taking place in the human trafficking industry. Once hidden in plain sight, traffickers now lure new victims and facilitate their exploitation by using sites like Backpage.com. The internet has expanded the influence and reach of traffickers. It is for this reason that Ernie continues fighting for more studies, better data, and more attention placed on this issue. He believes that through research, we can force policy makers to admit the true depth of the problem. This, he says, will hasten the development of new laws and services that will address the needs of victims and survivors. At present, institutions around the globe allocate only $124 million dollars a year to fighting human trafficking. Ernie is now working to create a foundation that would dramatically increase that number. He aims to appropriate $250 million dollars annually matched by donations from governments and individuals. This money will be spent globally to build capacity around the issue, from increasing activities that help victims and survivors, to advocating policy changes and empowering law enforcement. along with the ways we combat it. This is not a new issue, Ernie reminds us, nor is it a fair fight but we must continue to use our voices and our money to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.
2 Christina Arnold Founder, Prevent Human Trafficking Prevent Human Trafficking (PHT) is a Washington, D.C., based non-profit organization working to build a bridge between South East Asia and the United States to prevent human trafficking. PHT empowers individuals, organizations and governments to tackle the root causes of human trafficking through direct support and technical assistance and the organization uses its expertise and networks to promote best practices and inspire sustainable solutions in the movement to prevent human trafficking. Christina Arnold is a survivor. Raised by her father’s Christian cult in Thailand, her formative years were shaped by working all the time, taking care of other children, and cooking for 70 people all while being watched constantly. She was never paid for the work she rendered and finally escaped the cults clutches in the late 1990’s with the help of her grandparents. Back in the United States, Christina began teaching English to Thai orphans, where she says, she began to understand their stories as a facet of an international crime. Yet, when she went to speak about survivor’s experience’s on Capital, again she was rebuffed. Now Christina now leads Prevent Human Trafficking, one of the oldest anti-human trafficking organizations in the United States. Founded in 1999, Prevent Human Trafficking was only the second organization in the United States to educate people and address the root causes of trafficking. Her experiences in Washington, D.C. led her, Chris Smith, and Senator Paul Wellstone to sponsor the “Trafficking Victims Protection Act.” Passed in 2000, victims of trafficking who testify against their traffickers are offered T-Visas. The key for prevention says Christina, is tackling debt bondage. Second or third generations of families are still paying off loans to traffickers. The complexity within which human traffickers operate cannot be fixed simply by buying freedom. Prevent Human Trafficking’s Thailand Program aims to prevent the avenues within which traffickers work. Through their microcredit program, Prevent Human Trafficking provides funds for families who they know traffickers generally target. These funds ensure the safety of their children by preventing human traffickers from positioning trafficking as an easy way to make money. The families are either not sophisticated enough to know their children will end up in a brothel, or lack the funds to have a viable alternative. In a country that survives political insatiability often and constant socio-political interruptions, prosecution is often difficult, when and if it happens at all. For the children they cannot prevent from going into trafficking, Prevent Human Trafficking has also created a program to rescue them. Prevent Human Trafficking’s Leadership Program places rescued child victims of trafficking in a two-year training program. The children are taught to read, speak, and write Thai as well as English. They are then instructed in their legal rights and Thai law. But without major changes in Thai society, the effects of these can be difficult to sustain. The head investigator of Thailand’s anti-human trafficking task force has been given asylum in Australia due to death threats. And, as many economists note, trafficking is often economically driven and by providing innovative sociocultural and economic approaches to combatting it, Prevent Human Trafficking is on the forefront of advocacy, recovery, rehabilitation, and reintegration.
3 Dan Austin Executive Director, 88bikes Foundation The 88bikes Foundation endows bicycles to girls throughout the world, especially the heroic survivors of human trafficking. They partner with vetted, locally-run non-governmental organizations, purchase bicycles from local vendors, hire local labor and connect each survivor one-to-one with her donor. It is all part of what the organization refers to as Joy–Based Philanthropy - elevating happiness to a human need. Since 2007 they have endowed nearly 4,000 bikes to youths in seventeen countries. Dan and his brother founded 88bikes after taking a bicycle ride across Cambodia. The brothers wanted to give away their bikes to orphans, but there were 88 children in need. They started a fundraiser and gave 88 bikes away, but they wanted to do it again. When the Foundation gives a bike to the young women, she is also provided with a picture of her sponsor and world map of where the sponsor lives. Creating the circuit is important philosophy: the donor and the recipient are equal, and this creates a circuit of philanthropy. The bikes also inspire entrepreneurship. For example, Elma from Serbia loaned her bike at $1 per ride to her neighbors. 88bikes supports these entrepreneurial behaviors. Six months after a bike endowment, volunteers follow-up to measure the girls’ happiness. The pictures and smiles keep the organization going. Bikes break down, but that moment of happiness has an impact that is greater than we realize. You would never know the pain of their past by virtue of their optimism and ambitions. Individuals from a powerful and vibrant donor base donate all the bikes. The donors come from every sector of society to raise the funds necessary to continue to purchase and distributes bikes. For every $88 the foundation purchases a local bike to give away. They collaborate with other organizations in the Philippines, Cambodia, Serbia, Bihar, Northern India, and Southeast Asia. 88bikes would love to spread their impact in Cambodia and India and to Indonesia, Myanmar, Kenya, and Ethiopia. Every location offers challenges, but strong partners on the ground can help mitigate those challenges. The foundation wants long-term viability for their partners. If a bike breaks down, 88bikes replaces it, so partners must track progress on the ground and the effects that the bikes have on the children and their communities. For example, in an Afghan village the organization gave bikes to the boys but asked to allow the girls to ride too. Everything is volunteer-based now, but the foundation wants to have projects funded and to hire folks to execute faster on the ground. Dan recounted one story about a Serbian girl named Saka, who was trafficked to a brothel in Kosovo where she was chained to a room and raped 35 times a day. Once she was liberated and received a bike, she told the partners that it was the first time she felt beautiful. Dan feels that the focus of his work should be on the future, not the sadness in their past because they are defined by something more than their trauma. Dan fights for a world of equality, where people understand the struggles that fellow human beings are going through; a world in which we are all vulnerable and which we all take care of each other.
4 Brooke Axtell Director of Communications & Engagement, Allies Against Slavery Allies Against Slavery develops community networks that build slave free cities. To that end they, engage and mobilize the community through advocacy, education and activism initiatives while supporting and empowering local survivors of human trafficking alongside their partners and coordinate the Slave-Free City Network. They believe in pursuing justice for the exploited and enslaved. Brooke became an advocate for victims of human trafficking after being exposed to child pornography in her own youth. Not realizing that she was a victim of trafficking, it was not until years later when she was connected to a counselor that she began to heal from this experience. Her history taught her the important connection between domestic violence and human trafficking, particularly in the United States. Brooke says that trafficking victims in the United States often do not self-identify; a problem she continued to see years later in her work. Brooke’s experiences have affirmed to her the importance of having conversations about domestic violence and human trafficking publicly so as to engage the public and increase awareness. She believes that we must be committed to deepening the conversation around the spectrum of sexual violence, as there are lots of entry points for identifying the presence of other forms of exploitation. To that end, on a mission to continue her advocacy, she was invited to speak publicly as a survivor and advocate for victim’s domestic violence at the 2015 Grammy Awards. By sharing her story on such a public platform, she believes she inspired women to reach out and seek help. She started receiving messages from women all over the US. Some identified as victims of domestic violence, others of sexual assault or trafficking. Many had overlapping experiences. Her work has only strengthened her belief that survivors deserve to be loved and heard. In January 2015, to continue her efforts she joined Allies Against Slavery in Austin, Texas. Allies Against Slavery seeks to end slavery in Austin. They view trafficking and slavery as a systemic problem that affects economies, institutions and individuals. As such, in order to accomplish a slave free city, they map out spheres of influence by leveraging the synergy of grassroots and strategic initiatives. Through this, they aim to build a holistic model that addresses the entire problem. They work with the University of Texas to map Austin's Slavery Footprint while gathering a more accurate understanding of the local nature and prevalence of the problem. Allies then coordinates with a network of stakeholders from eight key sectors to fill gaps identified in the local continuum of solutions. By developing partnerships across in Austin, they are able to view human trafficking in a strategic way so as to create shared definitions of the problem and of what the solution is going to look like as well as creating a platform for shared accountability. For the organization, the end game is ending human trafficking and not the sustainability of one non-profit. In that regard, Allies provides financial assistance to partnering organizations to aid survivors during recovery. They also host sponsored events that allow them to provide back to school supplies, summer camp packs and other support initiatives to survivors and their families. By working with their partners they are better able fill the gaps in care for local survivors of human trafficking. Brooke emphasizes the need for short-term shelter, counseling and intervention as well as reintegrating survivors into society, while simultaneously preventing new victims. Allies Against Slavery will continue to partner across sectors, so that one-day they can say that in Austin, no one is being trafficked or enslaved.
5 David Batstone Founder, Not For Sale The work of Not For Sale is to provide survivors and at-risk communities in five countries (the United States, the Netherlands, Peru, Romania and Thailand) with safety and stability, education, and economic opportunities. To break the cycle of exploitation, Not For Sale provides survivors and at-risk communities with shelter, healthcare, and legal services, first attending to the most basic needs of individuals who have suffered extreme trauma. They believe that once their physical and emotional well being are established can they begin to work together toward long-term opportunities for education and employment. David became passionate about trafficking when he discovered that one of his favorite local San Francisco restaurants was using slave labor, having trafficked over 50 children through this one establishment. David decided to take a year off to travel and learn more about trafficking, and upon his return he wrote a book to generate a broader base of awareness. This was the beginning of Not For Sale. For the next three years he held hundreds of campaigns in 85 cities to raise awareness. Awareness however, David learned, is not enough. The next step was to hold companies responsible. Not For Sale began talking to for-profit entities and creating tools to hold them accountable for their manufacturing and souring practices. Because slavery is embedded in the supply chain, many large companies have proved unresponsive in order to avoid what is perceived as additional marginal costs. But change needs to happen in regards to the internal protocols in order to make strides in the broader corporate behavior. David wanted to try to create a model where justice and compassion are embedded in business. The charity, Not for Sale, needed to become sustainable so that David could focus on funding the issue internally. In 2006 David launched his first company REBBL Tonic, which became a positive model for creating the jobs David was asking other companies to create, and a positive model for fighting exploitation and trafficking. Embedded in the marketing of the project is the concept of justice in the consumer lifestyle and the awareness that transformation is possible once people receive dignity in their lives. REBBL Tonic (among his other projects) funds the work of Not For Sale. David now has eight for-profit companies in his portfolio, all aligned with Not For Sale, creating jobs for victims and funneling 2.5 percent of the gross revenue of every product back to Not For Sale. Not For Sale is now working on conducting and sponsoring more studies on the relationship between the lack of economic opportunity and injustice. In the next five to 10 years they will continue to work on increasing transparency. David is working on a program of self-empowerment for a victim that includes a sales model, which measures change in individuals to make sure they are more empowered when they leave the program. The program is all encompassing and includes a thorough understanding of the role played by a secure shelter, the community around the victim, and skill based training. With this tool, he can assess the proficiencies and proclivities of these individuals and help them best achieve their goals. Now, David is turning his attention to Europe in order to create creating more demand for the products, and more jobs for survivors.
6 Bazzel Baz Founder & President, Association for the Recovery of Children The Association for the Recovery of Children (ARC) is an organization comprised of former and active Intelligence, Military, and Law Enforcement personnel, dedicated to the recovery of missing and exploited children - both foreign and domestic. At their core, the members of the ARC believe that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Therefore, they are committed to recovering abducted children, and have done so with a 100 percent success rate. A former Marine and Central Intelligence Agency Paramilitary Case Officer, Bazzel Baz has seen violence in many forms. However, for him the most poignant reminder of the cost of violence around the world is its effect on children. In the civil war in Somalia during the 1990s, Bazzel discovered two little girls cowering in the debris of war; his heart ached for the devastation these girls faced in the midst of the chaos in which he fought. Bazzel served his country because he is a patriot and believes in the importance of saving the lives of fellow soldiers. His core motivation is to do good in the world. However, when he saw the collateral damage of war in the eyes of those two girls, Bazzel realized he had to do more. He found a place in New York City that would shelter the two girls, and so he returned to Africa to rescue them. As he researched the issue, he realized that very little was being done to help similar children because of judicial and financial constraints. The problem seemed enormous and almost impossible to face, but Bazzel acted because he asked himself: If I do not, who will? Bazzel began the Association for the Recovery of Children because he is passionate about doing rather than simply knowing about abolition. He believes knowledge leads to responsibility, and he feels responsible to act using his gifts and experience in order to rescue children from hostage situations. While organizations can put up posters and advertise to end trafficking or to save missing children, nothing will happen if we individuals do not act on the information they acquire. Bazzel believes that without boots on the ground freeing children, there will be no freedom. In addition to taking action, Bazzel also believes in holding people accountable. While raising awareness about the injustice of human trafficking is important, slavery will not end until more people stand up and do something about it. Although most do not have the ability to be able to bring captives home, pursuing practices that lessen slavery can make a difference. By consuming pornography, Bazzel points out, individuals are furthering the industry of human trafficking. He urges all of us to ask ourselves: are we personally doing everything we can to end human trafficking? He encourages everyone to teach their friends and family about the reality of human trafficking, donate money to organizations like the ARC that are actively working to end human trafficking; and to keep people and governments accountable regarding practices that fight slavery. This includes refusing to engage with pornography, verifying supply chains, buying fair trade items, and volunteering your time and talents to abolitionist organizations. Bazzel believes in the power of acting strategically to bring about change in the world. He and his team of unpaid volunteers go around the world to save children, putting to work the wealth of experience gathered serving in the world’s best trained militaries and most elite fighting and intelligence forces. In addition to rescuing children, ARC partners with organizations to help rescued children be restored from trauma. Although ARC is successful, Bazzel wants to rescue more children and find more pathways to encourage abolition through legislation and education. Because of his passion, fueled by his love of justice, children, and his faith in God, Bazzel is an inspiration to a new generation of freedom fighters.
7 Ryan Bealer & Anna Jaeger Chief Technology Officer & Program Intern, Caravan Studios; Creator of Safe Shelter Collaborative Caravan Studios is a division of TechSoup Global dedicated to using technology to create applications targeted on fixing societal problems. The company pioneered The Safe Shelter Collaborative as a project designed to improve access to shelter for survivors of trafficking. Supported by Polaris and the Sanar Wellness Institute, among other organizations, the Safe Shelter Collaborative increases the capacity of shelters to help survivors, provides technology to maximize the ability to find available shelter beds, and acts as a means to source funding for hotel rooms as emergency shelters when appropriately necessary. Statistics show that within forty-eight hours, an exploiter will approach 1/3 of newly homeless youths. 80 percent of trafficked youth are homeless when they are trafficked; vulnerable, scared, and without a safe place to sleep, these adolescents are willing to make drastic compromises like participating in “survival sex” in order meet the circumstances they are faced with. Most shelters use outdated technology, and don’t have enough beds to adequately provide for those who need them. Anna and Ryan are working tirelessly to counteract these issues by using technology in addressing the hierarchy of needs involved in homelessness. The technology the Safe Shelter Collaborative uses allows for trafficked persons to find shelter even if their specific shelter cannot house them immediately. The application inputs basic survivor demographic information into an online questionnaire without collecting any personally-identifying information, and subsequently submits an alert via email, text message, and/or automated voice call to all the shelters in the local region, inquiring about whether the other shelters have an available bed for the rescued person. This dramatically cuts down on the amount of time spent scouring shelters manually looking for available space and almost eliminates the re-traumatization of the survivor needing to recount his or her story over and over again. If there are absolutely no beds available at any geographically accessible shelter, the last resort step is to use the SafeNight application to find a donor-paid-for hotel room for the survivor to spend the night in. The Safe Shelter Collaboration was launched in 2015; and now seventeen agencies in New Jersey have begun using the service. The median shelter response time has been 6.8 minutes, and every request for a bed was met with at least one response of “Likely Bed” in less than thirty minutes. Currently, the technology’s “Locate A Bed” feature is live in the Bay Area and New Jersey, while the “Fund A Hotel” feature is available in New Jersey, California, Colorado, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Texas. Agencies are responsible for managing survivors cases and solidifying relationships with them, so while they do not have any direct feedback from survivors on how they feel about the technology, Anna and Ryan are positive that their efforts are making a powerful, exceptional impact.
8 Robert Beiser Executive Director, Seattle Against Slavery Founded in 2009, Seattle Against Slavery gives human trafficking survivors in the community an opportunity to take their skills and abilities and put them to use. Aided by a community board of advisors who are survivors of sex trafficking, the organization engages in a diverse array of tactics to combat modern slavery. Advocacy work, educational services, interventions, policy formations, and community mobilizations are just some of the aspects of the survivor-based work the organization undertakes in its efforts to create a an aware, education, compassionate, and slave-free society. Robert Beiser was working at Microsoft when he realized how strongly he wanted to make an impact on international crises and situations in his city, Seattle. He quit his job and got involved on advocacy campaigns with Repair the World as a facilitator for people who cared about issues like gender and racial equality. In 2010, he had the opportunity to create a service-learning program with an organization in Thailand, and learned about the local economic development in the rural areas of the country. Eye-opening and emotional interactions with Thai community members who were overworked and abused made the experience exponentially pivotal. Specifically, talking with a fifteen-year-old girl Muslim girl from Northern India who had been sold and taken to Thailand led Robert to the decision to join the fight against human trafficking back home. When thinking of trafficking, it is easy to stigmatize developing countries like Thailand as the only places where slavery exists. Regardless, exploitation is just as much of a domestic issue as it is an international issue, and Robert’s work at Seattle Against Slavery reinforces this fact. The organization is structured to be led by survivors of trafficking and service providers, ensuring that the model is informed by those that are directly benefitting from it. Mobilizing sixty to eighty educational volunteers annually, Seattle Against Slavery trains public groups like the Rotary Club and the Junior League by request, and also incorporates homeless youth, immigrant health providers, and cities themselves into their advocacy and prevention educational outreach efforts. Receiving funding from private donors enables Seattle Against Slavery to focus on policy, translating their efforts into lobbying and having meetings with mayors and other legislature officials across the nation. Activating businesses, schools, faith-based organizations, and local municipal agencies allows Robert to engage the wider community in joining the anti-slavery movement. One way in which Seattle Against Slavery spreads awareness of enslavement is through its No One Should Be Forced posters, designed with help from anti-trafficking providers and survivors. Notably, they do not use the term “human trafficking” on the flyers, and as a result of this multi-state initiative, there has been a 250% increase in calls to the Polaris Hotline, which signals to Robert that their efforts are making an impact. On the other hand, however, a growing number of people are being exploited, and that increase is definitely connected to economic disparities. To account for increased homelessness and higher rates of sexual assault and youth prostitution, the organization positioned its prevention curriculum to offer a broader range of resources tailored to different audiences with different needs. Currently, Robert and the organization’s other staff coordinators are focused on disrupting the commercialized sex industry unfolding on web-based platforms like OKCupid. Impassioned by the success of their initiatives, they continue to tirelessly expand their efforts, spreading their educational format to start conversations that will increase awareness, understanding, and the prevention
9 Ryan Berg Founder & President, The Aruna Project The Aruna Project exists to bring and sustain freedom to those exploited in the brothel system through employment marked by holistic care. By mobilizing thousands to take part in Aruna Runs across the US, everyone can be a party of bringing freedom to the enslaved. By offering employment to those who have stepped into freedom, everyone can sustain their freedom and restore the liberating power of choice. Eight years ago, a news story about children rescued from sex trafficking changed Ryan life. Shortly thereafter, he began his work to end human trafficking by traveling to brothels in India. Seeing for the first time the inhumanity of a slave who is sold repeatedly, Berg decided he needed to create sustainable employment for these women. First however, he needed to understand how sex trafficking works. Berg went back to the brothels in the Red Light District and interviewed the leaders of multiple organizations working to understand this problem. He saw how the process evolved from selling women in and around the country, to forcing them into prostitution. Interviewing a number of survivors enabled Ryan and to understand somewhat of how this problem thrives. The Aruna Project found poverty to be the driving force behind the trade. The survivors Ryan met shared similar difficulties. It is extremely difficult to get survivors adequate employment simply because there are so many people and so few jobs. For women who are 18 and older there is a conception that they legally considered and ‘freely chose,’ prostitution as a profession. To combat the stigma and end the cycle, Ryan founded The Aruna Project, to get people ordinary involved in the fight to free women from bondage. The Aruna Project’s solution is to run, free, empower, employ. Ordinary people throughout the world will run in an Aruna 5K run and/or walk event in honor of an exploited woman and in order to raise awareness and the funds necessary to end this type of exploitation. This money will then be in use to help bring then sustain her freedom. Aruna has more than 20 registered runs throughout the continental United States and they are hoping for 25-30 more by the end of the year. All money raised at these events is sent to projects in India. These projects include skill training, literacy classes, and a significant counseling process. The last landing point is employing the women. The Aruna Project runs a production facility in India for survivors to create the products that participants receive at Aruna races. The employment phase is in its initial stages but in the future, Aruna wants to create sustainable work environments in very poor areas to make sure people do not have to go into either sex work to begin with. For the future, The Aruna Project is trying to connect each product to a story. They want to become a “story factory,” whether via print or film, because stories do wonders in engaging audiences. Additionally, they hope that professional level races in larger markets will bring out thousands of supporters. The Aruna Project hopes that with these runs they will employ numerous survivors through their businesses and business partners. This will provide a safe and secure environment for women to grow, create, and build a firm foundation for their future.
10 Betsy Bramon Senior Policy Advisor on Gender-based Violence, Development & Technology, U.S. Department of State Office of Global Women's Issues The U.S. Department of State’s Office of Global Women’s Issues strives to ensure that all issues regarding women are wholly integrated into U.S. foreign policy. Preventing gender-based violence, like human trafficking, is one of the Department’s foremost tasks, as well as focusing on adolescent girls’ wellbeing, promoting women’s economic participation, and protecting women’s peace and security before and after conflicts occur. In order to understand human trafficking within a broader human rights context, Betsy Bramon focuses on the structural realities that create vulnerabilities. A person’s economic status, education, age, sex, gender, and broader environmental circumstances influence whether he or she is able to withstand humanitarian crises, natural disasters, war, and/or political instability – and therefore whether he or she will be susceptible to trafficking. After conducting extensive humanitarian efforts across the globe – from outreach efforts in The Netherlands’ red light districts to service work for such major anti-trafficking organizations as Free the Slaves, Polaris Projects, Courtney’s House, and FairGirls, to engaging social enterprise development with Hagar International in Cambodia – Betsey continued her career at the U.S. State Department, where she has tirelessly spent the past five years advocating and fighting for humanitarian women’s rights. She immersed herself in legal frame-working and victim-centered approaches to rehabilitation through grant- making and foreign assistance management at the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Later moving to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Betsy helped politically transitional countries understand and respond to the risks women face when basic civil liberties are not guaranteed. Her experiences prior to joining the Office of Global Women’s Issues enabled her to help start the Gender-Based Violence Emergency Response and Protection Initiative, a program focused on providing shelter, relocation, medical and legal services, and other targeted aids to those facing gender-based threats or violence. The U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally, released in 2012 by President Obama, is a key policy tool used by the national government to integrate gender perspective when dealing with violence internationally. The Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues at the U.S. Department of State is privileged to improve the Strategy so it can continually attend the needs of foreign policy when battling trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence. Humanizing the issue of human trafficking is an intersectional, imperative goal. Because the trafficking movement has been seemingly isolated from the broader human rights movement – possibly because trafficking is viewed as untouchable since it seems so unbelievable – Betsy believes it is essential for the trafficking space to continue connecting and uniting with other sectors of the human rights community. When these frameworks collide, the greater movement as a whole can creatively collaborate with different organizations to strategically target human rights violations at their source. The efforts of Betsy and the U.S. Department of State's Office of Global Women's Issues do not go unnoticed. Now focusing on the intersection of gender-based violence and technology, with ties to subjects like online harassment and online privacy issues, the Office continues to legislate for women’s overall safety and security, further perpetuating instances where acts of gender-based violence can be prevented before they even unfold.
11 Jeffrey Brown, Jane Charles, & Seirah Royin The Cast & Crew of the Film SOLD Based on true tales, SOLD, is the story of Lakshmi who journeys from a pastoral, rural village in Nepal to a gritty brothel/prison called Happiness House in Kolkata, India. Through one extraordinary girl’s story, SOLD illustrates the brutality of child trafficking, which affects millions of children around the globe every year. The film’s mission is to spread global awareness about trafficking and to raise substantial funds for organizations in India, Nepal, and the US, which rescue, rehabilitate, and empower survivors of trafficking. Written in vignettes targeted specifically to a teenage audience, SOLD has become the first entry point for youth to understand that slavery still exists. Through the book and the subsequent film, young adults are able to see the world through the eyes of thirteen-year-old Lakshmi; a young girl trafficked from Nepal to India for sex slavery. The book may be a work of fiction yet the inspiration behind it is not. During the films research phase, Seirah, Jane, and Jeffrey traveled to India and Nepal three times to meet with organizations as well as the survivors of India’s sex trade. Outreach in this region of the world is extremely important. In the Hindu worldview, victims are seen as those suffering from a previous life’s bad karma. Families will sometimes not accept back trafficked children and in some cases, victims will even be re-trafficked due to these belief systems. The filmmakers behind SOLD are creating a fund to combat both the stigma and the practice. They are hoping to mobilize community support, as the two primary causes for trafficking in Nepal are a lack of education and poverty. Jane cites the need for bottom up support and so they incentivize families with food in exchange for their daughter to attend school. When a child is kept in school, they are 80 percent less likely to be trafficked. Their work of combating both the stigma and the practice of sex slavery in India and Nepal is in conjunction with several other global initiatives. However, these projects remind us sex slavery is not always so far away. Jane also co-founded Stolen Youth, a non-profit in Seattle that raises both awareness and funds for victims of sex trafficking in Washington. This organization provides wrap around services, more beds, technical assistance, and partners with businesses to save the exploited youth of Seattle’s streets. Thus far, they have helped over 100 people per and raised almost one million dollars in the last three, but estimates place the number of exploited youth in Seattle at around 300 to 500 children and teenagers. Through programs such as Child’s Reach, their mission is to keep all children in school. The different aspects of their Child’s Reach project include training teachers, building toilet facilities, and raising awareness that empowers both children and adults alike. They bring survivors to schools to tell their stories with the aim of prevention. This inspired Starbucks in Seattle to start a training program for at-risk girls with the aim of getting them off the streets. This program is now expanding. For both Jeff and Jane, the most important aspect of their work is listening to the communities they service. And whether it is with their parents or through foster care, both Jeff and Jane believe that through education and reintegration, the global community can combat and prevent sex trafficking. Nepal, India, and Seattle, are recognizing and addressing this heinous crime. Although the movie may have finished production their work has just begun.
12 Mary Caparas Project Free Manager, New York Asian Women’s Center The New York Asian Women’s Center was established thirty-four years ago with the core message that commonalities between survivors lie in their shared economic vulnerability. The organization focuses on their clients’ work to learn more about the dynamics of their trafficking experiences, and operates a plethora of different projects to help Asian women reevaluate their lives after being exploited through sex and labor trafficking. Analyzing the issue of modern slavery from a micro and macro level enables Mary Caparas and the other employees of the New York Asian Women’s Center to visualize what changes need to be made in the modern slavery space. The Center is upheld by a staff of over seventy employees—approximately fifty of which are mental health workers, social workers, community organizers, and other forms of trained advocates. Between the organization’s diverse staff, a total of eighteen Asian languages are spoken, as well as Spanish. It is these individuals that enable the Women’s Center to provide aid and care to the multitudes of women, men, and children that require their services. Operating a 24-hour hotline allows the Center to provide counseling and referrals to clients in need, regardless of whatever language they may speak. One of the many successful projects run by the Center is Project Free, established as an anti-trafficking initiative eleven years ago to fight slavery through an umbrella-like structure. Within Project Free staff members provide survivors with culturally and linguistically appropriate counseling, and are trained for specialized case management, while an in-house attorney and legal department provides the Center’s clients with immigration and visa assistance. Safe shelter services are available for survivors of both domestic violence and trafficking. Many of the individuals who advantage the New York Asian Women’s Center’s services are women around the age of forty, and have suffered from relational or worker abuse—their desperation for income and lack of knowledge regarding worker’s rights and regulations contributed to their life circumstances and challenges. Additionally, the Asian Women Empowerment Program allows women an alternative to incarceration or subjection to fines, continuing their incredible activism efforts. Physically present in New York courts since 2011, the A.W.E. program provides the women the initiative serves with some choice in what they need in their lives through elective programming, developed from feedback from past survivors involved with the Center. Legal Immigration Consultation, English as a Second Language, and Economic Empowerment Workshops are example of such emboldening educational efforts offered onto survivors of modern slavery. The A.W.E.’s previously mandated attendees have started to return to the Center, marking the entire initiative as a success, since they are utilizing their own volition to continue gaining knowledge and skills to better their lives! Mary is hesitant to offer the world “solutions” when discussing proposals for change, since the word implies that there might be a concrete fix-all to magically impact the slavery space. Nevertheless, by combatting the spread of misinformation on trafficking and trafficking cases; educating immigrants on their rights and investing in their education; and identifying the roots of trafficking are three targeted ways to make a difference. Economic desperation is one of the main reasons why so many immigrants end up in trafficking situations—by understanding the importance work has to individuals in New York and around the globe, humanity as a whole can be more culturally mindful and self-efficient in the effort to combat slavery.
13 Guy Cave Managing Director, Geneva Global Geneva Global provides custom services to individuals, foundations, nonprofit organizations, and corporations worldwide, helping them to reach their goals and achieve greater social impact. Currently, Geneva Global is working in two areas to implement the large-scale plans of the anti-trafficking work being done by the Freedom Fund. Combatting slavery in India and Thailand. Guy has worked extensively with trafficking victims in the United Kingdom as well as for Save the Children in Burma. Geneva Global is at the forefront of combatting labor trafficking and modern slavery in South East Asia. Geneva Global is working in two areas to help implement the work of the Freedom Fund and combat modern slavery. Their first project, connected to international supply chains, focuses on labor trafficking in the low- caste regions of South India. In this region, labor trafficking is prevalent with as many as 60 percent of the female population having been forced into labor. Traffickers offer young women an apprenticeship and tell them they will give them a lump sum payment only at the end of the program. As it is difficult for low-caste women to be married off, there is an incentive for them to join. Once involved, the women have limited access to telephones and live in hostels to work 12 to 16 hour days with no pay. Indian officials are also complicit in the labor trafficking behind mill labor, knowing they employ children under 14 years old and yet, refusing to let them leave. The intent of governmental and industry officials to hide the practice ensures the demand for cheap labor is met. And there is a lack of coordination between government and police, as well as a lack of desire to combat corruption in any sphere, and weak connections to international retailers and brands. To combat this, Geneva Global is working with organizations on the ground that provides support for victims of human trafficking in real time. But India is far from an exception in terms of the government hiding or allowing the pervasive use of labor trafficking. Geneva Global is also combatting Thailand’s seafood industry and Costco’s supply chain slavery. In this case, traffickers persuade Burmese Migrants to travel to Thailand for work. Once there, traffickers inform victims they owe more and more money over time to keep them in debt bondage. Making matters worse, local police contribute heavily to the labor and bondage chain of the seafood industry. Geneva Global is fighting these practices by giving funding to the grass roots organizations in the societies where these problems thrive. They are also coordinating with international supply chains to organize workers to get them access to services. Simultaneously, Geneva Global is working with retailers to put pressure on suppliers. The solution must be both bottom up and top-down. On the ground, there needs to a bottom-up approach yet, these organizations also need to de-incentivize the use of slave labor at the very top of their structures. Geneva Global fears that local businesses will just work harder in the future to hide instances of labor trafficking and slavery. To prevent this, Geneva Global is working in multiple sectors across South East Asia to one day end human trafficking in the region. For Thailand and India to end slavery, Guy suggests making it a question of managing their international reputations. By working to strengthen local-business, Geneva Global can help industry leaders maintain commercial relations with the West without fear of scandal. For Geneva Global, the answer is greater police involvement at the local and national levels as well as encouraging consumers to buy ethically fair wage products and push retailers to engage in good practices. Geneva Global stresses the importance of international buyers contracting auditors to increase the chances of catching traffickers in real time. Finally, Geneva Global wants international brands to accept that cheap prices should not be at the expense of your workers.
14 Ambassador Luis C.deBaca U.S. Department of State, Office to Monitor & Combat Trafficking in Persons The Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons leads the United States’ global engagement against human trafficking. The office pursues policies, partnerships and practices that uphold the ‘3P’ paradigm of prosecuting traffickers, protecting victims, and preventing trafficking. The office and US missions worldwide meet regularly with foreign governments to gauge progress and identify and examine recent trafficking trends. The DOS anti-trafficking office was established in 2000 in accordance with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act as an update to the post-Civil War slavery statutes. The Office is divided into four sections: reports and political affairs, international programs, public engagement and resource management and planning. Through these departments, they aim to promote the guarantees of freedom from slavery set by the U.S. constitution and furthered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As the former Ambassador at Large to the Office, Ambassador C.deBaca coordinated U.S. activities in the global fight against modern slavery. In 2014, the Ambassador addressed Congress following the release of the Office’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP). The TIP report is the US government’s principal diagnostic and diplomatic tool to guide relations with foreign governments in combatting human trafficking. The report consists of country specific action plans and increasingly focuses on the implementation of laws that fight the practice. The aim of the report is to prompt legislation, policies and protection mechanisms that advance international understanding of modern slavery. In spite of tremendous progress to decrease the number of those trafficked around the world, the Ambassador notes that in order to continue this progress, there must be increased access to information: the number one problem is an imbalance not just in power, but in information. When you change the information balance you change the balance of power. To that aim, he emphasizes the need to change some of our more traditional approaches. For example, the United States has a set of ‘Safe Harbor’ laws, meant to protect child victims of human trafficking. Developed by the individual states to protect child victims of modern slavery and sex trafficking, these laws are intended to address the inconsistent treatment of children in federal and state laws. Previously, children victims of human trafficking could be charged as sex workers in spite of federal statutory rape laws. Although they serve to protect children, the Ambassador notes issues can arise. At present, he says, there are more laws passed bringing attention to victim rehabilitation. But victims also need their records expunged so that they can resume a normal life and attain viable employment. At this time, these law only deals with victims of sex trafficking, despite slavery also flourishes in the labor market. During the Bush Administration, the Ambassador believed that the US did not have an approach that dismantled human trafficking. To that aim, the Office tried to pass a bill that would require Homeland Security to seize goods produced by bonded labor. However, protecting foreign-born adults and children can be a political issue in the United States. In order to combat global slavery the anti-trafficking community needs to encourage compassion from politicians and promote the abolitionist cause. Recent years have seen The Office focus on bridging the gap between knowing where the offenders are, how to prevent them from future offenses and how to keep communities safe. The Ambassador believes we owe it to ourselves and to the world to make up for what we have done to each other. Once we increase the access to information and use that information to promote the abolitionist cause, we may one day see a slave free world.
15 Gerardo Reyes Chavez, Laura Germino, Smirti Keshari & Sanjay Rawls The Cast & Crew of Food Chains & The Coalition of Immokalee Workers There is more interest in food these days than ever, yet there is very little interest in the hands that pick it. Farmworkers, the foundation of our fresh food industry, are routinely abused and robbed of wages. In extreme cases they can be beaten, sexually harassed or even enslaved – all within the borders of the United States. Food Chains, a documentary filmed produced by actress Eva Longoria, reveals the human cost in our food supply and the complicity of large buyers of produce like fast food and supermarkets. Their story is one of hope and promise for the triumph of morality over corporate greed – to ensure a dignified life for farm workers and a more humane, transparent food chain. Many Americans do not realize that the end of institutionalized slavery did not end bonded labor in the United States. It simply forced the practice underground. For many farm workers in America, the reality was that of violence, sexual assault and threats against their lives, which forced them into chains. In the 1990’s, tomato farm workers in Immokalee, Florida, began organizing against the human trafficking and slavery they saw in their local farm communities. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) pioneered a ‘multi-sectoral’ approach to slavery prosecution. Believing that, ‘the most effective weapon against forced labor is an aware community engaged in the defense of its own labor rights,’ they coordinated with the FBI and local law enforcement to uncover, investigate and assist in the liberation of over 1200 enslaved persons across the United States. The CIW also co-founded the Freedom Network USA and the Freedom Network Training Institute, which continues to be used regularly to train law enforcement and non-governmental organizations to recognize both the signs of human trafficking and to assist those trapped. Although incredibly influential in empowering workers on the supply side, the CIW understood the need to address the ‘demand side’ of the US produce market. As corporations can profit from the artificially low price of US produce, their actions can incentivize the use of human trafficking and slavery. In order to address this, the CIW launched the Fair Food Program. Supported by corporations like Walmart and McDonalds, this program communicates with farms all across Florida to inform workers of their rights, and allow them to report abuses. If a case of slavery is reported, growers are referred to The Fair Food Standards Council, the third party organization created to oversee compliance. Should a specific complaint of abuse be validated, that grower will no longer be able to sell to big buyers. As a result of their work, tens of thousands of tomato farm laborers have been interviewed and educated by the Fair Food Program. The CIW now says that there have been no reported cases of sexual harassment in ‘Fair Food fields.’ Although the CIW has accomplished a tremendous amount in relation to the tomato industry in Florida, violent practices and slavery still exist in the fields of other crops. But by educating consumers, buying habits can change at the grass roots level. The film aspire to build a critical mass of people willing to divest themselves from corporations and products tainted by slavery and human trafficking. But the movement also needs assistance from corporations. First, in order to ensure compliance, they need corporations to take the lead in engaging and convincing growers and consumers to comply with this program as they can pressure other companies that refuse to take a stand. They also need the support of the public to end slavery in America by realizing that doing so benefits everyone, not just those victimized by the practice. Ultimately, we need systemic change. As such, the Fair Food Program has helped to eliminate forced labor in the Southeast United States and education campaigns continue to empower global communities to defend labor rights. However, we the consumers, remain the best weapon against human trafficking and slavery.
16 Kay Chernush & Michele Clark Creative Director; Founder, President & Executive Director of ArtWorks For Freedom Artworks For Freedom uses the power of art in the fight against modern-day slavery. Engaging people through photography, media, dance, and other forms of art allows for a heightened understanding of the complex issue of contemporary slavery and trafficking. Operating on the basis that art touches viewers in visceral ways, the organization utilizes multi-faceted awareness campaigns to shine an unrelenting spotlight on human trafficking. Michele Clark and Kay Chrenush each had their own personal experiences with human trafficking before they collaborated through ArtWorks. Michele, a former professor at Israel’s University of Haifa, actively worked on anti-trafficking policy and advocacy as the co-director of the Protection Project at Hopkins. She then went on to assist the European Union to meet its anti-trafficking commitments through legislative and policy reform, victim services, and prevention programs as the first Director of Europe’s Anti-Trafficking Office at the Headquarters of the Organization for Security and Cooperation. Now teaching human rights and women’s empowerment courses at George Washington University, Michele thrives as Artwork’s Executive Director with Kay, the organization’s founder, president, and creative director. As a professional photographer, Kay was tasked with taking pictures for the Trafficking In Persons report, published annually by the U.S. Department of State’s Office for Combatting Human Trafficking. She traveled the globe, photographing refugee camps, brick kilns, Thai brothels, those in debt bondage, the red light district, child laborers, and other horrific, inhumane mistreatment of human beings. Her emotional experiences encouraged her to continue to use her talents to create compelling images that dignified the victims she met. ArtWorks began with Kay’s first exhibit, shown in the Netherlands and later, across the United States, Kay held portrait sessions and talked with individual survivors, learning their stories and empowering them to recognize their own strength. Now, these pieces are shown across the world. Viewers are able to empathize with these survivors, sensing their stories through this pictorial representation of trafficking. The organization continues to promote advocacy through an amazing coalition of artist-activists. Through their global travels, Michele and Kay recruit local artists in efforts of building a stronger international community of awareness and to further advance their cause. ArtWorks also partnered with New York-based organization Groundswell to create a moveable mural series made by high students, entitled “What You See Is Not Who I Am”, that relays the messages of domestic servitude, sex trafficking, and labor trafficking through an uplifting, hopeful perspective. Artworks hopes to grow their funding and broaden their audience even further. Their goal is to develop and formalize a network of artist-activists to further focus on the important questions they have already raised through their outreach work, and want to commission new work in different creative areas, like opera. In order to solve a problem, the organization believe that people need to be able to see the issue with their own eyes and feel inclined to make an impact. Art invokes this necessary emotional response, making Michele and Kay’s efforts even more successful as they push for a call for action towards the omnipresent issue of human trafficking. But, like so many in the movement, these women feel as if their work is never done. But by urging for a unanimous move away from the clichés and stock photos that seemingly cloud the space, Artworks For Freedom provides the opportunity to shift the media narrative on trafficking and slavery, both organically and forcefully.
17 Father Leonir Mario Chiarello Executive Director, Scalibrini International Migration Network The Scalibrini International Migration Network’s (SIMN) vision is to foster a global network that serves migrants, refugees, internally displaced persons, seafarers, and itinerants, and advocates for their dignity and rights worldwide. The mission is to safeguard and promote the rights of there people and others like them, on the move, in this globalized economic system. SIMN fulfills its mission through supporting an extensive network of centers of research and study, social service centers for migrants, refugees and seafarers, shelters, senior centers, orphanages, medical clinics, kindergartens, schools, vocational centers, and cultural centers. SIMN works closely with other entities at the national and international level, promoting comprehensive service programs and advocating for the dignity and rights of migrants and their families. The Scalabrinian Congregation was founded in 1887 by Bishop John Baptist Scalabrini to accompany and assist millions of Italians who were migrating to the American continent. During the 1960’s the Scalabrinian Congregation extended its mission to all migrants worldwide which eventually lead to the founding of the Scalabrini International Migration Network (SIMN) in 2005. The Scalabrinian Congregation has been involved in three main areas of human trafficking: first, advocating for the protection of victims of human trafficking; second, raising awareness in countries where human smuggling is particularly problematic, especially Italy, the United States and Brazil; and third, promoting policies and conventions suppressing human smuggling and human trafficking. SIMN unites seven centers located in major cities on five continents, each devoted to deepening the understanding of migration, with synchronizes goals and efforts. These centers monitor the development of international migration flows, policies and related issues, including human trafficking trends and challenges. All centers are organized with similar departments and programs dedicated to research, academic publications, documentation, conferences, and other educational endeavors. Considering prevention of human trafficking to be the first step to eradicate this new form of slavery, SIMN is promoting programs in three specific areas: first, job creation, development, and education programs to tackle the root causes of human trafficking; second, the creation of a network of shelters and migration centers to stop demand of forced labor and human trafficking; and third, to push national, regional and international information campaigns to prevent human trafficking. SIMN members are promoting advocacy programs worldwide in order to stimulate the implementation of policies and programs to prevent human trafficking, protect the victims of this new form of slavery, and to persecute the perpetrators of this crime. SIMN is involved in different partnership programs between governments, the United Nations, international organizations, and civil society groups involved in prevention, protection, and prosecution programs to stop human trafficking. The partnership with the Global Freedom Network, promoted by Pope Francis and other religious leaders, as well as the Catholic Coalition against Human Trafficking, and the NGO Committee to Stop Trafficking in Persons (NGOSTIP) represent some examples of these partnerships.
18 Britten Chroman, Genevieve Kimberlin & Tish Lara Women’s Initiative, David Lynch Foundation The David Lynch Foundation helps to prevent and eradicate the all-pervasive epidemic of trauma and toxic stress among at-risk populations through promoting widespread implementation of the evidence-based Transcendental Meditation (TM) program in order to improve their health, cognitive capabilities and performance in life. TM is a simple, effortless mental technique that allows the mind to settle on its own and get a deep sense of rest. It can be practiced on a chair or bed for 20 minutes with the eyes closed. It is an ancient mind-body-soul practice that has been affirmed and validated through modern scientific studies over the last 40 years. One of the biggest issues that victims of human trafficking deal with is post-traumatic stress, which is in scientific terms, a chronic excitation of the amygdala – also known as the anxiety center of the brain. TM allows this center to calm down and lessen the ‘fight or flight’ response in order to allow chronic anxiety begins to decrease. People who cannot sleep and rely on medication (even over extended periods of time) have found they are better able to rest, even after just one first week. One of the David Lynch Foundation’s initiative’s is the “Quiet Time Program,” which gives 10 minutes of TM in schools (K-12) in the morning and evening. The program is implemented most often in low income schools with high dropout and high murder rate areas. The Foundation also hosts a TM program working with veterans suffering from PTSD. Through this program they began to hear stories of sexual trauma and abuse from female soldiers while they were in the military. Their findings led them to begin to explore the link between women, abuse, violence and TM. This was what led them to found the Women’s Initiative, whose main goal is to bring TM to women and girls in need primarily survivors of domestic violence and incarcerated women. The Women’s Initiative implements TM with not only the clients, but the staff as well. After learning TM, the staff reported a 50 percent decrease in stress and burnout. The clients have reported less stress during their court cases and also report feeling more “balanced.” The Women’s Prison Program within the Women’s Initiative focuses on women who have been incarcerated and looking to get back on their feet. The Women’s Initiative’s largest international program is in Cambodia where over 300 girls have learned TM. There are also programs in Uganda and Thailand. Domestically they have partnered with Children of the Night, in Los Angeles, where they have successfully helped students overcome outbursts of violent and dramatic behavior. Some of the challenges of the TM technique with victims of human trafficking are that the populations tend to be transient, so it can be hard to access them over time and continue follow-up. Another challenge is funding, since most foundations do not yet fully understand the healing value of meditation. Regardless of these obstacles, the Foundation continues to look for new partners for their TM program, with results speaking for themselves.
19 Lori Cohen Director, Anti-Trafficking Initiative, Sanctuary for Families Sanctuary for Families is New York’s leading service provider and advocate for survivors of domestic violence, sex trafficking, and related forms of gender violence. Every year, Sanctuary empowers thousands of adults and children to move from fear and abuse to safety and stability, transforming lives through a comprehensive range of services including clinical, legal, shelter, children’s and economic empowerment services. Sanctuary for Families consists of clinical social workers, psychiatrists, and shelters for victims of domestic violence and their children. Through their work, they have found that many clients are victims of trafficking via their significant others and or their families. A number of the victims they treat are internationals; those that entered trafficking when they immigrated to the United States. Sanctuary for Families says that most have gone through psychological torture, sleep deprivation, and varying forms of physical or mental abuse. The methodology of human traffickers is somewhat well known. Through the Internet or via the use of a personal relationship such as boyfriend, family member, fiancé, or lover, traffickers will force their victims into sex labor. By keeping their victims in a constant state of mental exhaustion via physical, mental, or economic abuse, traffickers maintain the upper hand. Some victims even report having to turn over 100 percent of their earnings. Many do not know their rights and are falsely told that they will be arrested for prostitution if they alert authorities. If and why they are arrested ‘on the job’, a pimp will often hire a lawyer or attorney to protect themselves and their victims from incarceration. This sustains the cycle of abuse inherent in most human trafficking cases. Sanctuary is conscious of the language they use to describe past experiences. For example, a position of “power” verses one of “vulnerability” is important when identifying and treating a domestic violence victim. Through their crisis management program, they work with clients who may or may not know they are victims. Legal assistance is also available to the women who want to get out of ‘the life.’ There is also a conscious effort by Sanctuary to emphasize the labor-trafficking pretense of sex slavery. Many victims are trafficked believing they will cross the border for a better life. Only when they make the journey do they realize traffickers are selling them into slavery. And it is not just criminal gangs or cartels who sell them. Sometimes, it can be members of their own family. Additionally, Sanctuary for Families provides training to encourage survivor leadership. A number of women in their program have gone from being marginalized victims to reaching out to others and becoming a leader in defense of victims’ rights. By transforming the way the women see themselves, Sanctuary for Families is providing meaningful services to combat the post-trafficking lives of its survivors. Lori suggests there are a few things to consider in the fight against human sex trafficking: why is trafficking profitable? Why are there more shelters for animals than there are for victims of human trafficking? Lori believes that we need to create strategies that will make trafficking less of a taboo and less profitable. She cites their biggest struggle is with clients who admit to being trafficked and then change their mind and disappear, or who choose to no longer seek help. For this, Sanctuary for Families approach is to not fight with someone’s perspective, but giving them space to come to it themselves. With resources such as Hopeline – a program by Verizon wireless that services victims of domestic violence with new cell phones and the training to make these women economically self-sufficient, Sanctuary empowers thousands of adults and children to move from fear and abuse to safety and stability.
20 Brooke Crowder Founder & Executive Director, The Refuge The development of a place where child survivors of sex trafficking can find safety, and have access to the proper therapeutic services for healing from the trauma they have endured, has been a long-time passion of Brooke Crowder. The Refuge was launched in November 2013 to that end. The primary purpose of The Refuge is to develop The Refuge Ranch, a long-term therapeutic farm outside the city of Austin, Texas with on-site comprehensive services for girls, ages 11 to 17, who are survivors of sex trafficking. 100,000 American children have gone through the sex trade and most survivors began when they were younger than 13 years old. Despite being afforded opportunities, many young people do not speak out or run away from trafficking situations due to the psychological bond that is formed between themselves and the trafficker. That bond allows the trafficker to manipulate the victim, sometimes creating an image that the trafficker is their “protector.” The Refuge Ranch is located in Austin, Texas, and is where survivors can receive long-term care to recover from the deep physical and mental wounds they suffer in a post-slavery life. They receive services at the ranch such as child welfare and juvenile justice. The Refuge has 50 acres of land that was donated by a family in Austin. It took size months to prepare the architectural design for the ranch, allowing for a wonderful creative space and housing in cottages large enough to host four girls each. They try to place girls with similar background and experiences together, allowing for a sense of community. There is a school program on the premises, uniquely designed for the girls including one-on-one counseling, art and music classes. There is a social space with a gym and home theater, as well as a multi-faith sanctuary and yoga studio, where the girls can establish a sense of safety, normalcy and community. In the last year, The Refuge has worked on building community partners, which they believe is the key to the success of operations at the Ranch. The partnerships will determine how to respond in a holistic and transformative way for each survivor. Although The Refuge is a Christian faith-based organization, they do not have any mandatory Christian activities and they accept girls of all faiths. The long-term goal of The Refuge is to establish places of healing with holistic care and sustainable funding streams. This would allow them the opportunity to duplicate the model in other parts of the country and provide their unique services to survivors across the United States.
21 Mary David Human Rights Advocate An advocate for victims of trauma, Mary David is an internationally recognized human trafficking expert. Formerly the United Nations Advisor on women and children for the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, Mary is currently a freelance writer and motivational speaker. She is a graduate of The George Washington University Law School, where she specialized in international human rights law. Mary works to unite different sectors of society against human trafficking in policy, fashion, film, and the arts. Her current work focuses on the plight of slaves in Mauritania. Mauritania holds the number one ranking for slavery in the world. Abolished only in 1981, the provisions and governmental protection of slaveries practice are widely known despite laws banning it. The Arab population has been the ruling elite over the Black African Haratins for centuries, and this continues through to today. As there is very little education for the slave community, elites are all-powerful. It is not a crime in Mauritania to rape slaves, force genital mutilation, or to force a marriage. Slaves have no inalienable right to move with their spouses and children as they are viewed as property. Courts in Mauritania have intimated that these people are similar to cows and sheep. Estimates place the number of enslaved peoples in Mauritania at one out of every five. Even Mauritania’s President, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, said in 2013 “slavery is alive and well” in the nation. While there are two specific laws banning the practice and making it a punishable offense with a mandatory prison sentence; Mauritania’s constitution says that the acceptance of Sharia law featured in their preamble effectively nullify these provisions. The legislative changes of 2003 and 2007 were largely written due to international pressure and not the sincere desire to address the harm of slavery. The challenges of addressing slavery in Mauritania are numerous. It is difficult to quantify what is happening on the ground. It is also particularly difficult to get the people to scrutinize the slave trade or its institutions. Internal dynamics instill a belief that slavery is the victim’s fault and many are indoctrinated to believe there is no alternative. Freed people in Mauritania do not have an easy-post slavery life either. Rehabilitation processes take a long time and freed slaves suffer discrimination in all aspects of society. To combat slavery in Mauritanian society, Mary has several suggestions. First, highlight the condition of slavery today in social media, op-eds, research, and more. Within the country itself, access to cell phones and social media is limited among the enslaved populaces. However, we can utilize these technologies to continue the international pressure that led to previous legislative changes. Secondly, lobby Congress and the UN to investigate slavery in Mauritania and place sanctions on economic aid if it contributes to the slave trade. As Mauritania is heavily dependent on foreign aid for their food and military assistance, it is essential to leverage the international community to continue pressing for change. The consistent lack of access to education and resources for the Haratin will continue their enslavement. For this, Mary suggests groups like such as the Malala Fund should be involved in the efforts to educate the Mauritanian population. As more than 50 percent of people in the country are under the age of 24, it is essential that their voice are heard in the future of the their state.
22 Justin Dillon Founder, Made In A Free World Made In A Free World believes that changing the world takes everyone. They are a network of individuals, groups, and businesses working together to disrupt slavery and make freedom go viral. They produce innovative campaigns, on the ground projects, consumer engagement tools, and business solutions designed to get slavery out of the system. Their dream is simple. One day everyone and everything will be Made In A Free World. When former rock star Justin Dillon found that one of the women in his audience was a victim of human trafficking, he did something about it. Investigating how to create a movement that responds instead of reacts, Justin founded Made in a Free World to combat human trafficking and slavery. He began the movement with “Call + Response,” a rockumentary, released in 2008 by Fair Trade Pictures to support human rights activism against human trafficking and slavery on a community level. Realizing people needed to communicate directly with the brands that may be using labor trafficking, he created a SlaveryFootprint.org, a website that adjudges how many slaves work for the user. This website gives people no option but to acknowledge their role in this crime, and the estimated 30 million plus people currently enslaved by labor traffickers globally. Justin is using disruption as a call to action. Made in a Free World is an organization that allows people to communicate directly with brands to call for an end to labor trafficking. He launched the organization to ask companies what they can do to end slavery. Justin cites the lack of data as the biggest issue in the fight to combat human trafficking. Primarily, businesses do not have the data to know where or how slavery affects them. To heighten global awareness, in the last three years, they have utilized data from Slavery Footprint and created a database for the risk assessment of goods in regards slave labor. For the first time, Made in a Free World has made it possible for businesses to search their supply chains for any hint of slavery. Furthermore, by altering the way individuals engage with companies, Made in a Free World is adding a new conversation piece to corporate accountability and is shaping the conversations we have regarding awareness of slavery in our modern world. Their strategic vision for the future focuses on three things, movement building, field projects, and the business solutions mentioned above. Utilizing tools such as the Slavery Footprint, Made in a Free World wants to create a global movement of awareness that gives people an understanding of the issue. Secondly, they believe people want to participate directly with the abolition of this issue. By creating field projects, Made in a Free World hopes to tailor high impact products to encourage larger community participation. They are beginning on this front with a project to rescue boys in Ghana. Like their mission states, Made In A Free World is empowering individuals, groups, and businesses with innovative solutions to end the system of slavery together. They have worked hard to make clear wins in this fight.
23 Reverend Que English Chair, The New York Faith-Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking & Domestic Violence With over 2,200 children subjected to trafficking in the City of New York according to the New York State Office of Children and Families, 280,531 Domestic Incident Reports filed in New York City in 2013 and 843 domestic violence homicides reported in the five boroughs between 2002 and 2013, The New York City Faith-Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking and Domestic Violence seeks to educate, train and equip faith leaders to effectively combat these atrocities. Reverend Que English has started a movement of thousands. She believes that when we see an onslaught against our young children, we must do something. This movement, founded by the Reverend and The New York Faith-Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking and Domestic Violence is now looking to recruit thousands more. Theirs is a movement to become advocates and to educate, understand, and get behind policy that creates real change. The New York Faith-Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking & Domestic violence has mobilized 200 houses of worship to be safe havens for survivors. In 2016, their goal is to open 500. They want to continue their efforts into 2017 with an additional 1000 safe spaces. This brings the faith-based community into the fight against human trafficking by creating safe spaces and partnerships with local law enforcement and non- profits. The Reverend is now asking religious leaders to create more groups in their respective houses of worship to raise awareness around human trafficking and to remain sensitive to survivor plight. The Coalition also calls for congregations to support agencies and organizations that provide services for survivors. The Reverend reminds us that it is not enough to just go through training and obtain certificates. It is also important to take action after we have received knowledge. Launching Not On My Watch NYC with their headquarters on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx, English says its important to address the problem at it’s roots, which is an issue of demand. The Coalition is also asking for congregations and parishioners to become a Not on My Watch site by placing bumper stickers on your car, wear the bracelets, talk to people and create a zone of safety and acceptance for survivors and women at risk. It is only through community and collaboration that the fight against trafficking and domestic violence can be fought and won. In 2016 the Reverend’s priorities are focused on expanding capacity and offering more services and opportunities for survivors. The New York Faith-Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking & Domestic Violence is also launching a documentary series entitled The Redemption Project, volunteering for agencies that provide care packages for survivors, and supporting organizations such as Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS). By making it her mission to combat domestic violence and human trafficking right here in New York City, Revered Que and The New York Faith Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking & Domestic Violence are ensuring that faith leaders, congregations, and communities learn to end trafficking before it starts. While she admits they still have so much work to do, she has faith that tomorrows spiritual leaders will interpret the scriptures and join him in the fight to protect our young children, women, and girls here in New York City. They keep moving forward to end human trafficking and domestic violence in New York because they will not allow it to happen – on their watch – anymore.
24 Nathaniel Erb Co-Founder, Worthwhile: GO & Partner, Dashing Emancipation Worthwhile: GO is a program to enable passionate advocates to bike for freedom and raise money to support efforts to end slavery. Dashing Emancipation is an annual fashion show and art exhibit to raise awareness about the plight of human and sex trafficking. Nathaniel Erb has long had a passion for human rights and an eye for adventure. While in college, although he knew what he loved doing, he could not quite figure out where his passions fit. Throughout his time in University, he worked in Honduras focusing on poverty alleviation. However, his life would drastically change when he moved to Nepal in 2012. While there, Nathaniel met CNN Woman of the Year, Pushpa Basnet, who operates a home for children that would otherwise live with their incarcerated parents in Nepal’s prisons. He would spend an entire summer working with her and the children she cared for while their parents served their sentence. Surrounded by the Nepalese and immersed within their society, it was there he discovered how endemic human trafficking had become. One local told him, ‘if you don’t sell your neighbor into slavery, they will sell you.’ Nearing the end of his college career he returned to America, but not give up the fight to end human trafficking. While working at United Nations Economic Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and writing his thesis on human trafficking, he met Jay Atlas through Facebook. Jay was walking across America to raise awareness of the plight of human trafficking victims and to end the practice. Together, they planned a trip. Jay would walk and Nathaniel would ride his bike across the United States from Seattle, Washington to Key West, Florida. Throughout their trip, they would raise awareness and connect to every anti-trafficking organization they could find along their route. At the end of his trip, Nathaniel knew that he had found his issue and could not imagine doing anything else. Continuing his momentum and combining it with his passion for adventure in 2014, he partnered with Worthwhile Wear. He knew he wanted to create an active element that invites others to join the fight and raise funds to combat human trafficking. Building upon his original biking across America idea, he created Worthwhile Go. The active element of Worthwhile Wear, riders ride across the country to meet and engage with everyone, from senators and state delegates to school and community groups. Worthwhile Go completed its third trip - from Fargo, North Dakota to San Antonio, Texas – in 2015. Shortly thereafter, Nathaniel began volunteering at The Samaritan Women, where he took charge of their advocacy programs. Realizing there were gaps in his research, he started asking The Samaritan Women what they need and what they wanted to see. It was then he learned of the difficulties survivors of human trafficking face in Maryland. Nathaniel then spent the next six months helping to create the first law to ensure college access to survivors of trafficking. Passed unanimously last May, survivors can attend any college in Maryland and only pay one fee. One of the first such laws in the country, Nathaniel believes it demonstrates that this is actually a positive economic investment for the state. Nathaniel is now opening his own firm, the first in the state of Maryland to focus on trafficking-related legislative advocacy full time. He also plans to look deeper into the issues that feed modern slavery like, poverty, homelessness and drug addiction.
25 Judge Laura Safer Espinoza, Laura Germino & Sean Sellers The Fair Foods Standards Council & the Coalition of Immokalee Workers The Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ (CIW) anti-slavery campaign has uncovered, investigated, and assisted in the prosecution of numerous multi-state farm slavery operations across the Southeastern US, helping liberate over 1,200 workers held against their will since the early 1990’s. CIW’s worker-driven social responsibility model is being emulated and adapted to fight worker exploitation in settings as diverse as dairy farms in Vermont, tomato fields in Morocco, and apparel sweatshops in Bangladesh. The already stunning success of CIW’s model is now poised to serve as the foundation for even greater progress for low-wage workers, suppliers, and corporate buyers in the years ahead. Driven by worker’s standards and created by those individual’s in the field experiencing these problems first- hand, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers fights to educate laborers as well as policy makers on the rights of low-wage workers in the United State agriculture industry, the first ever initiative of its kind. The CIW and Fair Food Standards Council believe that workers are in the best position to create the standards that address abuse. In this way, the CIW leads education sessions for 10,000 workers so that they are aware of their rights and are well-versed representatives in the fight against exploitation. With workers at the forefront of combatting and reporting abuse, farms that fail to comply with the CIW standard are placed on probation. If they continue to fail in their efforts, CIW and the Fair Foods Standards Council suspend all working relations with them. In real terms, that means exclusion from selling to 13 major suppliers including fast food chains and supermarkets across the United States. While 40 percent of the calls to the CIW complaint hotline are found to be invalid, the Fair Food Standards Council and CIW are proud of their diligent fact find process. CIW’s audit process to ensure valid complaints include an in-depth hour-long interview with each crew leader or farming supervisor as well as conversations with at least 50 percent of the workers on the property. CIW then triangulates all of that data with company records to create a report that states clearly whether the farm is compliant with the Fair Foods Standards. Farms found non-compliant are given 10 days to make changes. By creating safe environments for workers to labor in and ensuring punishments for non-compliant farms, the CIW and Fair Standards Food Council are preventing human trafficking before it even begins. In the future, The Fair Foods Standards Council sees an immediate expansion in the Florida tomato industry while launching a multi-state effort in the North Eastern United States. They are also in discussions to broaden their work from tomato farms to different crops. Other organizations are looking at the Fair Foods Standards Council’s model and utilizing it to meet the demands of their industries. While the difficulties of monitoring compliance and creating binding legal agreements between workers, farms, and suppliers cannot be understated; the implementation of CIW and Fair Standards Food Council policies has freed many from bonded labor. The United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights has described the Fair Foods Program model as “smart mix of tools” that “could serve as a model elsewhere in the world.” By creating a safe place for laborers, farms, and suppliers, the Fair Foods Standards Council and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers are ensuring the “liberty, and justice for all,” of our national anthem truly includes every worker in the United States.
26 Thomas Estler Founder, Freedom Ladder The Freedom Ladder is dedicated to making the world safe for children by educating them about issues like human trafficking while in addition to equipping them with the tools to handle these situations. They envision a world free from child exploitation by creating a culture that respects and honors people. Freedom Ladder works with law enforcement agencies, child welfare organizations, and artists to design effective tools with captivating narratives to inspire young people to protect themselves. Their comic book, Abolitionista, became a powerful story that educated students about human-trafficking while feeding into their imaginations. Thomas Estler, the founder of Freedom Ladder, wants to reach every child before they are victimized. And he doing so through Japanese manga, a popular comic book style in the United States. Thomas decided to adopt this style and partner with graphic artists to create a manga, Abolitionista, which address the warning signs of human trafficking in the frame of a Nancy Drew detective mystery. In order to write a captivating story about a very sensitive and difficult topic, Thomas had to write a tale that did that highlights the red flags of human-trafficking without reading like an educational pamphlet. He decided to build the story on the premise of a young detective, Eden, who is gathering clues about her missing best friend, Delilah. Thomas incorporates the standard warning signs of trafficking into the story like visible signs of abuse, birth control, disappearing from home or school, new phones, a change in dree or physical appearances, or new health problems. In the second half the story, Thomas begins to get deeper into the problem of human-trafficking but to do this he had to look at the subject with the perspective of a youth. He realized that the word: human- trafficking, was confusing and intimidating, but slavery was something children understood. The history of the slavery in America is taught at schools across America so Thomas decided to introduce the concept of human-trafficking through the historical context of slavery. Main character, Delilah, had an ancestor that was brought over from Africa as a slave. This realization helped Delilah see that she was actually enslaved by someone she saw as a boyfriend. Abolitionista has had an overwhelming response from educators, children and survivors. He has seen how the book helps girls recognize and identify manipulating relationships in their own lives. Thomas has also gotten responses from parents praising the book. The success of Abolitionista has pushed Freedom Ladder to expand what they can do with manga. Abolitionista has already been translated to Spanish in order to reach a larger audience and thanks to a popular demand, Thomas and his team is already working on the second volume. Thomas loves manga because it is made to be in a series and this allows him to add onto a story and introduce new books when there is new information coming out about human-trafficking. Thomas is constantly researching, talking to survivors and his working closely with an FBI Victim Specialist on the key issues and trends pertaining to human-trafficking today. Thomas also has partners in the Philippines, India and Malaysia to work on creating more comic books that reflect the culture and trafficking stories common in those regions. These international comic books would be invaluable to American students as well as they teach more about this global issue. All the work that Freedom Ladder and Thomas is doing is to equip the next generation of abolitionists to live safe, powerful, and inspired lives.
27 Tim Fain & Jacob Marshall Violinist & Composer,12 Years A Slave; Co-Founder, MORE Partnerships MORE Partnerships aims to promote partnerships among artists, brands, and causes. The company helps to explore and activate relationships with organizations and leading innovators in the arts and technology. 12 Years a Slave is a film documenting a free man’s journey through capture, slavery, and freedom. The film is an adaptation of the 1853 autobiography of Solomon Northup. Jacob spent ten years playing music and touring with a band. To his surprise, Japanese fans sang every word even though they couldn’t speak English: they had a deep, shared emotion. From this, Jacob realized that music has the power to transcend the barriers of culture, ideology, and language. In addition, he has learned how to collaborate with the fan base in a small and meaningful way: in 2009 he built a campaign that allowed fans to participate and donate to humanitarian organizations. Yet in order to scale impact on the ground, they needed partners and the smartest way to engage artists is to partner with them in a meaningful way. Brands have been doing more Community & Social Responsibility (CSR) projects, plugging in their consumers to social ends, and courting artists for cultural relevance. Jacob dedicated himself to understanding and facilitating partnerships between brands and bands. It is necessary to see a problem from multiple angles and embrace multi-disciplinary solutions, and so with that spirit in mind, he co-launched MORE Partnerships. Tim may be the greatest living violinist, but he also wants to build his legacy around ending human trafficking. While working on a documentary called Untouchable, he learned about the “lower caste” system, modern slavery, and the lack of opportunity in Nepal and specifically for Nepalese girls. Then Tim started to learn that this is happening even in America: in Seattle, Oregon, Los Angeles, and nearly everywhere slavery continues to exist today. Being the father of two girls determined him to ensure that girls would not have to suffer prostitution. He also wanted to use music to inspire people, because listeners open themselves to an issue without fear. His script and musical work on the Academy Award winning film 12 Years a Slave helped to depict the transformation of the lead character from abduction to freedom. Tim considered how the music and words would work together to achieve a glimpse into the downward progression of Solomon’s internal spiritual life. The subtle shifts in mood and tempo as well as the timing of phrases bring about an unsettling effect and have strong impact. Many times a sense of empathy drives people to want the change. Jacob and Tim want to help more people around the world feel a sense of connection through music. Technology can also be used to cultivate empathy. Jacob uses the realm of mobile applications to connect people to causes because there is an urgent need for empathy: it is the criteria for slave free world. There are artists who create beautiful work and communicate to large audiences, and they want to play a part in ending human trafficking. Practically Jacob and Tim collaborate with a number of caring artists; this joined experience has a greater reach. At the heart of art is a simple idea: individuals put things together as a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Many times the pair will invite an interdisciplinary coalition of people to have a meal and talk about how they can work together in an interesting way. Each person has different resources, and having the space to enjoy a good meal and let the conversation unfold is important for setting the tone. Both Tim and Jacob agree that what drives people into slavery in the first place is desperation. The legal side of the issue is reforming, but there is an economic dimension as well: national businesses must examine and clean their supply chain. There needs to be an increasing transparency in the global supply chain. Artist Nina Simone discussed freedom, stating freedom is ‘no fear.’ In a slave-free world people can live without fear.
28 Terence Fitzgerald Senior Director of Program Design & Evaluation, International Justice Mission The International Justice Mission (IJM) is a global organization established to ensure that a country’s public justice system works justly and fairly. Broadly, IJM focuses on ending violence against the poor; more specifically, IJM focuses on rescuing victims of slavery and human trafficking and convicting their abusers. The organization also seeks to monitor and evaluate the nature of the crime (total amount of victims), the experience of victims (how they were treated, both by traffickers and the public justice system), the state of the public justice system (practices on which the system runs), and the effects of its programs (how IJM has helped). Terence has been a crucial member and program developer for the IJM team for eight years. Most of IJM’s staff members are natives of the country in which they work, which gives them insight into the lives of both victims and perpetrators. Prevalence studies are the main way of capturing the scale of the crime and IJM works with criminologists brining undercover investigators to sample locations, having them interact with potential victims, and collect field data. This methodological approach has allowed IJM to bring to light to a great deal of once hidden information. The vast majority of slavery is an economic crime: the goal is to make money and gain a competitive advantage in the market. For example, in India, traffickers use the caste system to identify potential victims and keep them subdued, however their primary motivation is making money. The immediate benefit of IJM’s rescues is that victims are finally given the freedom they deserve. IJM also works to restore survivors’ dignity and help them live happy lives. The organization’s programs have resulted in the rescue of approximately 20,000 people. Before the arrival of IJM in a country, there exists a “state of impunity”: perpetrators believe they will not be punished for their crimes. IJM fights this impunity by improving local public justice systems. When traffickers are arrested, refused bail, brought to court, and sent to prison, they re-evaluate the risk of committing trafficking crimes. If criminals know they will be punished for breaking the law, their willingness to break the law goes down. The organization also trains and equips police and prosecutors to better do their jobs. For example, IJM embeds investigative training in officer training programs. It also seeks to prioritize trafficking by creating special police units, and mentor and cooperate with prosecutors and police on casework. Over time, IJM’s role transitions to technical support rather than “on the ground” assistance. The mission considers it a success when police units start to lead their own raids. IJM’s public justice system studies are based on a case-file review; IJM gets access to and analyzes old case-files and uses that information to track errors and/or major problems in the system. In many places, the fight against trafficking is hampered by a lack of accurate information, so IJM shares its research openly. For example, IJM shared its Cambodian study with the country’s leaders and other anti- trafficking organizations, and asked these people to critique and use it in their own work. IJM also engages in dissemination at conferences around the world. You can find information on all of IJM’s studies at www.ijm.org/studies.
29 Katie Ford Founder, Freedom for All Freedom For All partners with on-the-ground organizations that create long-term, systemic changes to end slavery in the countries where they work and to save lives by freeing people who are held in slavery. They also advise companies and their advisors on how they can save lives by following pre-existing measures to manage their supply chains and remediate problems within it. FFA recommends different initiatives and programs that will help eradicate the rampant problem of forced labor. FFA also focuses on producing material to raise awareness about modern day slavery for a variety of usage, such as education, presentations and conferences. Katie worked as Chief Executive Officer of Ford Models and in 2008 she decided to leave her job and focus on the anti-trafficking initiative, Freedom for All, where she spearheaded awareness campaigns reaching 400,000 viewers. A person who is trafficked can be used over and over again throughout their life in labor or sexually abused many times a day. Sometimes entire villages are enslaved and young boys and men are forced to work where they become completely dependent on the trafficker. The common grounds for trafficking are typically restaurants, farms, modeling, hotels, salons, door-to-door sales, etc. Children are also the most vulnerable, and traffickers prey on many different vulnerabilities - the most common being poverty. In Ghana, for example, children as young as three years old are being forced to untangle nets under fishing boats resulting in many drownings. Many victims of human trafficking do not have a way out due to lack of access to technology, isolation, threats with violence, and the like. This is why the Freedom For All focuses on training local people to understand and recognize trafficking. The organization has rescued 61,000 victims of sex slavery and human trafficking, from ages 8 to 22 years old. Once Freedom For All discovers an effective intervention of human trafficking, it can sometimes be replicated within country or in different companies. However, in Ghana the intervention plans are not generally replicable. FFA has partnered with the department of immigration in Brazil to warn people about fake work agents. Many young girls and boys are being lured with the promise of a contract and career in modeling or soccer. The Brazilian government has taken action against this predatory behavior. They have declaring that if they discover any supplier engaged in slavery, the government will cut funding until they can, within a two year period, ascertain that there is absolutely no slavery in the supply chain. The list of companies in Brazil that have signed on to the anti-slavery initiative list is one-third of the economy. The solutions proposed by the Freedom For All to bring an end to human trafficking include police training in the US, providing more housing and job services for survivors in the US, teaching about modern day slavery in schools, engaging the model industry about scam agencies, and creating a culture where young people are informed and believe they can make a difference.
30 Alison Friedman Deputy Director, U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor & Combat Trafficking in Persons The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) at the United State Department of State was established in 2010 and works with foreign governments, international organizations, and civil society to develop and implement effective strategies for confronting modern slavery. In addition, the office is responsible for bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, targeted foreign assistance, and public engagement on trafficking in persons. Its main goals are to prosecute traffickers, protect victims, and prevent trafficking. As Deputy Director of the TIP office, Alison is committed to fighting human trafficking, and her office is the only office in the Department of State that ranks other countries on an annual basis in regards to their efficacy in fighting trafficking. Although this choice creates friction, it is also a significant movement that effects real change. The annual Trafficking in Persons report released by the office every year, ranks the countries and details the trafficking situation in each of them. This research has spurred new laws and initiatives in many different places. In fact, according to a Duke University study, a country is two times more likely to pass an anti-trafficking law after being downgraded by the report. Unfortunately, the office receives just under $20 million per year in funding from the government for their worldwide initiatives, and therefore are seeking to partner with potential donors in future to share information about ideas that State Department cannot fund. In the United States, one of the best ways to fight human trafficking is to make it a part of the nation’s political agenda. Politicians such as Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator Sam Brownback, and others have picked up on this issue in the past. However, since there was not a huge outcry against human trafficking, the problem was not addressed as fully as it could have been. If the general public becomes interested in fighting the problem, more can be done to eradicate human trafficking. Some practical ways to raise awareness include getting the word about trafficking hotlines and the issue of slavery in general. Citizens can also engage with their mayor and school board to try and spread this information, as well as petitioning their state and federal Congressmen. In all, establishing a political base that will support the fight against human trafficking would be one of the most effective ways to eradicate slavery from the United States. One way for American citizens to fight human trafficking is ensuring that they are ethical consumers. Alison was introduced to the fight against human trafficking because her family was in textiles, and they came up against the problem of verifying supply chains. Supply chain verification is a real opportunity to create a standard for what is expected of businesses that holds them accountable. It’s a sound business practice to eliminate bonded labor in a business’s supply chain because it ensures one’s laborers are qualified and creating good products, as well as being paid fairly for their work. Alison also emphasized the importance of programs that empower survivors to live their lives fully. Religious organizations are wonderful resources, and they need to step up to the task. There are some real opportunities in our globalized world to connect survivors with their interests, but we need to figure out how to better integrate survivors back into society. As immoral and abusive as human trafficking is, it’s fundamentally an economic crime. That means there is a way to change it.
31 Tina Frundt Founder & Executive Director, Courtney’s House Courtney’s House is a drop-in center working with youths, both boys and girls, from ages 12 to 21. Founded in 2008, the organization fearlessly searches for children who are being forced into prostitution on the streets, in brothels, strip clubs, private homes, and hotels. The House embraces the rescued children and brings them into a safe environment where they and their families can heal, recover and develop hopeful, dignified, and influential lives. As a survivor of domestic sex trafficking herself, Tina relentlessly fights to protect children from sexual exploitation and the devastation that comes from it. When she was trafficked, she thought that she was to blame, and therefore is fully aware of how difficult it can be to overcome the trauma caused by the experience. Tina also was never given nor was she aware that she could get access to a wide range of services, so her organization was founded to help others facing similar difficulties. Courtney’s House works to find missing kids on the street and online, and to provide support groups, counseling services, and a hotline for survivors. The Courtney’s House hotline differs from the Polaris trafficking hotline, because the latter is a tip-line while the House hotline is a help-line where survivors can call in to find out more about services and get immediate support from the House team. The organization also provides preventable training methods to and for law enforcement and other service providers around the country. If officers can better understand the different types of control over survivors - including gang control, pimp control, and family control – they can better serve and protect victims. Tina also recognizes the need for employees of the foster care system to be better trained to recognize trafficking. Currently, foster kids cannot access the services they need, and many are trafficked. It is very difficult to recognize a victim, since all different races and gender identifications are trafficked. Many individuals from the LGBTQ are trafficked, in part because many LGBTQ youths are forced to leave their homes when by families unwilling to accept their sexual identification, making them an increasingly vulnerable population. Tina believes we need a better standard of care for young survivors; LGBTQ youths included. The kids at Courtney’s House resume their education immediately after their rescue, though many parents of survivors rely on homeschooling as a first step. Some survivors face bullying, and Courtney’s House helps families deal with this eventuality. However, support groups serve as the most effective means for support and are the most important component of the program for most of the kids in the House program. Two percent of the referrals that come into the House are from law enforcement; most referrals come from parents, the foster care system, friends of survivors, and the survivors themselves. The vast majority of survivors, when they contact Courtney’s House for the first time, are still in “the life” – even when they begin participating in the House programs. It can take many years for survivors to mentally and physically escape the trauma they have endured. Courtney’s House confronts a range of challenges – including the severe mental health issues of their clients and the demand for the growing number of children being entered into their programs – but they continue to work with survivors and challenge established norms about their acceptance by and reintegration back into society.
32 Patrick Gage Member, The Carlson Family Foundation & The Carlson Global Hospitality & Travel Company The Carlson Family Foundation represents the commitment of the Carlson family to give charitably to humanitarian and community affairs. Through investments in education, mentoring, children and youth at risk, and youth mentoring, the Carlson Family Foundation actively participates in creating strong and healthy communities, and a competitive workforce. The Carlson Global Hospitality and Travel Company is a member of ECPAT and a corporate leader in the fight against slavery and trafficking worldwide. As a leader in business tourism, Carlson maintains a majority stake in Wagonlit Travel and operates 1,300 hotels in more than 150 countries. Since 1999, the Carlson Family Foundation has taken a corporate and people’s approach to combatting human trafficking. Their approach requires ethics training for all employees focusing on the language of human trafficking. This is partnered with a Code of Business Ethics and Conduct Language for Suppliers, as well as philanthropy and advocacy via the Carlson Family Foundation. Employee trainings include discussions on how best to observe, identify, and properly report any suspicious or illegal activity. These trainings feature Not My Life, a ten-minute documentary about child trafficking and exploitation funded in part by the Carlson Family Foundation. Employees are then required to report any illicit behavior to a manager and every hotel has a certified trainer to ensure even franchises are prepared for such an eventuality. Placed in each Carlson hotel, a back-of-house poster is in use to raise employee awareness and help them to identify critical situations. This ensures that at every step they are encouraged to report any illicit activity. Along with their employee training, Carlson utilizes a Code of Business Ethics and Conduct for their suppliers. As many of the products we buy today are tainted by modern slavery, especially sweatshops and child labor, Carlson maintains a Supplier Code of Conduct, which ensures suppliers update their contracts with anti- trafficking language. Sometimes their big suppliers go to third parties to meet demand, and that is where the slavery and trafficking are most prevalent. To combat this, Carlson audits their supply chains that move to third parties. Although this may create friction over costs, Carlson believes that if large companies do not tolerate supply chain slavery at any level, they can effect a major change in combatting human trafficking. Carlson also makes ensure that travelers and customers are aware of the issue when traveling to countries where child sex tourism is high. This is their way of showing support for the movement inside and outside the US. On all itineraries originating in the United States going to countries with high risks for child-sex tourism Carlson places the National Human Trafficking phone number for both inside and outside the United States of America. Finally, through their advocacy and philanthropy, they petition governments, educational institutions, and the private sector to prevent and combat human trafficking. While they admit that measuring the impact is tough, as traffickers do not release numbers and victims are unable to raise they hand and be counted, they measure their successes by the number of hotels with certified trainers and monitoring employee training at the hotel level for compliance. Additionally, they cite new anti-trafficking laws and larger social changes. Working with key partners such as the World Childhood Foundation, they are able to combat the pushback associated with the costs of this program. Through their hotel loyalty program, Club Carlson, they allow members to donate to the World Childhood Foundation and advocate for event sponsorships or adopting organizations that help to break the cycle.
33 Cara Gardner & Stacie Reimer Board Member; Founder & Executive Director, The Amara Legal Center Founded in September 2013, the Amara Legal Center provides free legal services to individuals whose rights have been violated through commercial sex trafficking, in the Washington D.C. area. The Center focuses on helping victims of domestic sex trafficking, as it is a less popularly discussed issue in the United States. Amara is committed to providing excellent legal aid, raising awareness about the rampant spread of domestic trafficking, and finding ways to reform the public’s treatment of domestic slavery in the United States. A 13-year-old girl named ‘Jessica’ met a young man while living in Maryland. He promised to take care of her and give her things, and for a young girl without a good home life or support system, his words were just what she wanted to hear. When he started running low on cash, he told her she needed to start working so they could keep up their lifestyle. Jessica agreed, and her boyfriend began to sell her body to get money. This is just the beginning of Jessica’s story, and hers is a real life example of the 300,000 minors at risk of being trafficked in the United States. The average age of entry into the sex industry is 12 to 14 years old, and often the victims have already been sexually abused at home, in homeless shelters, or the foster care system. Many of the victims are female or transgender, hold a criminal record, and are African American or Latino. Chronic runaways and young boys are also in danger, but their risk is often overlooked. There are significant cracks in the school system in Maryland, as some students will pimp others, and school employees are untrained on how to recognize signs and report suspected instances of human trafficking on school grounds. As Jessica continued her relationship with her pimp, she dropped out of school and was arrested and charged with prostitution at 18 during a police raid. It is common for victims to become addicted to drugs and alcohol, and they are frequently unable to obtain a driver’s license. Trafficked girls will often have children as well, but, as with so many others, Jessica lost custody of her children. Finally, at age 22, Jessica was able to escape her pimp, but she now lives without a family support system, high school diploma, or government issued ID. Jessica has had no job training and does not have access to mental health or legal services. In addition, her previous buyers often threaten her and harass her to come back to the industry. While Jessica’s plight is grave, Amara Legal Center is an organization able to help Jessica overcome her most pressing legal problems. Amara helps victims of trafficking obtain restraining orders, regain custody of children, and expunge records, and it provides Victim Witness Advocacy and Policy Advocacy in the Washington, D.C. area. Amara Legal Center has recently submitted a law that will expedite clearing the record of sex trafficking survivors or those who have been arrested for prostitution, which they hope to see it passed in the Fall 2015. Sex workers are often looked at as criminals, but the anti-trafficking movement can work with the sex workers rights movement to prevent the kinds of brutalities against women perpetuated within the sex industry and help provide them with their legal rights. Amara Legal Center is also working to train social services and service providers on effective solutions to help trafficking victims, raise awareness through monthly events and social media, as well as working with clients, often comprised of trafficking victims, in the legal sector. In ten years, Amara hopes to be a provider of technical training for nationwide awareness of what survivors of sex trafficking need in terms of legal services. In Washington, D.C., thousands of trafficking survivors have unmet needs, and Amara Legal Center is on the forefront of helping these survivors as well as working against human trafficking. The justice system must be reformed so that these victims are not seen as criminals, but as victims in need of help. Social services can work with other private organizations like the Amara Legal Center to provide the help trafficking survivors so desperately need.
34 Sarah Gardner Director of Development, Thorn Thorn drives technological innovation to fight the sexual exploitation of children. Partnering with organizations across the tech industry, government and NGOs, Thorn leverages technology to combat predatory behavior, rescue victims, and protect vulnerable children. The Thorn Technology Task Force is comprised of more than 20 technology companies that lend their knowledge, time and resources to the work that Thorn does. Founded in 2009 by two philanthropists, Thorn is a global leader of innovating technology to combat human sex trafficking. With the introduction of the Internet, child pornography greatly increased, as did the platforms for its dissemination. Law enforcement was not capable of keeping up with the demand. Realizing the need for a larger initiative, Thorn began by starting a Technology Task Force of 25 companies. These companies, including as Facebook, Google, Pinterest, AOL, Twitter, Firefox, and others have their engineers meet twice a year to tackle the dissemination of child pornography at its roots. Thorn has discovered that three out of four victims of human trafficking are trafficked online. The average age of entry into trafficking is 13 years old and over 70 percent of those sold online have come out of the foster care system. Pimps and pedophiles look especially for vulnerable children like those in foster care. To combat this vulnerability, Thorn approached Digital Reasoning to create an algorithm that compares the language and keywords in the titles of ads on BackPage.com to determine a likelihood of age score. This score then denotes whether or not the person in this ad is a minor or legal adult. Further compounding Thorn’s fights are the pages that say, “Donations are non-negotiable.” This means that she is charging but the ads remain. The two owners of Backpage have won court cases relating to these algorithms by citing their freedom of speech, which includes the solicitation of donations. This is despite the fact that in most cases, prostitution is illegal. Thorn thus began to use technology to combat child sex trafficking at the internal level. The BEFREE Text Shortcode is a collaboration of the Polaris Project/National Human Trafficking Hotline, Twilio, and the Salesforce Foundation. Launched in the spring of 2013, the BEFREE text shortcode enables trafficking victims to text for their freedom. Since its launch, 674 new trafficking cases have been opened and over 1,100 new text-messaging conversations have started. Employing a similar algorithm as the one in use to determine age, this ad will guess the gender of the person seeing their advertisement. If the algorithm believes it to be a woman, they will send them the BEFREE ad. Working to fight child pornography has also driven Thorn to platforms such as the “dark web,” and illegal movie download sites. They designed and implemented a deterrence program that would act as a “red light,” to those googling these images with pop-up ads will pop up that say “We know where you are” (to scare) or “Stop- ask for help” (for assistance to get out of what they are doing). Their deterrence program has 1500 people hitting their page each day. Along with their GEMS (Girls Education and Mentoring Services) pilot launched in June of 2014, Thorn’s current priorities are to support awareness initiatives for BEFREE. With the GEMS programs, they want survivors of human trafficking to be empowered and re-integrated into society. With the backing of two philanthropists covering overhead and admin costs, Thorn sees itself as an incubator that is not afraid of failure in the innovation stage. Currently Thorn is in a nine-month test phase with law enforcement in Arizona, and in phase two, they seek to build a cloud-based tool that they will test in different cities. Finally, they are campaigning to teach very young children the importance of their digital footprint. By using technology to fight the sexual exploitation of minors across tech, government, and NGO platforms, Thorn works to dismantle the presence of trafficking in the digital world.
35 Girl Be Heard Girl Be Heard is a nonprofit organization that aims to help young women write, direct, and perform original works based on pressing issues in their communities. Art enables understanding; by taking performances on tour around the nation and to high-profile venues like the United Nations, Girl Be Heard enables individuals to comprehend widespread issues like sex trafficking in an artistic, humanizing, and approachable ways. Art and theater play an influential role in the larger social justice movement. Theater provides people who might not otherwise be heard with a platform and voice to share difficult stories. Art activism allows for more than one complex story to be told at a time; as talking about sex trafficking is meaningless without including discussions on poverty, rape, sexuality, education, and privilege. Girl Be Heard was founded in 2008 by a group of young girls who came together to discuss world issues like politics and feminism. Their dynamic synergized because their work speaks to diverse audiences around the globe. Regardless of age, gender, race, sexual orientation, or creed, issues like trafficking affect everyone, and participants were emboldened to take ownership over their own stories and experiences in a cathartic, creative manner. In 2011 the organization developed its first full=length show, and has since been performing fragmented excerpts of “Trafficked” in every country from Taiwan to Trinidad. Compiled of testimonies, poetry, dance, and movement, their performances are constantly evolving to incorporate current statistics and emotions. Below are two pieces performed in this show.
36 CARNA I used to think there wasn’t a part of me you hadn’t touched. Stripping naked before the mirror, in the dead of night when my body is brilliant against the dark of the room, My body was a classic textbook timeline, Dates and times and bruises tattooed on In thick spidery ink, Across the jagged edges of my toenails, and the jutting ankle bones, October 18th, 3:49 AM Etched between the soft hair that grows on my knees, and on the thighs that chafe on long walks February 3rd, 12:30 pm Dug into the vulva shaven for reasons long forgotten, The tummy with the slight bump March 15th, 7:13 pm Scratched across the dip of my ribcage, Plastered across the collarbone. July 8th, 11:21 AM As I slept, I hung with moonsilk thread A dreamcatcher, woven thick enough to hold the weight Of a thousand nightmares Near my head, And yet you, you hacked and slashed your way into my brain While I tried to sleep, I woke screaming with your face gleaming Across the backs of my eyelids, the weight of your psychosis Weighing in my mind in my bones in my skin tugging tearing pulling it down Into greying bags that hung below my eyes I used to think, that there wasn’t a part of me you hadn’t touched I ignored the needs of my internal organs, I scrubbed my skin with a harsh sponge They say that skin cells of anyone you touch stay with you for Seven long years But I was eager to lower the wait time, I changed myself, right down to the inner layers of my hair strands, So that I wouldn’t have to see the body you laid claim to Every single day. Exhausted from years of running, running almost every day for four years, Running Almost 8,500 miles and changing my hair colour four times and spending hundreds of dollars on makeup a change in religion, two new tats and seven piercings and two homes and three apartments, and an eating disorder that permanently changed my insides, There was nothing to do but slam my fists in the mirror and beg the heavens for a fucking answer. As the shadows of the room give way to streaks of pale morning-light, in the silence of the room I hear my answer, I feel my answer. Inside my ribcage, the constant thudding. Shattered only in metaphor, the bulbous blood pumping fierce beast in my chest forged on. I used to think There wasn’t a part of me you hadn’t touched. But deep within my magma infused core, Is something no man, whether with fingers bony and cold, or with drills and machines built for fracking, Could ever crack.
37 AMSTERDAM She stands deadweight in the door frame, Fingering the thick cloth of the velvety curtains that cover her window When she has a customer. Jet black hair, blackening eyes, She is striking against the dark background of her habitat. Her thick accent masks her fear as she says Any more questions? I have given her some euros to talk to me about her life. She takes me by the hand into the soft purple lit bedroom Decorated with end table, mirrors, a twin sized bed with blue And violet covers and sheets, a single pillow flat as a piece of wood, And the vague smell of…vanilla? Musk? To mask the scent of sex Points to the tools of her trade, scattered on shelves And in crevices beside the bed, one by one Ties and handcuffs. Fluffy and metal. Dildos. Many sizes. Strap on—many straight men like. Condoms. Latex and non latex. For allergies. Lube. Obviously. And there, tissue for the mess. Always many boxes. I can barely hear the life of Amsterdam’s canals outside over the thudding of Music that echoes through the vast brothel. Through that door… that is where we all live. It feels like I can see for miles. A hallway coated in red velvet and dim lighting, hundreds of women Who can dance and sing and play Nina from the Seagull, Shaving their legs and their nether regions, Combing and dying their hair bleach blond, Smoking hot ended cigarettes, Not sleeping but not fully awake, Lost hunting through fog For a dream that never showed up. “How did you get here?” They told me I was going to be a dancer…ballet. I do ballet. That much is evident from her slender lean limbs, and The graceful sharp turn of her head as her eyes dart round and round Round the room round the street round me. You want the sex? No, I tell her, no that’s ok. Thank you for talking to me. Ok good. You’re too young to be here. Don’t do this. Now go. I leave her doorway and boys in the street turn and whistle Hey girls can we join you? They spit and laugh and laugh and laugh, It hits our ears hard and shrill and childish While she clenches, and unclenches her fists, And returns to pose, arms and legs akimbo, in her windowsill, Eyes turned towards the blue, blue sky.
38 Pearl Gluck Filmmaker, The Turn Out Pearl Gluck is a filmmaker that has produced and directed numerous of films that explore representations of gender, class and faith in cinema. Her films have been premiered at internal festivals such as Cannes among others. She also brings her passion into the classroom by lecturing about the different aspects of film making at Penn State, Ohio University and Emory University. Her most recent film, The Turn Out, is a look at the role of prostitution in the trucking industry. The Turn Out is a documentary-based film that follow trucker Crowbar, who meets a 16 year-old named Nevaeh, asking if he’d like some company. But as he begins to learn more about Neveah’s story, he learns that she was trafficked by members of her own family. This experience forces Crowbar to reevaluate his perception and approach to the women and girls he has seen truck stops. The Turn Out is based on two years of investigative research into the sex industry in Southeast Ohio by filmmaker Pearl Gluck who produced this film to bring awareness to the widely ignored problem of sex-trafficking in local communities. Pearl gained an interest in sex trafficking after befriending a trucker five years ago. As she learned more about the trucker community in Ohio and was exposed to different anti-trafficking posters directed towards truckers. Pearl started to realize that there was a real problem of sex-trafficking right in the middle of these small towns. With Pearl’s Jewish background and connection to the Holocaust community she realized how the human-trafficking occurring today mirrors the oppressed generation of Jews in the Holocaust. She began to feel convicted to do something. Pearl’s goal with her film is to address the underlying causes of what it means to be a bystander to sex trafficking. Similar to the Holocaust, sex slavery is also an issue of those who stand in a silence and allow these atrocities to continue. Through her research, Pearl discovered that Athens, Ohio was surrounded by extreme poverty and a lack of education; residents simply do not realize the wrong in selling their family members. In an interview with Rebecca Miller from the Athens County Children Services, Pearl learned about the prevalence of intra- trafficking within families. Rebecca’s insight made Pearl take a new direction for her female lead Nevaeh, who would be forced into prostitution by a relative. However, another aspect of sex-trafficking that Pearl addressed was post-trafficking life. What happened to survivors that were fortunate enough to escape? Pearl met Judge Paul Herbert, to learn about a program he started called CATCH Court. Judge Herbert offers victims an opportunity to receive help and an expunged record from prostitution if they are able to complete this two-year specialty court program. Survivors get an education, learn about basic life skills, and attend AA and NA meetings while under the protection of the court. Pearl spoke to the first graduate of this program, Barbara Freeman, who was trafficked for over 20 years. She was locked in a cycle of domestic violence and drug abuse until she was saved by a police officer who brought her into Herbert’s program. She successfully finished the program and launched the Freeman Project to combat sex-slavery. Pearl’s hope is that her film brings awareness to sex-trafficking as well as the psychological and physical impact it takes on victims’ lives. On one side there are the captors and kidnappers, on the other are the victims. In the middle is the rest of the world, who allow this tragedy to continue by either paying for these inhumane services or doing nothing about them.
39 Molly Gochman Philanthropist & Artist, The Red Sand Project Molly Gochman is an experimental artist. Her projects are aimed at bringing together the collective experiences of many people to promote greater understanding. She believes that strong first step to empowering socially excluded populations, particularly women and girls, is to create transformative, systemic and cultural initiatives that demand a world where we all have the opportunity to participate fully and freely. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Molly Gochman grew up the daughter of a human rights lawyer. Raised with this unique perspective, originally she sought a similar career. However, after discovering that her heart was in art, she changed paths to become the woman she is today. Art, Molly believes, presents an opportunity for people to questions things for themselves. Following the passing of her father, Molly was faced with many life transitions back to back. Her house was condemned and she decided to take a break from art. It was during this time of transition, she learned more about human trafficking and modern slavery. Unsure of where to begin, she called and connected with many human trafficking organizations to see how she could help. It was then she says that she decided to use her art to promote a progressive cultural change. The Red Sand Project is an activist artwork piece that uses participatory sidewalk interventions and convenings to create opportunities for people to question, connect and take action against human trafficking. Beginning in Miami, Molly asked the public to place red sand into sidewalk cracks. Participants are then asked to document their sidewalk transformations on social media using #RedSandProject. She chose sidewalk cracks because like socially excluded populations, they are often looked over. By transforming them through these interventions her aim was to re-envision these once looked over sidewalk cracks as opportunities for art and conversation. Worried about reactions from the public, she says it was the response from survivors that gave her the courage to continue the project. Over a year later, red sand has been poured in countless cities around the world. Always interested in the usage of space, she began looking at larger ways she could use space to highlight exploitation in America. It was then she began thinking about what would become the evolving earthwork in Houston, Texas - Border, USAIMX. Molly explains that corruption, poverty and violence have forced thousands to flee from Central America and Mexico to the United States in search of security and support. However, rather than finding a safe place, these men and women often face discrimination and experience some degree of exploitation. With that in mind, Molly created a two-foot wide and nearly 300-foot long trench filled with red sand that mirrored the border between the United States and Mexico. During this phase, in spite of its bright color, the red sand was not visible to passers-by because it was level with the grass surrounding it. Molly notes, like human trafficking itself, the installation was hidden in plain sight. Phase two brought the piece into the open by adding soil on top of the sand. Now nearly three feet high and surrounded by picnic tables, the piece serves to engage the Houston public with the reality of human trafficking and exploitation. Art, once a guilty pleasure, has now transformed the life of Molly Gochman. An artist with a conscience, she now uses her work to expose one of the largest yet most secretive humanitarian crises in human history. But that’s not all. A prolific philanthropist, she works closely with partnering organizations, like the Freedom Fund, to promote research and best practices that advance the abolitionist cause. Inspiring all of us to look a little deeper and speak a little louder, Molly uses her art to give a voice to all in the fight against human trafficking and modern slavery.
40 Sarah Godoy & Rebecca Sadwick Lead Researcher; Digital Technology Program Manager, UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation The mission of the Luskin Center for Innovation is to unite University of California-Los Angeles scholars with forward-looking civic leaders to address the most pressing issues confronting our community, nation, and world. Faculty and staff conduct research in partnership with civic partners who use the knowledge to inform policy and organizational innovations. The Center is organized around initiatives that seek to conduct and translate world-class research and expertise into real-world policy solutions. Sarah Godoy serves as the lead researcher and content manager of a Google-funded report that focuses on the role of technology in the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC). Her partner, Rebecca Sadwick is the Digital Technologies Initiative Program Manager, overseeing the strategy, direction, and partnerships of this project. Present estimates list that some 20.9 million victims are trafficked worldwide. They are now researching, how traffickers are exploiting technology to advance this form of modern slavery. Originally looking at global statistics, they have now shifted to focusing solely on the United States. One of their first findings was that many people believe human trafficking only happens in developing countries. As a result, recent studies seemed to be primarily focused on foreign-born children trafficked into the United States. This resulted in a lack of information regarding the very real domestic born children who are victims of commercial sexual exploitation. As they began analyzing literature reviews, they realized that the conversation around the definition of human trafficking is very complicated and nuanced. Two nationwide systems collect data on human trafficking victims, the Uniform Crime Reporting Program run by the FBI and the Human Trafficking Reporting System run by the Bureau of Justice. The UCR Program is a program opted into by local law enforcement agencies to create reliable uniform crime statistics for the nation. Human trafficking data began to be included in 2013. Although more localities are now reporting on trafficking, these statistics do not necessarily provide a clear picture of the depth of this problem. Data often focuses on street prostitution rather than on brothels, parlors, and hotels. As such, they have learned that there is not a clear way to define labor and sex trafficking. Additionally, providing information is voluntary and some states have still not yet opted into the Uniform Crime System Program. However, when analyzing the data, they did notice some important trends in American human trafficking. From January 2010 to June 2012, eight out of every ten trafficking victims were trafficked into the sex trade. It is also important to note that 83 percent of those sex-trafficking victims were United States citizens. One of the most problematic issues for law enforcement and advocates are websites like Backpage.com. Backpage is a classified advertising website that has become a favorite of traffickers. The page accepts Bitcoins, a form of digital currency that is electronic and not controlled by anyone. This makes tracking transactions near impossible for law enforcement. Although, Backpage exists on the traditional internet, finding reliable human trafficking statistics from the deep web is simply not possible. Sarah and Rebecca say that in order to break down silos of information, especially among state-based databases, we need to create more unified and accessible resources that empower law enforcement and save lives. The creation of a central, national database for law enforcement officers with real time investigation information could link cases and save victims. In addition, as teens and young adults transition to a more mobile application based culture, the development of anti-human trafficking apps or an app that directly and discretely connects victims to law enforcement officers could also do a world a good.
41 Erica Grobler Founder, Red Alert Red Alert is a network of grass-roots non-governmental organization that pool knowledge and collaborate in different capacities to fight and eradicate Indian sex trafficking. The organization is fighting sex trafficking through awareness, a forthcoming national helpline, and local partnerships, creating an united voice against sex trafficking in India. Mumbai is home to Asia’s second largest red-light district. Estimates state that girls in Indian brothels are on average raped twenty or more times a day. With at least one million, if not more, children forced into child prostitution in India, researchers believe that every ten minutes, a girl is sold into the flesh trade. The number of enslaved people living in India as a whole is a staggering fourteen million. Elca Grobler founded the Red Alert project to help save the children of India. Their strategic vision is to spark and sustain a movement that will end large-scale sex trafficking in India by 2025. To accomplish this goal, Red Alert is positioning itself to raise awareness about sex trafficking. 80 percent of families who do send their girls away do not know they are sold into sex trafficking. Red Alert wants to teach parents and girls about trafficking whilst at the same time, showing the ‘johns’ their actions are wrong. They are currently working on establishing a national helpline for victims, parents, or families to provide counseling and advice. This will enable them to construct an extensive case database that Red Alert and its partners can use for educational, outreach, and counseling purposes. Their local partner network is already quite expansive with groups such as MyChoices (National), Rescue, Restoration, Safe Homes Prajwala (Hyderbad), Prem Kieran (Mumbai), Bombay Teen Challenge (Mumbai), The Freedom Project (Banglore), and Sanlaap in Calcutta. Additionally, in the last nine months, they have visited over thirty organizations in India and Nepal dedicated to combatting modern slavery. Yet, negative cultural norms regarding women and girls and the social inhibiting caste system are still prevalent. Other issues include economic factors, poverty and widespread corruption. To combat government apathy, Red Alert is proposing partnerships with young and influential Bollywood stars or producers. This will take away stigma regarding the conversation and make it more socially acceptable to talk about. At a time when the economy is weak, and more young women (and even boys and men) are working in the brothels, Red Alert is moving towards increasing discussions around the topic of rape in schools, communities, and in partnerships with other anti-slavery and trafficking organizations throughout the country. There are always challenges to their work but Red Alert promises to be the bane of sex trafficking by consistently and creatively working against the darkness – to fight until they win.
42 Nick Grono President & Chief Executive Officer, The Freedom Fund The Freedom Fund is the world’s first ever private donor fund dedicated to identifying and investing in the most effective front-line efforts to end slavery. The Fund has developed an independent and global approach to bring together knowledge and capital to deliver results in those countries and sectors with the greatest incidence of slavery. They invest in best-of-class anti-slavery interventions, scaling those that succeed. The Freedom Fund shares its knowledge to encourage best practice and greater collaboration in the sector while measuring impact to improve investment strategy over time. It also works to bring together a community of activists committed to ending slavery and empowered by the knowledge of how best to do so. There are three main factors that contribute to slavery: vulnerability (poverty, immigration status, language barrier, etc.), discrimination (racism, caste system, gender), and lack of rule of law. Slavery is very profitable, drawing in about $150 billion annually according to an International Labor Organization (ILO) report; the majority of which results from sex trafficking. Traffickers generally pay about $2,000 to acquire a victim, but in India traffickers may pay only a few hundred dollars with very little chance of prosecution or ramification. The Freedom Fund focuses on such “geographic hot spots” where it identifies effective local organizations to support. The Freedom Fund was established through a partnership with three of the largest funders in the anti- trafficking space – Humanity United, Legatum, and the Walk Free Foundation. Rather then working separately and in parallel, the organizations determined by pooling their resources and creating a united front, they could more effectively and efficiently hasten and end to the slavery once and for all. Currently the Fund works in Brazil with frontline organizations to bring human rights activists on the ground. It seeks to take the same approach in Thailand, where a massive problem of slavery persists in the fishing industry. The Fund wants to build resilient, slave-free communities where the people are aware and empowered with an accessible livelihood, including access to government services. Nick believes that funding small organizations of former slaves will build a powerful network to fight slavery, and it is using funding to drive that collaboration. Once that network is created, it can begin to scale up. In order to make a difference, slavery needs to become morally abhorrent and normatively unacceptable. In order to achieve that, we need a new abolitionist movement. Governments need to mobilize and prioritize the fight against slavery, and along with consumers, encourage businesses to work towards slave-free supply chains. The Freedom Fund will continue to partner with local organizations, to research on what works best and what can be scaled up, and finally to provide support for victims to come out and stay out. To do so, the Freedom Fund will focus on building resilient, slave free communities where individuals have access to a livelihood in order to support themselves and their families, as well as access to government services and aide. Pressure, therefore, also needs to be brought to bear on countries around the world to provide these services, and to adjust their legal systems so that not only is slavery abolished, but its is prosecutable and punishable by those that traffic and enslave the innocent.
43 Laura Hackney Executive Director & Co-Founder, AnnieCannons, Inc. AnnieCannons, Inc. is dedicated to destroying the stigma pitted against trafficking survivors in existing work environments. Operating on the belief that anyone can innovate if given the opportunity, the San Francisco organization empowers young survivors of trafficking to learn important computer programming and literacy skills, thus perpetuating a trauma-sensitive space that fosters creative collaboration, successful integration back into the workforce, and promotion of the important issue of trafficking to massive tech companies. After spending years investigating common trafficking threads as a Stanford University researcher, Laura discovered that the anti-trafficking movement had largely focused on enforcing convictions and advocating for proper awareness training – but not on providing survivors with education and career opportunities after they have been freed from exploitation. She co-founded AnnieCannons to fill this gap in the trafficking space. Eponymously named after an early 1900s Harvard astrological researcher who pushed past society standards to become an influential female paradigm in her community and in history, the organization enables trafficking survivors to take control over their lives by regaining confidence in themselves and in their role in society. Instead of talking about their trafficking experiences, students are asked to share their interests and passions as part of their detailed intake process. Emphasis is placed on promoting a positive, label-free environment where individuals feel comfortable asking questions and advancing their knowledge and skills. They are placed into small classes to ensure individualized attention, and take a course on personal finance. To properly educate their students, the organization partners with shelters and technology boot camps to employ survivor leaders from the community and female software engineers, ensuring the curriculum is trauma-informed and technologically progressive. AnnieCannons instructors spend time debunking myths about what the technology industry is like as many of the survivors in the program feel intimidated by coding and the technology field as a whole. Armed with the comprehensive education, AnnieCannons provides a platform for these individuals to confidently undertake job placement, ultimately putting their skills to use in the field. Incorporating survivors into the tech world not only diversifies the industry, but also enables more opportunities to fight the surging connection between trafficking and technology. Large technology companies gain vital awareness of human trafficking through the talent and wisdom of AnnieCannons’ students conversant in software development, online programming, data entry, web design and development, JavaScript, HTML and CSS, and more. The individuals engaged in the organization’s services defy expectations by offering not only the necessary skills to be a qualified tech employee, but also a unique perspective on how to engage technology in a benevolent manner. For example, students work with Facebook to help identify profiles that are recruiting girls into trafficking, as they are personally familiar with the warning signs. As their students continue to thrive, the organization seeks to expand outside of the Bay Area. AnnieCannons is working on partnering with different organizations in Atlanta, Washington, DC, New York, Tennessee, and other states to offer more survivors the opportunity to gain life-changing technological skills. Abroad, AnnieCannons is seeking to implement their services in Romania, as the country features exponentially high human trafficking and unemployment rates. Overall, AnnieCannons’ long-term rehabilitation efforts provide countless survivors with a second chance at success, bringing an exciting future to the tech industry.
44 Fergus Hanson Executive Vice President, Global Fund to End Slavery The Global Fund to End Slavery’s mission is to catalyze and coordinate a global strategy informed by rigorous measurement, owned by countries, and at the scale needed to permanently dismantle slaveries systems. Their core objectives are an escalation of the resources and investments available to combat modern slavery. They do so by engaging with countries and businesses to create a global effort coordinating, monitoring, and evaluating investment in the most effective practices as well as programs that combat human trafficking. Fergus Hanson joined the anti-trafficking fight after working at the Brookings Institution for several years in Washington D.C. He noticed that while HIV/AIDS receives $19 billion annually, estimates place funding for anti-human trafficking programs at $120 million a year. This is despite the fact that both issues affect similar numbers of people. Yet the funding gaps appear in other areas as well. There is currently a very limited picture of total anti-slavery spending, as many governments do not record their anti-slavery financing or generally spread their expenditure across multiple departments. Additionally, we do not have a clear picture of what needs to be spent. The organization Free The Slaves estimates that the cost of freedom is around $350/per person. The Global Fund to End Slavery’s vision combats human trafficking on the industrial scale. Thus, the Fund began its work by conducting studies in countries based on the Slavery Index and engaged with governments toward eradication. There are obvious difficulties that arise as a result of the shoestring budgets of most anti-slavery organizations. Very few have any money to spend on rigorous studies and it is often extremely difficult to identify slavery in the first place. Fergus suggests a geo-mapping of known slavery sites and completing more studies on the economic arguments for eradicating slavery. Most analyses rely on data from the pre-war era or even earlier and we currently have no studies on the cost for companies to eradicate slavery from their supply chains. We need new and innovative approaches to garnering our baseline data. To accomplish this, The Global Fund to End Slavery has looked at several innovative models including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria to enhance their sustainability. They want to strengthen coordination between states, monitor evaluations, increase spending, and produce a business model that force humanity to deliver results. This led The Global Fund to End Slavery to propose a new model based on private-public partnerships. With a basic structure of a global board, the fund will act on the advice of anti- slavery experts with national-level strategies to set a global approach that prioritizes certain projects. Governments that align with The Global Fund will then be eligible for more funding. The plan is to use the private sector to incentivize governments to fight trafficking. With the new private-public model of The Global Fund to End Slavery, the Forrest Family (who began the Fund) believes that they finally have a structure that truly addresses the core issues of anti-human trafficking campaigns. By utilizing the data of the Global Slavery Index, they are beginning to conduct baseline surveys to measure slaveries prevalence much more accurately. Working with the State Department and their Trafficking in Persons (TIP) program further enables them to survey every government in the world. Collaborating with other organizations and pursuing dialogues with states, their strategic vision for the future includes consultations with governments and a listening tour in the United States. They also hope to have governments sign up as founding partners. Their mission is to catalyze and coordinate a global strategy informed by rigorous measurement, owned by countries, and at the scale needed to permanently dismantle slavery systems.
45 Brooke Hathaway Manager, Anti-Trafficking Programs, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center End Slavery Now (ESN) is an organization dedicating to raising awareness about slavery and is committed to unify the public to end slavery in our lifetime. ESN is a project of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (NURFC), which is an organization dedicated to honoring abolitionists and starting conversations about slavery. The mission of the NURFC is to reveal stories of freedom’s heroes, from the era of the Underground Railroad to contemporary times, challenging and inspiring everyone to take courageous steps of freedom. According to Brooke, the modern anti-trafficking movement faces two essential problems. First, the public is not fully engaged since the movement is less than twenty years old and it is difficult to compare it to other causes about which people care. Second, the group of people fighting trafficking on a daily basis is very small, as compared to the historical Underground Railroad movement, which consumed much of the country. Traditionally, there have been two solutions to these problems: helping victims, such as through recovery programs or economic empowerment of former slaves, and cutting off slavery at its source through resources like anti-poverty programs. While most organizations work in these two important realms, ESN has a mission to target a different method of fighting slavery through engaging the public. Through their method, ESN believes they can create widespread change through a mass movement of anti-trafficking action. ESN is dedicated to building their movement with people who are committed to authentic action and wants the public to be proactively engaged in the fight through avenues like legislative advocacy. With this goal in mind, ESN outlines five steps to building the movement. First, they create awareness by seeing if people have heard of human trafficking. Second, they get people interested through providing information about slavery. Third, they encourage interactivity in ways like going to ESN's resource-laden website. Fourth, they engage people by getting them to participate in real change, such as buying fair trade products and checking supply chains. Fifth, they encourage the public to evangelize through passionately telling their community about slavery and how they can end it together. With such a large and admirable goal, ESN uses three main strategies to work towards their objective. One initiative is storytelling through photo essays, survivor stories, business case studies with companies like Delta or Carlson, and academic research with Historians Against Slavery. Another strategy ESN employs is advocacy through local and national governmental policy advocacy, corporate policy creation, general public education, and partnering with faith-based organizations. A final strategy is through engagement, which manifests in brainstorming and implementing ways for the public to get involved in the fight against slavery. In the next three years, Brooke and ESN have worthy goals to reach. They would like to shift the storytelling angle of human trafficking from sensationalism to hope, create a database of survivors' stories, map antislavery opportunities in nine specific countries, introduce opportunities to advocate for policy change at the grassroots level, and more. Brooke believes a slave-free world is one in which people are willing to spend their money such that slavery cannot survive and are willing to address the fundamental, societal problems that allow slavery to exist. With the efforts of organizations like ESN and NURFC, slavery can end in our lifetime.
46 Lima James Grant Writer & Education Training Coordinator, LifeWay Network Located in Queens, the epicenter of trafficking in New York, LifeWay Network provides extensive educational and safe housing services to the New York metro area. Through prevention-focused workshops and presentations, outreach efforts, and long-term initiatives, LifeWay engages individuals to learn about trafficking in a localized context, as well as serving female survivors of sex and labor trafficking through tutoring, mentoring, translation services, housing, and more through their Safe Housing Program. Founded in 2007 by Sister Joan S. Dawber, LifeWay has served women from twenty-two different countries, from Mexico to Nigeria to India, and continues to impart a benevolent impact in the tri-state community. Like so many others, Lima Jmes was aware human trafficking, but thought it only happened in other countries. However, when she read a survivor’s story about domestic trafficking and, later, Patricia McCormick’s bestselling novel SOLD, she felt energized to make an impact. Lima began attending anti-human trafficking conferences and events and eventually created an elective university course on human trafficking at SUNY- Albany. She focused on policy while working with the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, and now centralizes her efforts towards educational outreach at LifeWay. Like Lima once was, most people are unaware of the trafficking that is unfolding in their neighborhood massage parlor or nail salon. This only illustrates why education is one of the most essential factors in eradicating human trafficking. Due to this, LifeWay leads presentations for middle and high schools, colleges, parishes, social justice groups, and other community groups to spread awareness of how trafficking infiltrates society nationwide. As well as providing exemplary educational services, LifeWay is the sole organization in the tri-state area that offers safe housing specifically for both female domestic- and foreign-born survivors of sex and labor trafficking. By providing both emergency and long-term safe housing services, LifeWay caters to women aged eighteen years old or older who have come from any sort of abusive background. In emergency situations, women are provided with beds and may remain in the organization’s safe house for a given period of time, from a few weeks and up to several months. Women utilizing the long-term safe housing services can stay for upwards of one year. The Safe Housing program began in 2009. Since establishing two long-term safe houses, called LifeWay House One and Aspire Home, the organization will open a third long-term safe house in 2016. The community model embodied by LifeWay provides each woman with a full support system, replete with a caseworker, service provider, host community, house manager, social worker, and team of volunteers. The host community, in particular, engages the women in fun activities like shopping to help transition them back into normal life, as well as assisting them with any educational programs they are enrolled in, providing mentoring and tutoring services, building resumes, cooking, teaching essential life skills, navigating the New York public transportation system, and much more. Lima notes that sex and labor trafficking appear to occur at equal rates. She, and the other hardworking individuals of LifeWay Network, enable survivors to overcome their pasts to live healthy, successful lives in the future. Easing survivors from a life of slavery and trauma into a normal existence is no easy task, but the organization works seamlessly to promote harmony and happiness onto the women they serve with their corps of dedicated.
47 Duncan Jepson Founder, Liberty Asia Established in 2011, Liberty Asia is made up of a group of dedicated professionals from different industries that feel strongly that a more effective, coordinated response to slavery is essential and that leveraging technology available to the corporate sector and providing it to the NGO sector will facilitate this response. Liberty Asia’s goal is to provide new solutions to change the way slavery and trafficking is addressed. Where possible, they will work with existing organizations to avoid duplication and to ensure resources are used efficiently. Liberty Asia seeks a systemic change that will constrain the environment in which slavery thrives. Collaborating across sectors, including data and information collection, communications, and with law enforcement, they work to combat the profits of slavery. Duncan believes that slavery is about people and money. Liberty Asia follows the money to prevent and end this institution. They want to leverage the technology of the corporate sector and provide it to the NGO sector to facilitate real response. This begins by working with law enforcement to support effective anti-trafficking investigation and prosecution. The legal framework that victims’ face is often incomplete or inconsistent. Many victims are unidentified, wrongly arrested or isolated, and only about 400 prosecutions happen per year. Through their program Secure Evidence Exchange Knowledge System (SEEKS) Liberty Asia protects the evidence for criminal cases that had previously been lost or damaged. By encouraging effective anti-trafficking investigations and highlighting the incompleteness of the data, Liberty Asia supports sharing best practices across the nonprofit and legal sectors. This information will then enable Liberty Asia and its strategic partners to have a much stronger picture of what slavery in Asia looks like and how best to fight it. Their biggest initiative is to end the money laundering that facilitates and sustains the slave trade. Criminals will hide their illegal profits by means of transfers involving foreign banks or legitimate businesses. It is not that the financial industry does not know that trafficking happens, rather, they are not necessarily obligated to find it in their supply chains. To combat this, Liberty Asia utilizes the banks legal obligation and the risk of injury to their reputation to build robust infrastructures of response. They also hope that by fostering the systems of response with big banks, they will reach the smaller that have less incentive to comply. Finally, for non-financial companies such as hotels or manufacturers, they research regulations and appeal to owner to create long-term obligations. Liberty Asia does not believe shutting down businesses is the answer. Rather, they aspire to change them. For Liberty Asia, it is much more effective for organizations to run anti- trafficking programs that will incentivize the market to fight slavery.
48 Patricia Jurewicz Founder & Director, Responsible Sourcing Network Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN), a project of the nonprofit organization As You Sow, is dedicated to ending human rights abuses and forced labor associated with the raw materials found in products we use every day. RSN builds responsible supply chain coalitions of diverse stakeholders including investors, companies, and human rights advocates. Currently, RSN works with network participants to leverage their influence in the areas of conflict minerals from the Congo and forced labor in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan to create positive change for brands, consumers, and the impacted communities. Patricia’s background in the fashion industry and public policy inspired her network. After working for clothing giant Gap and the World Trade Organization, she became curious as to how foreign factories treated workers. After discovering widespread mistreatment of workers, she founded the Responsible Sourcing Network in 2010. Many of Patricia’s efforts now focus on raw materials. Egregious human rights violations are traditionally found at the bottom of the value chain. These violations are very difficult to track, since corporations tend to buy a finished product rather than the individual raw materials. RSN examines company material reports so that investors can compare companies’ social impact. RSN’s concerns itself with its risk management and reputational risk associated with the traceability of human rights violations within the value chain. The organization is working with its stakeholders to construct strategies centered on corporate practices, policy and diplomacy and public campaigns. The stakeholders include brands and retailers, suppliers and mills, farmers, and industry associations. Their strategies include three main areas: corporate practices (internal policy, letters to suppliers, local support), policy and diplomacy (SEC, legislation, ILO complaint, OECED mechanism), and public campaigns (consumer awareness tool, published survey, boycott, store/embassy protests, letters/emails, shareholder resolutions). With these tactics, they achieve solutions such as due diligence assessment, supply chain verification, policy recommendations, diplomacy engagement, and rewarding responsible companies. RSN conducted a widespread case study on conflict materials — including tin, titanium, tungsten and gold — and discovered that rebel groups control a huge majority of the mines, as well as the African trade routes that bring them to market. RSN further discovered that the majority of these conflict minerals were widely used in everyday products. In 2010 the Dodd-Frank Act passed, part of which says companies must report to the SEC on whether or not their supply chains include conflict minerals. Many large corporations like Ford, Hewlett- Packer, and Microsoft have agreed to these guidelines. RSN’s second case study concerned forced child labor in the cotton industry. The Uzbek government effectively controls the cotton industry in the country and is able to, therefore, orchestrate the movement of millions of people to the fields in order to reap the greatest profit from the annual harvest. With RSN’s help, 172 companies have pledged to fight trafficking in the Uzbekistan cotton industry. Despite this level of awareness, a recent survey illustrated that 80 percent of brands do not audit their spinners - as opposed to the majority electronics companies that are now auditing their smelters. RSN’s efforts through case studies and multi-stakeholders’ engagement strategies have helped the workforce act more responsibly in regard to raw materials and human rights.
49 Siddharth Kara Director, Program on Anti-Trafficking & Modern Slavery, Harvard University The mission of the Carr Center is to make human rights principles central to the formulation of good public policy in the United States and throughout the world. They train future leaders for careers in public service and apply first-class research to the solution of public policy problems. The Center uses its teaching capacity to inspire future leaders to make respect for human rights principles a central commitment of democratic leadership. In South Asia, the word slave has a much more nuanced definition than its English counterpart. Defined in the ancient Hindu Vedic texts, the practice has over fifteen different types; four of which are based on debt bondage. Also defined in the Hindu Vedic texts is the caste system. Ranging from Brahmin to Shudra, each Varna has subcastes. Beneath even the lowest caste, Shudra, are the ‘untouchables’ or dalits. Untouchables or dalits are the poorest, minority castes in the region. Many are landless, illiterate and socially isolated. Seeking credit, and a stable income, they may volunteer their labor for a credit agreement. As a result of the societal power asymmetries, the creditor is able to manipulate the agreement and borrower in numerous ways to extract bonded labor. Originally proposed to pay off debts, this system rapidly transforms into slavery and human trafficking. Although as ancient as the Vedic Texts themselves, the British Colonial period saw the popularization of debt bondage and urban slave markets. Following India’s independence, ethnic bias combined with the immense poverty and landless of peasants, begot the continuation of bonded labor. Although agriculture is at the heart of this practice in South Asia, slavery and forced labor are found in many of the regions remedial jobs. Young girls are sold for as little as $20 to work as domestic servants in higher caste homes or carpet weaving, while young boys are often garbage pickers or cigarette and brick makers. Bonded labor is the most extensive form of slavery in the world. Currently, credible estimates place the number of bonded laborers as ranging from 10 to 60 million people. Siddharth estimates that there are 18 to 20.5 million in South Asia alone; of which 97 percent are from the ‘untouchable’ class. Part of the issue is that, the global economy feeds on and thereby promotes under-regulated, low cost slave-like labor systems. Net profits from these systems are estimated to be between $300 per bonded laborer in agriculture and up to $2000 per bonded laborer in brick making. Bonded labor and slavery are not unique to this region. Although credible estimates are hard to determine, there is reason to believe that nations like China and parts of Eastern Europe also have incredibly large rates of bonded labor. One of the largest impediments to eradication in South Asia is the lax enforcement of laws meant to empower laborers and end the practice. However, the penalties for those who use the practice are low. In India, for example, the fine for the use of a bonded laborer is $450, while in Pakistan the fine is $600. In the neighboring countries of Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, currently, there are no fines. Siddharth emphasizes the need for multilateral cooperation in raising awareness of the suffering of bonded laborers and their connection to Western consumer products. Different corporations respond to calls against the employment of this practice differently and compliance varies across countries and industries. However, many are still waiting for someone to force them to pay attention to slavery. As such, Siddharth requests multi-national corporations, celebrities and others of influence to speak up against this practice. Siddharth stresses that in this globalized world, the issues of bonded labor, slavery and human trafficking touch all of our lives and so, he will continue to work to expand the reach and relevance of human rights considerations to all those who influence their outcomes.
50 Mara Kelly Director, Center to Combat Human Trafficking & Slavery, United Way Worldwide United Way Worldwide is the leadership and support organization for the network of nearly 1,800 community- based United Ways in 41 countries and territories. United Way improves lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities around the world to advance the common good, which it accomplishes by focusing on education, income and health. The United Way movement mobilizes millions to action—to give, advocate and volunteer, and to improve the conditions in which they live. As the world’s largest privately funded non-profit, United Way has numerous initiatives. But when President Barack Obama asked the organization to combat human trafficking and modern slavery in 2013, United Way has passionately and tirelessly advocated for freedom. To this end, Mara was selected to coordinate President Obama’s faith-based initiatives and partnerships. In order to combat slavery with United Way, Mara has created a comprehensive and holistic approach, bringing 70 non-profit organizations together to accomplish three main goals. First, United Way wants to create cross sector collaboration, where people from different groups can come together and brainstorm creative initiatives looking at demand, supply chain and survivor services. Second, United Way wants to raise public and political support. For example, the Department of State allocates $40 million around the world to combat trafficking per year, compared to the $5 billion per year it gives to combat the ongoing AIDS epidemic, even though there are more slaves in the world now than there have ever been in history. The problem is much larger than many people understand, and United Way believes getting public and political support will be a catalyst for change. Third, United Way seeks to launch a campaign with multiple anti- trafficking organizations and to call upon them to commit to raising $3 billion per year. Mara believes United Way is the perfect base from which to launch this ambitious initiative, due in part to their large and localized presence. United Way’s wide reach of influence allows them to increase awareness and fundraising in communities with experts on the ground, providing a holistic solution with maximum impact. Mara seeks to reframe the issue of human trafficking as a domestic one, since it is often only understood as an international problem. United Way would like presidential candidates to pledge to end human trafficking, as well as support legislation such as the Safe Harbor Law if elected. Mara believes that if and when these powerful leaders bring the issue of human trafficking to the masses, change will occur quickly. Another of Mara’s goals is to have multiple idea forums where leaders in different industries come together to brainstorm ways to end slavery. In June 2015, United Way brought non-profits and faith based organizations together to discuss the issue of slavery and trafficking in America. The organization also plans on holding business and technology forums, as well as a marketing and media forums. Mara hopes to convene 10 to 15 large national organizations and have them select the best ideas that emerge from these events, and commit the resources necessary to make them a reality. The next step for Mara and the United Way team is to dramatically scale the anti-trafficking movement by fostering the political will for funding programs at the necessary level in order to eradicate human trafficking. With the unification of many leaders towards one goal, United Way believes slavery can and will be abolished in our lifetime.
51 Emily Kennedy CEO of Marinus Analytics & Creator, Traffic Jam Productized in 2013, Traffic Jam is comprehensive software that enables law enforcement officials to analyze online advertisements in order to accurately monitor, follow, and organize human trafficking data patterns. Marinus Analytics operates the software and gathers inclusive and fragmented online data to make it searchable, thus empowering investigators to find such patterns so they can effectively pinpoint victims and traffickers as they move from location to location and change phone numbers and other contact info. Used by local, state, and federal law enforcement, as well as prosecutors and social workers across the U.S. and Canada, Marinus Analytics and Traffic Jam are fundamental resources in building cases and finding victims. Emily Kennedy learned about human trafficking at a very young age from a leader in her church who had moved to Cambodia’s red-light district to physically pull children out of sexual exploitation. Appalled by the knowledge that girls her own age were being so horribly exploited, she knew she had to get involved. A few years later, while studying at Carnegie Mellon University, Emily interned at The Protection Project in Washington, D.C., and gained invaluable hands-on experience working with domestic and international trafficking legislation. She studied and reported on the evolution of U.S. code over time with relation to victim protection in America, and extended her efforts to her college campus, founding a chapter of the International Justice Mission and serving as its president. Partnering with a passionate friend, Emily made Pittsburgh the first mid-sized U.S. city to introduce legislation to combat sex trafficking in massage parlors. And she felt could contribute even more – when contemplating the focus of her senior thesis, Emily wanted to research how the Internet had affected the business of sex trafficking, intent on proving the specific movement of traffickers transporting their girls across cities and state lines. She interviewed detectives, agents, and analysts, all of whom were using this online data but had to spend countless hours searching for it. Immediately, Emily thought that there must be a better way to work with data to pull meaningful insights from it, and thus began collaborating with the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute. Together, she and the researchers adopted preexisting data technology to combat human trafficking. Traffic Jam, as the technology was named, was then deployed as a highly effective and neccesary product tool for law enforcement nationwide. The software has been used in almost every imaginable trafficking situation – from finding ruanway children advertised online and returning them to their parents, to corroborating victims’ stories and giving detectives important background information for interviews, to apprehending the most dangerous traffickers, Traffic Jam is one of the most modren, effective, and useful tracking tools available. Now, Emily pushes to constantly democratize high technology for the average law enforcement agents to access. She conducts Vice Trainings for new units regularly and supports agencies on sting operations. Recently, she worked with the LAPD to recover nine missing minors and arrest six traffickers, and partnered with Carnegie Mellon researchers yet again to study how big events like the Super Bowl statistically impact escort activity, and therefore trafficking activity. Collaborating with non-profits like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children ensures that the benevolence of Traffic Jam is far-reaching and unwasted. Offering tailored analytic solutions, rather than overwhelmingly impossible manual work, allows for data to be processed exponentially quickly. Scaling up research can be challenging and daunting, but Emily and her dedicated partners are relentless in their quest to diminish human trafficking’s domestic spread. Expanding the next frontiers of research is the hands of this young generation, and Traffic Jam is a prime example of one way in which millennial pioneers are impacting the human trafficking space.
52 Kevin Kish Director of the Employment Rights Project, Bet Tzedek For the past 40 years, Bet Tzedek has provided free, comprehensive legal services for low-income individuals and families in Los Angeles, proving that access to justice makes a difference in people’s lives. They seek innovative solutions to persistent poverty. Whether harnessing the power of technology to overcome barriers or mobilizing communities through collaborative partnerships, they seek to empower the more than 20,000 people we serve every year with the help of hundreds of pro bono attorneys and volunteers. Hebrew for “House of Justice,” Bet Tzedek began providing free legal services to the poor, elderly and disabled of Los Angeles in the 1960s. Bet Tzedek has found there is a spectrum of coercion in the labor market; on the one end, traffickers may exploit child labor while on the other they may use threats and intimidation to maintain control over their victims. Victims seldom pick up and run away and are often only rescued after the intervention of an outsider. This outsider is Bet Tzedek, representing men and women in low wage industries, as they are some of the most susceptible to labor exploitation. Bet Tzedek provides holistic services for people coming out of trafficking situations. Providing safe housing, they work closely with pro-bono attorneys to immediately start the immigration process, as many victims are not born in this country. They further provide civil referrals for victims interested in bringing an affirmative lawsuit. These cases allow survivors to recover damages, such as a pain and suffering, directly from their trafficker. However, fewer than 100 cases have been brought to date, as legal proceedings are a difficult and painful process. In all civil and criminal cases, the victim must face their former traffickers and be cross- examined. It is during cross-examination that victims are often accused of lying about their experiences. In addition, cases may take years to complete. This is part of the reason criminal prosecutions are so rare for human traffickers. As there is an inherent conservatism in the court, a lack of witnesses’ plagues the prosecution. In criminal cases, prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was trafficked. This is further complicated by the common belief that victims could have just walked away. Many do not realize that victims may be from nations without trustworthy law enforcement organizations or may feel pressured by their cultural norms to remain silent. In addition, many judges have minimal experience with victims. Coming from corporate practices, they look for legal precedents to inform their rulings. In these cases, with little established precedent, it is up to the judge’s discretion to decide how much background information is provided to the jury. Kevin emphasizes the need for a two pronged approach in assisting those who want to get out. First responders often do not understand what is going on. Victims are often treated as smugglers themselves or unauthorized immigrants, particularly in sex trafficking. As such, Bet Tzedek works closely with the Los Angeles Police Department, bringing victim advocates to train police and others about human trafficking prior to a raid. Through this, they aim to increase the detection of trafficking in police work. Second, Kevin and Bet Tzedek emphasize the importance of companies monitoring the subcontracting process. Bet Tzedek believes that everyone deserves decent housing, care, safety and fair treatment. With their large network of attorneys, advocates and volunteers, they stand up for those in need when crisis strikes. They say their unique approach combines direct legal representation with powerful outreach, education and legislative advocacy. As Bet Tzedek believes, it is not just about aiding clients, it is about getting to the root of the problem. As a house of justice, they fight for those with nowhere else to turn.
53 Vandana Kripalani Chief Marketing Officer, Bombay Teen Challenge & Set Beautiful Free Campaign Started by K.K. Devaraj in 1990, Bombay Teen Challenge has been rescuing, rehabilitating, and reintegrating trafficked women and children in and around India. Now one of the largest non-governmental organizations working in the education and healthcare fields, Bombay Teen Challenge and its Set Beautiful Free initiative strive to create a bondage-free world. Partnering with local government enforcement agencies enables the organization to tackle and challenge trafficking at every stage. Breaking the vicious cycle of poverty, illiteracy, and enslavement in India is fundamental to ending human trafficking in the country; by establishing successful methods of prevention, outreach, and aftercare, Bombay Teen Challenge and the Set Beautiful Free campaign have spent the past twenty-five years restoring hope and dignity to marginalized women and children through education and vocation. Vandana’s entire livelihood – replete with an American university education and a consultant job for Ernst & Young in India – changed when she was kidnapped on a visit to Thailand. Her attacker tried to sexually assault her, but after fighting him with all of her strength, she was able to escape – a fate that few women in similar situations are able to achieve. The life-changing experience made Vandana realize how little she knew about gender-based violence, thus propelling her towards research and reading and ultimately to volunteering and working for Bombay Teen Challenge and its Set Beautiful Free campaign. Battling trafficking in India is a never-ending task. Regardless of the tireless efforts of organizations like Bombay Teen Challenge, trafficking becomes exponentially prevalent instead of decreasing. Because of the devastatingly impoverishment, over 70 percent of all trafficked victims are illiterate with a family income of less than one dollar per day. It is estimated that sixteen million women in the country are victims of sex trafficking, and a total of twenty million are involved in commercial sex work. Kidnapped or lured from their rural homes by relatives or neighbors at age eight or nine, girls are forced into sexual slavery through a combination of coercion, torture, starvation, and rape. They are sold to brothels, where they are deprived of food and water, abused multiple times per day, and confined to small cages. Women that have unsuccessfully tried to flee have had their eyes gauged out, or endured even worse punishments. Once the girls suffer through this “break-in” period, they are forced to have sex approximately eleven times per day, essentially for free; they are required to give their earnings to their trafficker. Sexually transmitted diseases run rampant. When their “debt” to their trafficker has been paid off, the women are then forced to rent rooms from the brothel while soliciting in the streets. They typically become addicted to drugs and many are HIV-positive. Most have at least a one, if not more, children. Sex trafficking in India is described as the most lucrative business, especially because the men involved don’t find any fault in their horrific mistreatment and abuse of women. An extremely high influx of migrant workers has dramatically increased the demand for younger girls in the industry. The caste system perpetuates a society in which the majority of the population is viewed as voiceless, making women of this group prime targets for trafficking. Vandana, Bombay Teen Challenge, and the Set Beautiful Free Campaign visualize several gaps that need to be filled: more research needs to be conducted regarding sex trafficking trends and data, more aggressive laws need to be passed in order to criminalize the act of purchasing sex, and awareness needs to be prioritized in order to steer the national opinion away from perpetuating gender- based violence. Thus far, Bombay Teen Challenge and Set Beautiful Free have rescued a plethora of women from the confines of brothels, and have started the first school in India that caters only to child victims of human trafficking or children of victims, intent on giving them love and hope for the future.
54 Meghan Lazier & Robin Newman Founders, Say No More Say No More is a card game that helps girls learn about trafficking by reacting to romantic relationship scenarios. For pre-teen girls at risk of sex trafficking, Say No More is a tool that allows them to reflect on uncomfortable situations, healthy relationship boundaries, and practice saying no. For social workers and educators who facilitate the game, Say No More is a tool that allows them to easily get a pulse on risk factors in the groups they already work with and gently introduce the issue of trafficking to an at-risk population. The average ages for victims of sex trafficking in this country are 12 to 14 years old. How do you inform girls about such a complicated issue in a way that is not overwhelming? One way is to introduce a game. Say No More is a card game created to start conversations about relationships and the importance of saying no. Their mission is simple: to allow girls to reflect on uncomfortable experiences and to create healthy relationship boundaries for them in the future. Played with social workers and their female peers, this game enables young girls to speak freely about their experiences while social workers monitor risk factors. While social workers may be familiar with sex trafficking victims, Say No More enables them to teach preventative educational measures and analyze the risk factors of groups they already work with. By tailoring the game to target most affected populations, they are able to discuss these important issues without shame. It is critical for the women at Say No More to create an environment where these things reveal themselves naturally. By looking at emotional signs such as paranoid behavior, exhaustion, or submissiveness, social workers are working to help girls come forward more easily. Only after the post-game discussion with social workers are girls allowed to guess what this game actually discusses. This is not a game just for people who are vulnerable and unaware. All women and girls are all at risk of someone taking advantage of them. All girls encounter difficult relationship situations, it is within how she deals with them that matters. For the women behind Say No More, dealing with these relationship patterns comes with education. In the future, Say No More hopes to expand beyond the 500 preliminary games released in New York City to areas with high sex-trafficking rates. Additionally, they seek to find partners on multiple campuses with controlled environments to collect stronger data. They cite the need and importance of feedback from players regarding Say No More’s impact and what conversations it will change. One of the key challenges of this conversation has been that girls do not self-identify as ones who are currently being trafficked. The women at Say No More and their partners at ECPAT USA believe Say No More can change this. By facilitating stories, situations, and conversations Say No More enables girls and their social workers to talk about difficult things in a non-judgmental environment because games are precludes to serious ideas.
55 Laura Lederer President & Founder, Global Centurion Global Centurion is a non-profit organization that seeks to fight human trafficking by focusing on demand. This is done through a three dimensional strategy: developing demand-focused research and programs; providing cutting-edge education, awareness and advocacy training; and establishing partnership and collaborative networks in response to this issue. After working at the United State Department of Office of Democracy and Global Affairs, Laura developed a strong curiosity in regards to the demand side of trafficking. She set out to talk with survivors through a series of focus groups, specifically on the topic of the health problems they experienced. Laura discovered a wide range of different health issues, both while they were being trafficked and since they had escaped their captors. For example, 125 women and children who have been rescued from a brothel, 80 percent tested positive for TB. She also discovered that many of these women were actually seen by healthcare providers while they were enslaved and/or being trafficked and had been knowingly sent back to their captors after receiving medical attention. Laura also discovered widespread violence and physical abuse, as well as high levels of narcotics usage among survivors. Laura believes there is a need for increased education for health care providers on how to identify a trafficking victim and utilize their resources in order to keep them safe. For example, the high level of correlation between abortion and trafficking means victims have frequent contact with medical providers. Global Centurion has proposed specialized training and a strengthening of the collaboration between healthcare providers and law enforcement to ensure that when these women and girls enter the system, they can be identified and hopefully removed from the bods of their captors. Though the startling statistics gleamed by Laura’s report makes the situation feel hopeless, Laura noted many women whom would argue otherwise. For example, Laura notes that many of the survivors who participated in her study discussed finding God in the midst of the horror they were experiencing, an element of he research which speaks to the resiliency that many survivors are able to muster.
56 Jimmy Lee Executive Director, Restore NYC Restore NYC’s mission is to end sex trafficking in New York and restore the well-being and independence of survivors. Working to this end, they find victims through their outreach strategies and partnerships with law enforcement, the court system, and community-based organizations. For every survivor, the organization envisions the promise of a new life and an end to modern-day slavery. Their overall goal is to provide these women with the in-depth after-care that they require to succeed in their post-trafficking life. No one who comes to America should be forced to sell their body or be sexually exploited for profit. There are many myths that stifle substantial progress in the fight against human trafficking but perhaps none is more dangerous than the erroneous belief that it does not happen in the United States. That is why Restore NYC works with the community to raise awareness and to aide foreign nationals who are women from other countries that are brought into the U.S. They have found that many of these women are not in prostitution voluntarily yet complete care for these women is rarely available. Restore NYC tries to provide in-depth after care to break the cycle. One way Restore NYC provides in-depth after care is through unique transitional housing for 12 months while addressing all aspects of the victim’s restoration: physical, mental, emotional, economic, and legal. Partnering with the court system, they identify victims of sex trafficking by working with women who are arrested and/or arraigned for prostitutions. Their model is transitional, not emergency oriented. They take the time to empower women with skillsets, language abilities, literacy, and employment opportunities. Restore NYC also seeks to increase the capacity for training health care professionals who may encounter trafficking victims, deepening relationships with the community-based organizations that work in and with specific demographics, and raising awareness in targeted immigrant communities. They believe that these four strategies are scalable and replicable across any city in the United States. In conjunction with their after care plans they are first focused on finding the victims. Restore NYC would like to partner more with federal and local law enforcement in order to build a relationship of trust between their organization and the victims that fuel their passion to help. In addition to their 11-bed safe house, Restore NYC believes economic empowerment is fundamental to the work it does; training opportunities are vital to improving the lives of victims. As approximately 10 percent of their clients are not literate in their native tongue and 80 percent have no experience with English, job and language training are by far the most pressing issues the organization faces. Even though their safe house exists to aide each victim in their recovery, Jimmy acknowledges the challenges that come with running a safe house and that often times bringing someone directly in from a raid is not the best solution emotionally for these women. Therefore, Restore NYC pursues a model that is transitional, not emergency-oriented. Restore NYC is working to help victims of human trafficking to get back on their feet again by providing them with the tools necessary to feel safe as well as confident as they reintegrate back into society. Jimmy believes that whether it is the AIDS epidemic or sex trafficking or any other health crisis facing humanity, there is a huge benefit to the society when you protect vulnerable women, regardless of where they are in the world. The benefits can be seen economically, socially, and culturally.
57 Rachel Lloyd Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Girls Educational & Mentoring Services Founded in 1998, the Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS) is the only organization in the state of New York specifically designed to serve girls and young women who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking. GEMS aims to empower young women (ages 12 to 24) who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking to exit the commercial sex industry and develop to their full potential. Rachel believes that simply rescuing survivors is not a long-term solution and can potentially result in their disempowerment. Instead, GEMS focuses on empowering victims by treating them with the same level of respect and dignity that all people deserve. All of their programs are staged-based in order to ensure the most effective development, because GEMS recognizes that different women and girls require different levels of support at the different stages of their recovery, and that maturing and learning occur by having the right people in the right positions. GEMS also maintains training programs for service providers and law enforcement all across the country, and emphasizes that assistance should include emergency housing and meeting people exactly where they are. The most difficult obstacle is convincing people that survivors were victims. Donations and police help are scarce when people believe the girls “chose that life.” GEMS provides support for their girls to attend college and provides employment training for others. The organization helps its survivors explore their strengths and talents and introduces them to variety of different career options. This strengths-based perspective encourages survivors to focus on what they do well rather than the experiences that they were forced to endure. A focus on educational and employment opportunities allows GEMS to help to empower and sustain its clients over time. By providing empathetic and consistent support as well as viable options and pathways for positive change, GEMS is able to stop trafficking at its roots and break the cycle of poverty . Cutting demand is important, but that is just one small piece of a much larger puzzle. There is also a need to have a conversation about the larger social issues, which lay at the root of human trafficking. For example, the legalization of prostitution has produced a lack of emotion within the discourse, which is problematic for the fight against it. If we lived in a world with equal education and a lack of poverty, then maybe, as Rachel argues, prostitution could be considered a moral issue. But, given the state of affairs in the world we live in right now, the prostitution industry produces a means by which others can prey on those who are most vulnerable. The world we live in produces an industry that preys on those who are most vulnerable. Therefore, Rachel notes, we should focus on decreasing vulnerability. Everything has unintended consequences, and the sex industry is inherently harmful in many ways.
58 Danielle Lohan & Amanda Weikel National Partnerships; Deputy Communications Director, The Samaritan Women The Samaritan Women is a national Christian organization providing restorative care to survivors, and bringing about an end to domestic human trafficking through awareness, prevention, and advocacy. Operating transitional and restorative shelter programs for women recovering from human trafficking, their program emphasizes life-rebuilding, acquiring personal accomplishments, social re-entry, and spiritual reconciliation. Founded in 2007 by Jean Allort, The Samaritan Women provides a place for the long-term restoration of adult female survivors of human trafficking. Nearly half of their residents are self-injurers, many have been victims of child molestation, and most grew up in homes with addicted family members. The Samaritan Women offers no short-term rehabilitation. The initial period of caring for a survivor and then restoring them is a significant investment of time. The Samaritan Women uses a therapeutic model that seeks to address the multifaceted needs of survivorship from rehabilitation to reintegration into society. Their restorative care facilities begin with a 90-day decompression from trauma utilizing cognitive behavioral psychology and faith based counseling. Residents must provide a list of safe supportive people in their life before they enter the facility. To create a domestic environment, dinner is served family style and the women call each other sister. The Samaritan Women empowers these survivors mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually to move beyond the trauma of their lives. The organizations wants survivors to explore themselves as their natural self and not what their traffickers had dolled them up to be. To facilitate this process, they begin by looking at thought patterns. They believe that negative thought patterns are responsible for the negative behaviors in each of the women’s lives. In order to end them, The Samaritan Women provides residents with a systematic plan against all the negative thoughts ‘that are breaking them down’. Their belief is that by taking these steps she will establish her voice, which is instrumental to the healing process. The Samaritan Women believe that success can be seen in the surviving women who have a powerful, self- controlled voice that they are able to use to prevent re-victimization. They believe that through this new voice, survivors will be able to re-establish their personal agency. Unique to The Samaritan Women’s facilities are their internship and advocacy programs. After a three-month training period, residents are better able to have positive relationships and become receptive to safe risk taking as well as work as advocates and use their new voices to speak about their experiences by campaigning against human trafficking. Raising awareness to the plight of these women is crucial to the future of this and other organizations like it. At The Samaritan Women, survivors pray, they worship, and they err. They create a space for God in their lives, finally remembering and rebuilding themselves to how God wants them to be really be – free, independent and strong.
59 Stephanie Lorenzo Founder, Project Futures Founded in 2009 after reading the autobiography of Somaly-Mam, PROJECT FUTURES is a not for profit organization whose objective is to stop global human trafficking and slavery by empowering individuals to take action in their own communities. PROJECT FUTURES aims to empower individuals to take action on the issue of human trafficking and modern slavery by raising awareness and funds in fun and easy ways in their own communities. Stephanie Lorenzo founded PROJECT FUTURES in 2009 to support the work of Somaly-Mam using innovative and creative fundraising. With a background in marketing and communications, Stephanie was able to organize a bike ride for victims of human trafficking which raised $80,000 from just two dozen people. After meeting and spending time with Somaly-Mam in Cambodia in 2009, Stephanie set up PROJECT FUTURES. Through her young professional advocacy fundraising, Stephanie was able to peak the interest of The Salvation Army. The Salvation Army has an anti-trafficking program that now partners with PROJECT FUTURES to ensure the use of new and innovative fundraising techniques. As Stephanie points out, many non-profits struggle to raise revenue, however, PROJECT FUTURES raised their first $1 million just last year through events and campaigns, corporate partnerships, and an online Do-It-Yourself Toolkit. With their corporate and not for profit partnerships growing significantly in the last year, PROJECT FUTURES also began work with the Cambodian Children’s Trust, a secular, non-profit Cambodian NGO working to enable children in Battambang to break free from the cycle of poverty and become educated, ethical and empowered leaders in their communities. These partnerships have enabled PROJECT FUTURES to reach young people all over the world. PROJECT FUTURES finds ways to speak to their demographics and to excite young people by using innovative approaches to fundraising campaigns. The DIY Toolkit allows you to personalize your fundraising experience. In addition, PROJECT FUTURES motivates their large volunteer network by being upfront and honest about what they need. As volunteer’s priorities will sometimes differ, PROJECT FUTURES sets standards for all volunteers to ensure they know who they can rely on. Stephanie’s core message is about harnessing the ‘power of purpose’ in our lives. Once you discover your ‘why’ you are able to empower yourself to take action, and manifest your gift to the world. By empowering individuals to take action to stop human trafficking in their own communities, PROJECT FUTURES is using innovation to bring an end to this terrible international crime.
60 Diana Mao Founder, Nomi Network Nomi Network launched their first pilot project in Cambodia in 2009, focusing on their mission to create economic opportunities for survivors and women at risk of human trafficking by equipping them with leadership, entrepreneurship, and production skills to become financially independent. Nomi’s approach addresses both sex and labor trafficking by preventing women and children in the most vulnerable communities to be exploited. Nomi Network is an organization committed to eradicating human trafficking and creating a better life for women and their children. Women and children are primarily trafficked from high poverty areas where there are no alternative options for employment or rehabilitation for rescued victims leading many victims to fall back into trafficking or become re-exploited. Nomi Network focuses on the “Path to Freedom” which uses empowerment as a base to focus on prevention, rescue, rehabilitation, and finally the reintegration of victims of trafficking. Their mission is to develop products and create a marketplace that generates economic opportunities for women who are survivors or at risk of human trafficking. To accomplish this goal they provide vocational training, increase the availability of high quality fair trade products, invest resources into programs and training, and they forge partnerships among public and private organizations. Nomi takes a three-pronged approach. Firstly they develop stylish and well-made products created by survivors and women at risk of human trafficking while building capacity for social enterprises and non-profits who employ survivors and women at risk. Second, they provide direct training in technical skills, leadership development and an introduction to entrepreneurship for survivors and women at risk. Lastly they raise awareness and market demand of the products among retailers and boutiques. Nomi measures the success of their programs based on three tiers: skill development/capacity building, production, and sales and job creation. Nomi Network struggles against an array of socio-cultural issues, the role of branding at the retail level, developing world health issues, and unsupportive communities. In some cases women can make more money in prostitution and are pushed back into the sex industry by their families in need of revenue Nomi Network presents a call to action to buy products that support survivors and women at risk of human trafficking and to not support the companies that continue to have exploitation in their supply chain.
61 Dr. Shawn MacDonald Director of Programs & Research, Verité Verité takes aim at serious problems: child labor, slavery, systemic discrimination against women, dangerous working conditions, and unpaid work. They develop and promulgate standards of performance and promote their adoption to change whole industries, and improve common business processes like procurement and hiring. Verité aims to ensure that globalization is made to work for poor and vulnerable people around the world. They ensure that powerful institutions, and particularly the private sector, take responsibility for solving human rights problems where goods are made and crops are grown. Established in the mid 1990’s, Verité is a response to supply chain compliance and corporate social responsibility. Utilizing their network of NGO’s in 60 countries, they work with companies and other stakeholders to promote fair labor worldwide from their low-level workers to top tier management. Verité’s work begins with their researchers. The primary focus of their work is consumer products as domestic worker trafficking is harder to assess. However, as a leader in combatting supply chain slavery, Verité’s research is in use every day to end debt-bonded labor globally. Verité’s investigators issue reports and assessments that combat forced labor around the globe. Their fieldwork initiatives collaborate with non- governmental organizations and companies to incentivize the end of debt-bonded labor. Through their work, Verité has found that there are various levels of labor brokers and forced employment. In Malaysia, their electronics industry case study report found that 94 percent of workers paid high fees to get the job and another 94 percent did not have access to their passports. In Peru, Verité found the widespread use of human trafficking and child labor in the gold mining industry. They have also conducted risk- assessment reports for the banana industry in the Philippines, the rubber industry of Liberia, and cocoa workers in West Africa. This shows that forced labor is not only in the global economy but that it is worldwide and rampant. For Verité, the most important worker right is a ‘no-fee policy’ and Shawn says the organization is working to create incentives that change these behaviors. This means stable and consistent purchasing from companies that comply with the no-fee policy and rewarding companies that change their behavior both in employment and recruiting processes. Verité also strongly advocates for the creation of a uniform matrix of standards on the usage of forced labor, because problems of inconsistent reporting standards as a major hurdle. In the United States, Verité is working on changing US policies to promote accountability in procurement. By working with the International Labor Recruiting Working Group and the Alliance to End Slavery, Verité is trying to ensure the best implementation of Obama’s Executive Order that requires contractors of the federal government to have a compliance plan in place to ensure zero tolerance to human trafficking. Additionally, they promote better international standards in multi-stakeholder institutions. For Verité, the biggest challenge is not getting people to write new company policy rather, they ask that companies to dig in, and change things on the ground.
62 Ed Marcum Vice President of Investments, Humanity United Humanity United believes that we are all united in the challenges and opportunities we face. To that end, they lead and invest in a wide-range of efforts, networks, organizations, and ideas that share their vision of the world. Their partners work with them to build peace, promote justice, end atrocities and advance human freedom. Human trafficking is one of the most pressing human rights challenges of our time. Yet, the issue has often been below the radar in the human rights community. The International Labor Organization estimates that 21 to 36 million people are currently living under the conditions of slavery while the estimated profits from trafficking networks stands at $150 billion per year. Economic conditions, debt, unemployment, ethnicity, caste, and gender increase the risk of being trafficked. Humanity United is working to combat these conditions via their work targeting slaveries hotspots around the globe. Humanity United’s first Chief Executive Officer wanted to work in India and South Asia, as the aggregate numbers of slaves there are the highest in the world but they found out immediately that their work could be quite divisive. While estimates state that 10 to 15 percent of people living in modern slavery are victims of sexual exploitation, some groups within South Asia felt prostitution should be legal and regulated. Humanity United is collaborating with local NGOs to increase awareness of the uncomfortable truth. Additionally, their partnership with the Freedom Fund enables them to address the chronic lack of funding of anti-trafficking initiatives around the world. Their goal is simple; to target hotspots around the globe where locals and donors can come together to share information with one another in hopes of ending modern slavery. This mission has also drawn Humanity United’s attention to Nepal. While the Nepalese government currently has very progressive anti-human trafficking laws on the books, they are often not enforced. Humanity United’s focus was to change this by focusing on creating a ‘slave free’ brick kiln market. The brick kilns of Nepal entail damaging physical labor with employees who get work by purchasing their way in. Exploited via debts and predatory interest rates, laborers force employees to work every day knowing they will never be able to pay off their dues. Humanity United is working with the brick kilns to transform their employment processes. In exchange for reforming work conditions and paying employees. As corporations today are realizing they have to change and address the issue of slavery in supply chains Humanity United is working with small local NGOs to address communal networks of support. Yet this work is not without its challenges. Humanity United is working on an early stage risk assessment for corporations, but many of the tools that exist are not on the scale for huge companies to use. Additionally, the fact that these NGOs can be so small, they are hard to identify and with little or no reputation to stand on, often a big risk. To alleviate the stresses attached with this process, Humanity United and its partners are working to create long term monitoring systems for supply chain slavery. With a long term goal of utilizing precision to differentiate between corporate responses Humanity United hopes that with pressure companies will respond more stringently to the slavery in their supply chains.
63 Peter Mihaere Founder & CEO, Stand Against Slavery Founded in 2013, Stand Against Slavery’s mission is to save the more then 30 million men, women, and children in bondage. Many of them live in plain sight, among us, and because of us. We wear their clothes. We drink their coffee. We eat their food. Much of our lifestyle is built on their backs. This must change. Stand Against Slavery exists to lead a movement, to lead a generation that fights for a slave free world. Peter Mihaere first learned of human trafficking and modern slavery on the streets of Kolkata when he was hired to renovate a factory for FreeSet, a fair trade business offering employment to women trapped in the city’s sex trade. Shocked, inspired and touched, Peter would lead FreeSet and many other businesses to expand their anti-human trafficking operations into other areas of India. Returning to New Zealand, he was offered a six-month sabbatical to study the issue and effects of slavery in the modern day and age. He discovered that slavery and human trafficking is dominated by sophisticated criminal networks competing against unsophisticated NGO’s attempting to combat it. These NGO’s are often unaware of each other, operating within rigid silos of activists working on individual projects with little collaboration. Peter founded Stand Against Slavery in 2013, to work not on the frontline but as in order to connect and coordinate all interested parties in the fight against human trafficking and modern slavery. Stand Against Slavery works in two ways. First, by collaborating between organizations and governments while producing knowledge highlighting the issue. Secondly, by providing fundraising opportunities through their consulting funding model. By building relationships with governments and nonprofits Stand Against Slavery attempts to bring together organizations into a community network to be more cohesive and to create an interface between civil society and government. Stand Against Slavery’s research has focused on several issue areas: How do we engage civil society in the anti-human trafficking space? How do we prevent human trafficking in industry? Is there anyone doing this work with insufficient resources? For Peter, the business of ending slavery begins with a company’s bottom line. He says when people can actually look at something like slavery and fix their bottom line they then get excited about a solution. When Peter first started talking to companies at the executive level, they were interested morally but they did not factor this interest into their contracts. However, many chief operating officers recognize that this issue will impact their contracts, especially in Europe. By making slavery a bottom line issue, Peter notes that governments play an important role in terms of international trade. Peter believes this work will create an expectation that, particularly in the agriculture and horticulture sectors, there are best practices in terms of the way you treat people. If there is a clause in industry contracts that prevents exploitation, then civic and government pressure can influence others to conform. In addition, by placing slavery in the context of public health and education, social change can and will evolve over time. For Stand Against Slavery, this means discussing with industry officials the importance of clean supply chains. This work is extremely important, particularly because of New Zealand’s geographic location. Many migrants coming to the country are from Southeast Asia where slavery is endemic. Peter notes, New Zealand’s migrant population is 4.5 million, a portion of which is operating and exploiting labor. This is why Stand’s model is so important. By providing the research, collaboration, and consultation for funding, Stand Against Slavery is creating innovative models to combat the exploitation of peoples in their backyard and around the globe.
64 Jessica Minhas Founder & Chief Executive Officer, I’ll Go First I’ll Go First is dedicated to empowering survivors of abuse, trauma and assault to find their voice, and their freedom. They make it their task to open the door for what is generally held in silence, shame and accusation. I’ll Go First began with the idea that sharing stories offers permission and invitation to heal. Those who have experienced the heartbreak of abuse, assault or trauma find it difficult to believe they can write a different ending to their beginning. I’ll Go First helps survivors get connected with healing resources in their area and live an abundant life with purpose and vision. The spirit of I’ll Go First celebrates resilience, overcoming abuse and trauma, and breaking free from shame. The idea for I’ll Go First was born out of Jessica’s numerous trips to Asia in her search to find her biological family. During one of her visits in Thailand, she was asked to mirror emotions to the girls causing her to begin wondering about the connection between shame, abuse, and healing effects. When she was asked to share her personal story in a brothel, she realized that she could only free others once she had freed herself. She began asking herself a lot of questions regarding her own story and the sense of paralysis she felt by her past. This is when she started to plan I’ll Go First to help women with psychological healing to get beyond their trauma. Jessica uses the ideology “what shames us, frames us,” focusing on inner strength, purpose, and mentorship. I’ll Go First is an invitation to ask questions and connect to individual stories. The biggest challenge is overcoming the shame component in sharing a story of sexual violence. It is extremely important not to ask people to be “professional survivors.” The past traumas still need healing and hope. Often in trauma there is a lack of remembrance of events and the timeline and we must be very careful not to re-victimize people. I’ll Go First has specific guidelines on how to talk to survivors. They must first share their stories publically in order for the organization to share it. The organization will not share a story if the survivor is not okay with it possibly going viral. I’ll Go First does not campaign the negative side of human trafficking, but focuses on hope and redemption. After every story, they always offer a call to action in order to not traumatize or overwhelm the audience.
65 Kenneth B. Morris, Jr. Founder & President, Frederick Douglas Family Initiative The Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives (FDFI) was co-founded in June 2007 by Nettie Washington Douglass, Kenneth B. Morris, Jr. and Robert J. Benz. FDFI is an abolitionist organization that combines lessons from the legacies of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington: primarily abolition through education. FDFI brings the guidance of history to the fight against modern forms of slavery. As the direct descendants of Booker T. Washington and Fredrick Douglas, Kenneth and his family founded the Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative to use the pillars of their history to combat modern slavery. Kenneth is the great-great-great grandson of Fredrick Douglas, a man who was chosen from all of the slave children to learn reading and writing until his master forbade the practice. Not to be deterred, Douglas used his education to escape slavery when he was only twenty. He later became a leading abolitionist and an advisor to President Abraham Lincoln. Many believe he helped to agitate the President into signing the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The leaders of the Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative are also descended from Booker T. Washington, a man of equal merit. Booker T. Washington worked in salt and coalmines to save up money to go to school, which, after making the 500-mile walk to Hampton Institute in Virginia, he graduated from at 25 years old. Washington’s most prolific work was the creation of a school for freed slaves, The Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. The Tuskegee Institute taught freed men and women trades to build their skills in post- slavery America. In the tradition of his ancestors, Kenneth and the Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative work to combat slavery through education. In 2007, after Morris read a National Geographic article on modern slavery, he founded the Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative to end the silence around its current practice. He started by contacting schools named after Washington and Douglas to teach the history of slavery; and had reached forty-five schools in just thirty days. To date, over 100 schools have joined this project. The Initiative is placing students on service projects in order to raise awareness of slavery worldwide. The Foundation's vision for the future includes Globalize 13, a project to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Through this work, they are teaching people the importance of the Thirteenth Amendment and transitioning that into discussions about modern human trafficking. They aspire to introduce legislation against the labor trafficking practices of supply chains in multi-national corporations and aim to globalize the spirit of the Thirteenth Amendment. Finally, The Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative is working to build champions who address the needs of prevention. Kenneth wants to focus on both fighting modern slavery and preventing it from happening in the first place. The biggest problem The Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative faces is funding. Curriculums are free but the Initiative is in need of donations to ensure their visionary work continues. Kenneth believes that the echoes of slavery are hard to hear today, but if we listen close enough, we’ll hear those cries loud and clear. With Globalize 13, the creation of champions of prevention, and their aspirations for legislation, The Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative is using their familial history to prove that education can and will end slavery.
66 Dr. Sarah-Jane Murray & Benjamin Nolot Story Consultant, Writer, Director & Producers, Nefarious Trilogy Nefarious: Merchant of Souls is a hard-hitting documentary that exposes the disturbing trends of modern day sex slavery. With footage shot in over nineteen different countries, Nefarious exposes the nightmare of sex slavery as experienced by hundreds of thousands daily, through the eyes of both the enslaved and their traffickers. Nefarious features expert analysis from international humanitarian leaders, and captures the gripping and triumphant testimonies of survivors in order to galvanize hope and vision. When considering strategies to abolish slavery, the first option that comes to mind is not often creative media. However, Benjamin and Sarah-Jane know that creative media is one of the most potent mediums to affect change. Art has an intangible emotional pull that has the power to change hearts, and therefore it is not surprising to know that multiple abolitionist movements were pioneered through creative media. For instance, abolitionist William Wilberforce used drawings and diagrams to illustrate the horrors of African slavery; this technique drew people into a tangible experience of the injustice, helping him abolish slavery in England. One can discover other examples when examining the impact of the book Uncle Tom's Cabin on the Civil War or the effect of abolitionists' use of portable cameras to convince King Leopold to free the enslaved Congolese people. All these stories point to the fact that media has had a pivotal role in creating abolitionist movements that reach the social construct of thought in culture. The current cultural norm is the acceptance of exploitation on the premise of monetary benefit. In exploring the realities of such exploitation, it is important to note the role of the man as a primary driving force of modern day slavery. There is a widespread demand for women's sexuality, and it is only being perpetuated by the social norms of cheap sex in the world. From Cambodia, where approximately 70 percent of men regularly purchase sex, to a North American sport team locker room, where strip clubs are normal conversation topics, sex commercialization is internationally rampant. In particular, prostitution and sex trafficking are intimately connected. Benjamin has found that legalizing prostitution simplifies the link between the industries and makes organized crime harder to fight. Many women in prostitution do not receive the money they earn from their work. For example, in Las Vegas, prostitution is wrapped up in the veneer of high-class society, but women are routinely pimped out by men they once believed loved them. No matter what profits a woman may generate, she will not actually possess any of it. It is important to recognize and act on the stories of exploited women and tell their experiences with integrity so that change may occur. It is Nefarious's objective to help play a part in reshaping the narrative of our culture through storytelling. World media tells a trusted story about the identity of men and how to treat women and their sexuality. Benjamin and Sarah-Jane want to reverse that trend and make the crime of sex exploitation visible in order to rewrite this cultural norm. Therefore, Benjamin created Nefarious: Merchant of Souls, a documentary produced to expose the injustice of slavery worldwide. Sarah-Jane believes stories have the power to transform the world because they are ideas in action. Through the connection to the heart, insanely great stories have the capacity to shift public sentiment and create change. Since they believe it is time to re-write the culture’s narrative, Benjamin and Sarah-Jane are now working on a film that continues from where Nefarious left off, asking: what is the perception on prostitution, and what is the role of men in society?
67 Dr. Padmini Murthy Associate Professor & Global Health Director, New York Medical College New York Medical College is one of the oldest and largest health sciences colleges in the United States. Located in Long Island, New York, NYMC structures its curriculum with a humanistic, community-based medical approach that provides thousands of medical students in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area with research and clinical-focused training opportunities, many of which target trauma care as a primary way in treating exploited individuals of modern slavery. Approaching the global issue of modern slavery from all angles is crucial for the movement to succeed. That is what makes Dr. Padmini Murthy such a critical ally in the space. Her comprehensive medical approach to the well-being of human trafficking victims and survivors invites a promising perspective into the space. No matter type of exploitation survivors confront, they all suffer painful social, physical, and mental injuries that require proper trauma evaluation, care, and treatment. But physical ailments are the focus Padmini’s work. She has seen health-related issues which occur intentionally and accidentally, including burns from cigarettes and scalding metal rods, as well as broken bones; head traumas and traumatic brain injuries; knife wounds; strangling injuries; missing teeth; severe bleeding and bruising; and scarring. The effects from such traumas are both immediate and chronic, and are lasting reminders of the horrors endured while enslaved. Tragically, women are at an exponentially greater risk for more serious impairments – including but not limited to reproductive health issues, repeated genital traumas, forced abortions, untreated STDs and hepatitis, infertility caused by infection, and intra-uterine growth retardation – that can be emotionally and physically scarring, as well as extremely dangerous to both woman and fetus. When children are trafficked, they suffer physical and cognitive developmental delays and vitamin deficiencies, causing their bones to soften due to the lacking Vitamin D in their systems; their risk of contracting tetanus skyrockets without access to vaccines. Padmini and her colleagues promote a human rights focus and culturally sensitive approach when interacting with the women that seek post-trafficking treatment at New York Medical College. Slavery is like an octopus, she notes, the tentacles are so widespread. That is why she advises her medical residents to be aware of the signs which indicate a patient might be a victim of human trafficking. Multiple visits from the same woman for a variety of consistent and/or differentiating physical ailments should raise a red flag for a medical professional. If the patient is an immigrant or does not speak English, interpreters and online translators are vital resources, as the family members accompanying the injured individuals might be the abuser. Maintaining eye contact and personal empathy when questioning individuals is crucial to solidifying a relationship of trust between doctor and patient; if a woman at a clinic was abused or is in an abusive relationship, she will be highly unlikely and/or hesitant to discuss her challenges and reproductive health with a male doctor. Gender sensitivity is therefore critical. The efforts of the doctors at New York Medical College reaffirm the fact that the global community must focus on promoting and preserving women and maternal healthcare to better support and benefit the female population and society worldwide. Trauma informed care is essential to aiding victims of abuse and enslavement; teaching doctors across the world to recognize the signs of abuse creates a community of well- informed and prepared medical providers properly armed in the fight to tackle modern slavery.
68 Brad Myles Chief Executive Officer, Polaris Project Polaris, named after the North Star that guided slaves to freedom in the U.S., disrupts the conditions that allow human trafficking to thrive in our society. From working with government leaders to protecting victims’ rights, to building partnerships with the world’s leading technology corporations, Polaris sparks long-term change that focuses communities on identifying, reporting and eliminating trafficking networks. Polaris was named after the North Star in order to link the history of abolition with the future goal of ending human bondage and to create a symbol of the community that must come together to resolve the enormous, evil problem of slavery. Brad explained that the organization began on the campus of Brown University when a few students realized that a girl had been trafficked right outside of their campus and no one was outraged. The concerned students came together and formed Polaris with the hope of filling specific niches in the anti- trafficking community. Four principles guided the founders of the organization. First, Polaris is global because slavery is an international issue. Second, the group fights all types of slavery, including sex and labor trafficking. Third, Polaris wants to see systemic and social change, desiring to become a catalyst through changing culture and to treat the root of the problem rather than simply address symptoms. Fourth, the organization measures their progress and looks for improvement in the problem of slavery through their labors. In addition to their four founding principles, the organization has concrete goals. Polaris collects and analyzes data, creates safety nets for survivors through pooling resources and providing services, intervenes and disrupts human trafficking networks, and trains subject matter experts who strategize. Brad discussed one such strategy through pointing out how trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry, and yet non-profit organizations fight the problem. Therefore, when non-profits partner with larger groups such as governmental and financial institutions, the fight against slavery operates at a larger scale due to the rise in funding and resources. Polaris achieves its goals through its well-developed programs. In Washington, D.C. and New Jersey, the organization operates victim services, where they provide safety nets to 700 survivors. Through their public advocacy program, Polaris works at the state and national levels to advocate for anti-trafficking laws. In addition, Polaris has operated a national hotline for seven years, the purpose of which is to provide an avenue for survivors to find help. The hotline, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has helped 18,000 survivors, 5,000 of which called last year alone. Polaris has also conducted research to map hotlines around the world, and have found that there are 120 hotlines in 60 countries, but another 130 countries do not have this resource. Brad discussed how Polaris is in the process of helping to create hotlines in all countries by providing training and advocacy programs. In addition, through their data analysis program, Polaris processes data from multiple sources, including hotline calls, and analyze the data so they can strategize on how to disrupt trafficking networks. A final program is targeted campaigns, where Polaris focuses on a specific type of trafficking. Most recently, they have a campaign against massage parlors where trafficking occurs. Brad specified that there are many legitimate massage therapists in the United States, as specified by certification boards. However, there are many illegitimate massage parlors, which are oriented as part of the commercial sex industry, and Polaris's campaign is aimed to target those illicit businesses. In the end, Brad said that Polaris's goal is to see marked improvement in ending slavery, and to bring communities together to do so. Ultimately, they would like to see the culture change from accepting or ignoring trafficking to recognizing it as an international issue and wholeheartedly fighting slavery. When society comes together to fight it, human trafficking will end for good.
69 John Nehme President & Chief Executive Officer, Allies Against Slavery Allies Against Slavery works to develop community networks that build slave free cities. They initiate activism by engaging and mobilizing the community through advocacy. They believe in a holistic, long term approach to ending modern slavery. Coordinating the Slave-Free City Network, they support and empower local survivors of human trafficking and collaborate with partner organizations to disrupt the complex system of slavery. In 2007, after watching a film on human trafficking in South Asia, John felt the impetus to do something. Unable to travel overseas, he began to research the practice, only to discover that human trafficking and slavery occurs in the United States as well. Gathering concerneds citizens in Austin, Texas, John’s belief was that everyone had an ability to take action against slavery and could do it best by working together. He held the first meeting of Allies Against Slavery in 2010. The goal of Allies Against Slavery is to establish community networks that work to create slave free cities. With an all-volunteer staff at the beginning, their 2011 Free Austin Campaign exceeded expectations, reaching over 1,000 people in that first year. In order to better understand the needs of survivors, they began mapping different anti-slavery organizations and stakeholders to identify gaps. Through their collaborative efforts, they aspire to create a bridge between survivors and service organizations that can better serve their needs. However, he states that in order to end slavery, people must first realize this is more like a community development issue. Allies Against Slavery emphasizes the importance of addressing the root causes of slavery: poverty, social isolation, addiction, child abuse and the sex industry. As a result of their work, they are against the legalization of prostitution. Their networks of survivors agree with them. In spite of having case by case stories, research is not yet able to present an accurate picture of slavery in their city. John cites that there is not yet a standard human trafficking screening tool for social service organizations in Austin. To amend that gap, Allies Against Slavery is working with the University of Austin to establish a baseline of what human trafficking truly looks like in Austin. They believe that by establishing solid metrics they will be able to better understand both the scope of the problem and the successes of survivors. As a result, they will be able to say that slavery has been reduced in Austin by a certain percentage each year moving forward. Allies Against Slavery emphasizes the need for a continuum of services to be offered to survivors. Working towards that, Allies Against Slavery collaborates with partners to build cross sector networks that provide a more holistic and inclusive approach to ending human trafficking. Yet, their work is further complicated by the fact that there is an information gap. Many people do not realize how their local purchasing habits can drive international activity and slavery. As such, Allies Against Slavery has partnered with the Polaris Project and other international organizations to highlight the connection. By engaging with their partner organizations, they aim to increase awareness of this international abolitionist movement. But it has not been easy. His years in the movement have illuminated issues of sustainability he says are now facing abolitionism. Ideological differences appear in how to approach and administer the impact of this work. His response is to continue emphasizing cooperation Continuing to grow their organizational capacity, Allies Against Slavery will continue to work towards one day creating a not only a slave-free Austin, but a slave free world.
70 Michele Newsome Director, The Porch Light at The Florida Baptist Children’s Home Florida Baptist Children’s Home (FBCH) has been in existence for more than 100 years and operates a number of different ministries throughout the state of Florida. Working with the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), leaders from FBCH and DCF founded the Porch Light to meet the desperate need for safe homes for child victims of domestic sex trafficking. Property was purchased in an undisclosed location where victims could find shelter, unconditional love and a safe place to begin a new life. Florida has the third highest reported number of sex trafficking incidents in the country. Yet, there are only six safe houses with 28 beds in the entire state. To answer the call of victims in desperate need, The Porch Light program launched in 2014 as a joint effort between Florida Baptist Children’s Home and the state’s Department of Children and Families. The Porch Light is a safe house and program where vulnerable girls can find physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing. Porch Light efforts focus on prevention through education and awareness. In this capacity, they aim to educate communities about the problem of sex trafficking within the United States. Florida’s safe harbor law enables law enforcement to place sexually exploited children into safe homes in lieu of an arrest. Treating the children as victims rather than as prostitutes, this law enables The Porch Light and its partners to transform the mindset that says these children chose this life. It also guarantees a safe location for these young victims to heal. Victims are typically female between the ages of 14 to 17 who live in large urban areas. They begin by meeting the tangible needs of these children, from crisis to long-term housing, food, clothing, education, employment, and medical care. Porch Light staff then advocates on their behalves by addressing the intangible needs of their residents. The children are placed in a safe nonjudgmental environment where they learn about positive community building, healthy relationship boundaries, love, and how to recognize abuse and trauma. Residents receive both daily and weekly counseling while they reside together in spacious residential suites on 14 acres of land. The undisclosed location provides a safe place for the girls to reside under constant protection via their security systems. The biggest struggle the girls face is not the feeling of safety but the psychological and mental health traumas. Utilizing their faith-based approach, the Porch Light program offers a holistic methodology to recovery that focuses on all parts of the person (physical, emotional and spiritual). Their next phases include creating a child graduates program to help children step down from living in transitional homes with the creation of therapeutic foster care. Their hope, healing, and restoration program is inspired by John 8:12, “I am the light of the world, he that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” There is a better life out there for these girls. The Porch Light provides a meaningful way to educate people about sex trafficking and provide this better life.
71 Lisa T.D. Nguyen Executive Director, The Senhoa Foundation The Senhoa Foundation was established in 2010 and works to fight modern day slavery through prevention, rehabilitation and advocacy programs. Through partnerships that have been cultivated over time, the Senhoa Foundation is able to fund projects that empower women and children who are disadvantaged, so that they might build a better future for themselves. More specifically, they believe in empowering survivors in their intellectual capabilities in hopes that these women and children will generate income and regain a sense of independence in order to make a greater impact. As Executive Director of the Senhoa Foundation, Lisa was initially motivated to join the fight after seeing images of children in brothels. As she continued educating herself and working in this field she was saddened by the overwhelming aspect to this issue. Her main questions was centered around how to turn victims into survivors. Since then she has been focused on removing the stigma that comes with the word “survivor” and moves forward to the hope that can be drawn out of a hopeless situation. Through this process she has learnt that it can often be a challenging cycle of trying to sell their cause for funding needs while trying to convince survivors that their past does not define them. There are three major programs that the Senhoa Foundation supports: the Lotus kids club, The Safe House, and the Senhoa jewelry program. The Lotus kids club focuses on the prevention aspect of their foundational goals. They provide access to educational tools in order to strengthen the child’s family structures and keep them away from vulnerable situations. The Safe House program focuses on job placement but even more so on social reintegration. The Safe House provides a place for women to process and heal from their experiences and gain confidence to build a better future for themselves. Lastly, the Senhoa jewelry program is one of the ways Lisa is trying to change the mentality from “victim” to “survivor” although she notes that they intended for the jewelry to sell itself before the cause. It provides fair wages, health and education in order for the artisan women to walk away with confidence because of what they have created. Instead of homegrown designs, Senhoa’s approach has been a high-end chic look that simply is the start to the greater conversation. Their jewelry has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Senhoa is trying a different approach to the issue of human trafficking as a whole and aim to focus on the future rather than the past. They believe though acknowledging the past is important, the future is bright for these women and they need to envision that. Senhoa targets the intellectual and educational aspect to these women’s future stories as they are the sole breadwinners for their families. Lisa realized that without opportunities to generate personal income, these women risk the chance of falling back into a vulnerable situation. The Senhoa foundation has made the transition from a foundation working with partner shelters in hopes of enrolling women in a training program to a social enterprise that focuses on bigger aspects like fair wage and an array of educational opportunities. This transition has consisted of events and online boutiques, among other projects, that have provided a critical revenue stream for the Foundation’s services, both of which they hope to expand in the future.
72 Consolee Nishimwe Rwandan Genocide Survivor, Author & Activist In the early 1990s, Rwanda was plagued by civil car which distinctly divided the country’s two primary ethic groups: the majority Hutu population and the minority Tutsi population. After the nation’s president was assassinated in a fatal plane crash, Hutu extremists took control over the country, launching attacks against the Tutsi population in April of 1994. Consolee Nishimwe was only fourteen years old when the widespread murder and systematic rape of the Hutu against the Tutsi began, destroying her family and her country. As a survivor, she utilizes her voice to promote awareness of her experiences, working to ensure that such unbelievable horrors never occur again. Sharing her story in her memoir, entitled “Tested to the Limit: A Genocide Survivor’s Story of Pain, Resilience and Hope”, is just one example of her activism efforts. Consolee was a happy, loved teenage girl – the eldest of six siblings, living with her parents who both worked as teachers – when the Civil War broke out. She had experienced the hatred expelled towards her ethnic group even before the mass-murders unfolded; her classmates bullied her at school, and her grandparents, parents, and other family had experienced some persecution. Like Consolee, they all were Tutsis. Regardless, Consolee’s parents worked tirelessly to ensure that she and her siblings felt secure and safe at home until the radio began blaring hateful messages, ordering that the “Tutsi must be killed.” Scrambling for safety, Consolee and her family sang Christian gospel songs and prayed for God’s help as they followed a massive crowd into the streets. Consolee, devastated and terrified, watched as people struggling to find shelter in the community’s stadium were slaughtered; she knew that the Tutsis had done nothing to deserve such deplorable oppression. Consolee’s mother led them to a friend’s house to hide, avoiding the children armed with machetes that swarmed the streets; after a period of time, Consolee and her family were forced to flee yet again, moving fearfully through the bushes at night and praying for salvation by day. Consolee’s aunt ran from their attackers, and was killed immediately, leaving the rest of the family in search of another place to hide. Following three months of hiding in the African bush, Consolee learned the true meaning of survival and strength. After her father was killed, she focused on comforting her mother, who carried Consolee’s three- year-old brother as she led the remaining family members through the scrublands. Their feet were swollen and they were subjected to harrowing tortures by their neighbors and friends. ‘Killers’, as Consolee labels them when recounting her story, waited outside houses and inside schools, searching for Tutsis to murder. Along their difficult journey, nevertheless, Consolee and her family were spared by a few individuals her mother had worked with and taught when she was a teacher. These small acts of humanity allowed for the family to continue searching for safety. However, after Consolee’s brother was killed, she and her mother began to lose their emotional and physical strength. Rape was used as a weapon; Consolee was kidnapped, then recurrently raped, tortured, and beaten until she wished to die. Yet her strength persevered, and Consolee’s mother nursed her back to health as the war finally ended. Most of their paternal familial members had been murdered, leaving only three cousins and one sister as their remaining family. While recovering from her physical trauma, Consolee discovered that she was HIV-positive. Prayer gave Consolee the tenacity to fight through and overcome the Rwandan Genocide. Now, she never loses hope. She shares her struggles because so many others cannot, and wants to continue to educate others through telling her story, making documentaries, and other influential means of aiding survivors.
73 Yvonne O’Neal Member, Episcopal Diocese of New York Task Force Against Human Trafficking The Task Force Against Human Trafficking is the Episcopal Diocese of New York is a coalition of members and leaders fighting to end human trafficking. Through widespread educational outreach efforts, the organization has been able to hugely impact multi-faith communities and engage hundreds of individuals to get involved in the modern slavery space, spotlighting the influence of religious groups in the anti-slavery movement. The transatlantic slave trade that brought Yvonne O’Neal’s ancestors to the Americas was the beginning of an evil system that continues to plague the world to this day. Dwelling on the cruelty of historical and current violence and slavery empowered Yvonne to employ her powerful connection to her faith when devoting her life to fighting human trafficking. Serving on the Advisory Council of the Anglican Communion Office at the United Nations and the NGO Committee to Stop Trafficking in Persons, Yvonne advocated to educate the community and the public on the issues of slavery and trafficking worldwide. As the current co-chair of the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development, she realizes that violence—including but not limited to violence against women, domestic violence, child marriage, acid attacks, and human trafficking—acts as an impediment to achieving global sustainable development goals. Holding these various advocacy positions have enabled Yvonne to lead and participate in important conversations focused on human trafficking and its far-reaching effects. Many of the Episcopal churches throughout America are working to help end trafficking in their communities due to the efforts of the Diocesan Task Force Against Human Trafficking. Passing the “Make an Organized Commitment to Combat Sex Trafficking” resolution at the 2014 Convention of the Diocese, Reverend Adrian Dannhauser, Yvonne, and other influential members of the Church implemented an efficient educational model for use in parishes across the nation. Distributing brochures prompted a higher community awareness of trafficking, so Yvonne pushed to create a tangible area of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to be designated for a United Nations GIFT Box display – a program used to raise awareness of trafficking and slavery in public spaces all over the world. Parish members spoke with over 450 people from 23 different countries, educating them on trafficking and how they can get involved, and gained over 300 signatures to the Runaway and Homeless Youth and Trafficking Act Petition during the time the GIFT box display was active. This simple but powerful act of advocacy proved the power within the religious community to make a difference in the space. The group later created an interfaith panel for the first day of the 60th Session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, and emphasized why houses of worship and communities of faith must not be afraid to talk about human trafficking. This, and the other practices that the Diocese of New York has implemented, has actualized a community thoroughly educated to know the signs of slavery. Even spreading simple suggestions to congregants, like suggesting they write the human trafficking hotline number on the walls of bathroom stalls, encourages individuals to get involved. All efforts are important to ending slavery: As Yyvonne notes, it is necessary to work towards building a beloved community of God where one day there will be no more captives, where all will be set free—both captor and victim.
74 Emily Pasnak-Lapchick End Trafficking Program Officer, U.S. Fund for UNICEF The U.S. Fund for UNICEF advances UNICEF's work, and other efforts in support of the world's child population through fundraising, advocacy and education in the United States. The End Trafficking Program seeks to raise awareness about child trafficking and help people to take action to protect children. They work towards the goal of seeing not a single child trafficked in our world. Emily Pasnak-Lapchick, inspired by her family's history of fighting for social justice as well as viewing child poverty in India first hand, grew particularly concerned about children forced into armed conflicts and farm labor rights in her formative teen and young adult years. Her work in the End Trafficking Program at UNICEF aims to raise awareness and find solutions to end trafficking, not only in the sex trade, but also in the often- overlooked side of labor trafficking. The End Trafficking program was launched in 2012, and has grown steadily over the past three years. In partnership with concerned individuals and groups, the End Trafficking project aims to stop all forms of exploitation. The program began with a project that surveyed Americans to gauge awareness about trafficking, and to date has engaged over 22,000 people via events, Google Hangouts, webinars, workshops, film screenings, and more. One pillar of the End Trafficking Program's work involves targeted advertisement campaigns through online and print publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine, as well as using advertisements in malls and at bus stops. All ads include their emergency hotline number and appear in places with high instances of trafficking. Another pillar has focused on advocating for U.S. state and federal legislative changes in conjunction with organizations like the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST) in order to align priorities and ensure the greatest possible impact. A final pillar is the End Trafficking Program focuses on college campuses, and engagement with college students and athletes in order to raise awareness about the issue on university campuses. In a follow-up study in 2014 (from the original study in 2012), the End Trafficking Program saw positive trends in regards to awareness, familiarity, and concern, as well as a 21 percent increase in the public’s ability to properly define trafficking and an eight percent increase in the public’s recognition of trafficking as a problem in the U.S. From this study, we has learned that more and more people are learning about trafficking, and those who do know are working to end it. In fact, the study found that three in 10 people reported doing something to fight trafficking: buying fair trade, signing petitions, donating, learning the signs, etc. However, the study also found some misconceptions. Most perceive victims of trafficking to be low income or impoverished women and girls, and the public almost always believes that slavery is simply about sexual exploitation. While this information is important, an aspect of trafficking that is often overlooked is labor trafficking as well as the fact that men and boys are enslaved almost as often as women and girls. Emily believes that as a nation, we have come to a tipping point, and now we need to harness our energy to find real solutions. However, we do not yet not have the right ones. But, solutions will come when everyone is working towards a unified goal. Emily believes that this generation holds exceptional power and enthusiasm, which greatly contributes to an increase in awareness, and that with everyone working together, exploitation through human trafficking can, and most certainly will, end.
75 Morgan Perry Film Department Producer, Exodus Cry Through faith-centric prevention, intervention, and holistic restoration, Exodus Cry is diligently determined to abolish sex slavery. The missionary organization produces documentary films to promote the eradication of human trafficking, change the social conditions that foster a sex slave industry, bring freedom and healing to victims, and inspire action to the masses. Filmmaker Morgan Perry began her journey into the human trafficking and sexual exploitation space ten years ago. After doing service work in Thailand at a restoration home for abused women and children, Morgan returned to the U.S. to study media in an effort to address human trafficking. Her goal was successful; in 2011 she produced her first feature-length documentary, entitled Sex+Money: A National Search For Human Worth, to explore the important issue of domestic minor sex trafficking. Now Morgan works with Benjamin Nolot, creator of the international sex trafficking film Nefarious: Merchant of Human Souls, at Exodus Cry to produce films educating the public on the critical issues relating to sex trafficking. Together, the duo is creating three new films focused on the demand aspects of human trafficking. They realized that without such a massive demand, there would not be an equally massive supply of trafficked and enslaved individuals. Therefore, Morgan and Exodus Cry’s goal is to explore what exactly perpetuates this ubiquitous underground economy. The first film in the series, dubbed Liberated, takes inventory of the impact of society’s hyper-sexualized media and analyzes contemporary ‘hook-up’ culture, among other sociocultural phenomena. In the second film, Buying Her, Morgan and her team address demand through interviews with fifteen sex buyers and question how and why these men initially began purchasing sex regularly, and what drove them to stop and seek recovery. This journalistic exploration further reinforces the strength of the third film, The Face of Porn, which dives into how the easy accessibility of pornography has impacted both sex education and sex trafficking. Extensively analyzing contemporary culture allows Morgan to assert that the sexualization the media propagates influences and grooms’ individuals – replete with stereotypical gender roles, messages of violence, and the unavoidable notion that “sex sells” – into believing that blatant mistreatment and objectification of women is normal and acceptable. Examples of such normalization are omnipresent in popular culture. The video game Grand Theft Auto encourages users to buy sex with prostitutes in order to boost their avatar’s health meter, and to kill the prostitute when finished if the user wants his virtual money back. The porn industry boasts that its two highest grossing genres are “Hardcore Violence” and “Barely Legal.” American Apparel and other famous brands feature advertisements with barely-clothed young women in uncomfortable, hyper-sexualized poses. And while these societal pillars’ messages promote tolerance of a sex slavery society, Morgan’s films and the efforts of Exodus Cry help combat and educate the public on what they internalize. Morgan Perry and the other dedicated individuals of Exodus Cry thrive on the support of the human trafficking community and the public as a whole to ensure their important messages are being heard. Sexual media has created a culture that is neither safe for women nor truly satisfying or healthy for men; spreading awareness and screening documentary films such as Liberated, Buying Her, and The Face of Porn allow for rape, sexual assault, and sex slavery to be recognized as criminal behavior instead of normalized facets of everyday existence.
76 Gerardo Porteny President & Co-Founder, Young Minds For Gender Equality Young Minds For Gender Equality (YM4GE) aims to work together with young men all over the world to raise awareness about philanthropy and, most importantly, gender equality. Based in Mexico City and New York, YM4GE primarily focuses on five topics: education, economy, society, politics, and culture in order to address the empowerment of women. Gerardo Porteny is a student at New York University who is passionate about social justice through gender equality. A few years ago, Gerardo visited the United Nations, including the division of UN Women, and was impressed by the structure and effectiveness of the organization. He then went to a Global Summit on gender equality and was amazed that 1.1 billion women have been victims of violence, facing vast inequalities with little support. Gerardo decided to do something, so he asked the advice of his mentors, who told him to first research gender inequality before he acted. He therefore participated in every feminist workshop, symposium and conference he could find. Through his hands-on research, Gerardo found that he was often the only male in the room, and that these events, while worthwhile and meaningful, were speaking a message to an audience who already agreed. Gerardo realized then that men needed to become a part of the conversation for gender equality. He therefore co-founded Young Minds for Gender Equality, a global youth coalition operating in more than forty countries for the advancement of women's rights. He also works with the #HeForShe movement as the consultant of global youth engagement for UN Women. In essence, the fight for gender equality is not between women. Rather, it's the fight of all of humanity against discrimination. Since women are often the victims of gender inequality, the issue is often viewed as a female campaign in which men have no role. However, men hold a crucial role in the issue, and although men are part of the problem, they can be part of the solution through partnering with women. When this unity occurs, humanity will benefit because people will work together towards progress. Gerardo believes no one benefits when freedom is violated, and therefore gender inequality is not just a female problem: it's a human issue. YM4GE has three main objectives. The first is to change the attitudes regarding gender equity being passed down through culture. Fathers teach their sons how to treat women, and men follow the culture in which they live. Therefore, if fathers teach their sons to respectfully treat women as equals, gender inequality will be eroded from the inside out. The second goal is to drive economic female empowerment through teaching women about their opportunities and advocating corporations to change the way they function with gender inequality through the 10x10x10 strategy. Through checking supply chains, buying from female-owned businesses, and having more flexible timelines for women so they do not have to choose between a career and motherhood, businesses can be a part of the fight against inequality. The third objective of YM4GE is to engage governments and universities through advocacy for gender equality policy. YM4GE engages with ten different governments, including Rwanda, which is the only country with a majority of female leaders in their parliament. Their female-inundated governmental system has led Rwanda to have one of the most thriving economies in Africa. In addition to reaching governments, YM4GE is reaching universities, including NYU and Harvard, and working for gender equality among the nation's next leaders. Through his work with YM4GE and the #HeforShe movement, Gerardo has seen tangible change in the lives of individuals, as well as a change in policies for corporations and governments through the awareness of widespread gender inequality. Through advocating for equality, Gerardo believes he can help change the world for good.
77 Andrea Powell Executive Director, FAIR Girls Founded by Andrea Powell and Caroline Tower Morris in 2003, FAIR Fund was created to empower girls in the U.S. and around the world who have been forgotten, exploited or otherwise are at-risk of not reaching their full potential. FAIR Girls currently operates programs in Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, Russia, and the United States. The FAIR Girls home office in Washington, D.C. offers compassionate care to prevent the exploitation of all girls, with a special emphasis on girls who have experienced homelessness, life inside the foster care system, sexual abuse, and trafficking. Twelve years ago, Andrea Powell met a Bosnian woman living in an undercover domestic violence shelter in the basement of her German apartment building. Over the course of the next six months, Andrea learned that the young woman was married to a sixty-year-old man who had used her as a sex slave. Over time, they devised a plan to run away to the United States and free the girl from her trafficker. Unfortunately, the woman disappeared. When Andrea told the local police what had happened, their response was, “things like this just happen to girls like that.” FAIR Girls was created to organize and pass anti-human trafficking advocacy legislation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Originally thought of as an organization that would keep most of their resources abroad, Powell learned that there was also a huge lack of understanding and resources around this issue in our nation’s capital. FAIR Girls found that while many in the United States thought of trafficking as simply a foreign problem, trafficking happens here at an alarming rate. The majority of human trafficking victims in the United States are US nationals, 85% of whom are children of color, 70% of those either are or were in the foster care system, and 90% report of having experienced sexual trauma before the trafficking situation. FAIR Girls operates a holistic treatment and prevention program providing safe houses to girls referred to them via law enforcement or a family member. They offer 24-hour counseling to girls in the first three months of treatment. On the prevention side, they also work in the public school system to educate girls and boys about human trafficking. They also collaborate with the Human Trafficking Unit of the DC Metro Police, the National Human Trafficking Hotline created by the Polaris Project, and Salesforce Database to create a profile of the girls they serve. Powell hopes to share this cloud based information with other organizations in the US and abroad to draw a better picture of who victims of trafficking are and how best to combat it. As the number one request from FAIR Girls clientele is safe housing, going forward, FAIR Girls wants to expand their safe housing program currently funded at 70%. They also seek to expand the metro card, bus fare card, counseling, and other support services they currently provide. FAIR Girls continues to advocate for legislation as well as resources in the DC area and nationwide. As there is a shortage of shelters across the country, FAIR Girls hopes to make the public aware that they are making a small-scale investment with a meaningful impact by aiming to expand their housing program. It costs only $12,000 per girl per year, which is far more cost effective than alternative jail or welfare programs. Through prevention education, compassionate care, and survivor inclusive advocacy, FAIR Girls creates opportunities for girls to become confident, happy, healthy young women.
78 Alezandra Russell Founder & President, Urban Light Urban Light is a Thai organization that aims to restore and rebuild the lives of young men affected by modern slavery. Operating in Chiang Mai, Urban Light provides an incredible array of services and support, ranging from HIV testing to legal assistance to conducting community outreach efforts. The persistence and effectiveness of the organization is measureable: In the last year, Urban Light has provided aid to over 500 boys. Alezandra Russell began educating herself about modern slavery after someone she cared about was trafficked. When working in D.C. seven years ago, one of her female students was kidnapped, taken to a different state, locked in an apartment, and forced to service men. The police assumed that the girl was a reckless runaway, but Alezandra knew better, though she had never heard of trafficking before. Later, when visiting Thailand, Alezandra realized that the issue also affects young boys and males of all ages. Her impactful experiences seeing people as young as 11 years old selling themselves in the red light district ignited her passion to make a difference, thus propelling her goodwill into the modern slavery space as a recognizable force. There exists a major misconception around the world that males are not typically, if at all, victims of trafficking and modern slavery. Discussions tend to focus on women and young girls, largely due to the fact that social and cultural norms perpetuate the idea that men and boys are stronger and can fend for themselves. Nevertheless, these notions are invalid. In some countries like Sri Lanka abuse against boys is estimated to outweigh abuse against girls. The FBI estimates that boys are depicted in at least fifty percent of the pornography they intercept and see in the United States; yet across the world, in Thailand, child pornography is not illegal. Activists like Alezandra strive to illuminate how omnipresent and inclusive modern slavery truly is—no person, regardless of their gender, is eliminated as a potential victim of these crimes. The rule of law is weak in Thailand. Corruption plagues the nation and infects the legal system and police force like a fatal cancer. That is why the efforts of Urban Light are so important—if the government is contributing to the issue, who else will help these burgeoning boys? The organization deals with undocumented, stateless boys; ethnic minorities from very remote villages; refugees or orphans; and second- generation sex workers. Many of these boys are from neighboring countries like Cambodia and Vietnam, but the greatest influx of males are arriving from Burmese refugee camps. Because they are too young to work and do not have access to any support system of community, these adolescents sell themselves on the street or in bars, where they are given free heroin and other narcotics to keep them coming back. This force them to depend on sex to survive. Urban Light provides these boys with an opportunity to create a different future for themselves through education, English classes and other means of training. Urban Light also provides health services, like HIV and TB testing; harm reduction services, like access to clean needles, health kits, and drug rehabilitation; safe employment; and legal services, such as providing ID cards and/or passports for boys who came from refugee camps and helping boys who are wrongly deported. Urban Light ventures into Thailand’s streets and bars to connect with boys nightly to continually impact the lives of those they serve. Now reinforced with funding from the State Department, Alezandra and her team continue to spread their empowering efforts across Chiang Mai, and want to educate families in villages in order to teach what could happen if their children are sent away to cities, thus working to prevent more boys from being trafficked.
79 Raleigh Sadler Founder & Executive, Let My People Go Let My People Go helps churches pinpoint which constituents in the church and community are most vulnerable to human trafficking. The faith-based organization provides churches with the proper resources and models to respond. A series of pastors inspired Raleigh Sadler to join the fight for social justice. After attending a conference focused on human trafficking, he immediately felt an intense physical and spiritual desire to get involved in the space. Several years spent researching modern slavery led him to realize how far West Virginia behind was in implementing statewide anti-human-trafficking legislation, so he approached the governor’s legal counsel in an effort to personally spearhead an imitative. Raleigh helped mobilize people to support the bill which passed and inspired him to do more. Moving to New York, where the need was even greater and the problem even more extensive, Raleigh met with a wide range of faith leaders and communities that wanted to help, but lacked the infrastructure to create lasting impact. Establishing Let My People Go allowed Raleigh to provide these communities with a close personal network to help church constitutions support the anti-trafficking movement. Undocumented immigrants and homeless youth most susceptible to human trafficking within the church community. Many churches do not know what to do when presented with these issues in their own communities. Let My People Go advocates for congregations and spiritual to leaders to continually promote themselves as welcoming, safe environments for those confronting slavery. By listening to people’s stories and getting to know them as individuals, invites a deeper awareness of communal engagement and strength into the parish. Challenging Christians to focus on the tenets of their faith also motivates them to fight trafficking. Raleigh reminds groups that if their faith is not deep, they will not be able to effectively help the multitudes of exploited persons that need assistance. Additionally, Let My People Go strives to introduce and connect churches with the law enforcement agencies and representatives to further cement their synergies. Emboldening innovation and collaboration between communities is a key point within Let My People Go’s module. Now, as the organization’s outreach and impact efforts continue to grow, churches across the tristate area have been reaching out to receive Let My People Go’s guidance. Simply preaching about social ills does not create change; by providing people with a direct, actionable model to make a difference, ministry work continues to advance the abolitionist movement, as it has in the past. A slave-free world, as Raleigh notes, cannot exist without divine intervention. With hopes to establish Let My People Go as a national community, he depends on a higher power to propel the organization’s mission forward. In five years’ time Let My People Go aims to have directors in every major region of the United States, as well as clusters of people in every state working with their local churches to develop innovative ministries. Fighting human trafficking is an inter-faith, intercontinental issue and freedom is inevitable when spiritual connections collide.
80 Sophia Sanders Director of Programs & Operations, Stolen Youth The award winning book Sold, by Patricia McCormick, inspired Stolen Youth’s founders to travel to Nepal and India on a learning trip. Seeing firsthand the devastating effects of human trafficking, they left determined to make a difference. Their mission is to expand the community’s awareness and ability to appropriately intervene on behalf of young people coerced into the sex trade and to work together for sustainable and system-wide change in our community. Statistics show that more than 300,000 kids, at the average age of 13, are trafficked annually inside the United States. In recent years, the Internet has become one of the largest mediums for traffickers to lure victims and sell women and girls. In response to this societal travesty, the twelve board members of Stolen Youth decided to host a fundraiser in 2011 to secure more beds for trafficking survivors. They raised over $700,000 at their first event for local survivors. Their success served as a catalyst for continuing to combat this international travesty. Stolen Youth provides funding to support innovative collaboration between local organizations combatting human trafficking. Stolen Youth works with four Seattle based organizations to bring together the strength of multiple sectors to address each unique problem in human trafficking. While they do not provide direct services themselves, they bring local dollars to local issues to together to support the strengths of direct service, policy development and the public sector. Working closely with community organizations and advocates, Stolen Youth maintains relationships with anyone that is in direct contact with youth, from guidance counselors to teachers and local community organizations. Because of their efforts, they have received over 140 referrals in the last two years. Victims are met in person by advocates to connect them with an understanding and familiar voice. This allows them to treat each case individually and personalize the counseling, rehabilitation, and therapy services. Sophia explains that this is what make their program successful and hopeful about the prevention. Over the last three years, Stolen Youth has raised over $2.3 million for local initiatives. Fundraising for direct services takes priority with operating and salary costs taking a back seat. In this way, they are able to continue funding pilot projects that may not receive state or federal funding. In recent years, Stolen Youth has funded several innovative direct service initiatives including training for hotel workers that allows them to better identify potential trafficking victims, and a high school curriculum that works with boys and girls at the sophomore and junior levels to identify societal aspects of commercial sexual exploitation. Stolen Youth aims to lead on this issue with youth outreach. They aspire to create a youth board with youth ambassadors that allow them to plug in to the abolitionist movement. Over the next five to ten years, Stolen Youth wants to create specialized vocational housing to meet the demands of the survivor community. They also want to create residential facilities that do not treat these child survivors like criminals. Further, they hope to have survivors inform programming. Their years of experience have taught them that victims did not choose this life. They believe that by working together, we can offer them a way out of one of the largest human rights tragedies of our time. Whether collaborating with local businesses, hosting town hall meetings, or simply engaging in conversations with everyone they meet, they aim to educate the public regarding the dangers of human trafficking and modern slavery.
81 Conchita Sarnoff Executive Director, The Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking The Alliance to Rescue Victims of Human Trafficking’s mission is to rescue sex trafficked girls in North America between the ages of six to 12. Providing a nurturing, loving, safe house for these children, they work to rehabilitate victims while raising awareness of child sex trafficking. Through their work, they aim to show that every sex trafficked child is adoptable and deserves to live in a loving, permanent home. The dark side of globalization has seen the simplification of child sex trafficking, something Conchita learned of on a trip to Mexico. This would inspire her to write the book Sex Slave in America, detailing the broad scope of sex trafficking in the region and efforts to abolish the practice. Through her years of research, she discovered that some of America’s largest cities are lacking the correct response mechanisms to this unique issue. Part of the problem Americans faces is a lack of awareness to the severity of the issue, particularly in regards to the lack of safe houses for rescue and rehabilitation. Through her efforts, The Alliance to Rescue Victims of Human Trafficking works to ‘re-home’ rehabilitated children with a loving family. This is an issue of particular importance to the program as some of the children may have been sold into sex trafficking by their parents or previous adoptive parents who no longer wanted them. This is in addition to The Alliance’s work to secure funding to open a new safe house for children in Washington D.C. Child sex trafficking and violence has recently come to the forefront of American consciousness thanks in part to the influx of children on the US-Mexico border. Attempts at escape are also risky as many of the coyotes (those who guide people across the border) charge a high price and work for the cartels. Many originate from Central America. They are running from gangs and drug cartels; some of the worst offenders in human trafficking. Kidnapped children are often sold online through classified companies. Although the US government is currently working with Yahoo, Facebook and Google to detect trafficking victims, a scan of pedophile networks shows that there are a number of sites that post and sell children with ease. All a pedophile needs to purchase the child is a credit card. Different from drugs or other tangible commodities, children can be sold and resold, many times within the same day. To exploit this practice, young boys and girls are being forcefully removed from their homes by gang members or corrupt local police officials to be sold at a profit for these illicit organizations. To combat the corrupt police officers on the payrolls the gangs and cartels, The Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking, is currently working to develop a plan and program to establish law and order in these countries. One of their top priorities is addressing the corruption in local law enforcement that is currently making human trafficking legal in the region. However, they realize that the trafficker is simply meeting a demand, he is not the pedophile. Further, some children are trafficked and killed for their organs as hospitals will pay a high price. It is not always for sex. Conchita stresses the need for a massive grass roots effort to raise awareness. She believes that everyone of us can do a great deal to help stop slavery simply by educating ourselves on the need to enhance international border security. She also emphasizes that there needs to be more done to force online service providers to comply with regulations.
82 Joe Schmidt Founder, ENDCrowd ENDcrowd is a community of abolitionists fighting to end slavery through harnessing the power of “the crowd.” Their mission is to raise funds for innovative projects that combat slavery in a variety of ways. Aided by a team of human trafficking and e-commerce experts, ENDcrowd, a project of the Audacity Factory, is a place where people can unite to not only learn about modern day slavery, but also to engage in the fight against it. Joe began his career in the for-profit entrepreneurship world, before turning his attention to how he could practically impact the world for good. To that end, he created Audacity Factory, a think tank and incubator whose goal is to help under-served areas with humanitarian aid, specifically in the spheres of slavery, marriage, adoption, and other areas of social justice. Joe's life was radically changed one day when he spoke to a woman who told him a story about a girl who was trafficked and forced into slavery. Joe was astounded and was so impacted by the severe injustice, he decided to do something about it. Joe began by financially supporting a local anti-trafficking organization, and through his involvement at the grassroots level, he realized the severe lack of funding allocated to the fight: just $100 million is spent annually to fight a $150 billion dollar illegal enterprise. As Joe became more involved, he saw the problems the abolition movement faces: visual depiction of trafficking is frightening and makes it difficult to relate to the problem, the issue can be complex and hard to understand, and the solutions are often vast and desperate. In pondering these dilemmas, Joe wondered if crowd funding could help solve some of them. He thought that perhaps by bringing people together into a community through education and then giving them a way to act, he could provide a way for many people to come together to change the world through supporting the abolition movement. And so ENDcrowd was born. The concept of ENDcrowd is to enlighten and educate people who are unaware of the severity of human trafficking and then provide a direct way for them to get involved through micro-donations. ENDcrowd first created a website which features extensive educational videos and blogs to teach viewers about different areas of the anti-trafficking movement. ENDcrowd then launched two to three projects in each category on the website in order to break down the issue into smaller pieces, making it far more accessible to the average person. ENDcrowd is different from other crowd-sourcing sites or anti-human trafficking organizations because of their choice to highlight the different sub-issues and provide a direct, concrete way for the average person to get involved in fighting human trafficking and modern slavery. Through providing an opportunity to choose how to support the abolition movement, Joe has successfully combined the strategies he learned as an entrepreneur with the well-tested, yet relatively new model of crowd-funding in order to create an organization that is already changing lives. Thus far, ENDCrowd has successfully micro-funded $10,000 for an eight-passenger vehicle for an aftercare home for minors, as well job training for two employees working with at-risk youth in California in conjunction with the organization Not For Sale. In the future, ENDcrowd looks to activate more social channels and move towards more peer-influenced projects. Although they are just getting started, ENDcrowd will make a positive impact on the world through their strategy to bring the public together to help end slavery, one project at a time.
83 Eric Shih Founder, Spendrise Spendrise is a new technology platform that mobilizes purchasing power in order to make changes in causes consumers are compassionate about. It is a powerful form of online campaigning built on the idea that paying consumers have a say in companies and in corporate social responsibility. Spendrise is a stage for consumers to stand on and actively participate and fight for transparency and labor rights within the global supply chain. Consumers can be a powerful voice in aiding organizations and other agencies in the struggle to end human trafficking and modern day slavery. Eric Shih first became involved in social justice with the Chinese Progressive Association. He worked to serve the Chinese immigrant communities that made up 25 percent of the population in the Bay Area. Eric’s time with them opened his eyes to the grueling labor violations that surrounded him in garment factories, restaurants and other establishments. Shih worked to raise the minimum wage, secure fair contracts and fight against exploitation. This experience made him wonder how consumers could also be agents of social change. This lead to the creation of Spendrise. First launched in April 2016, Spendrise targets the power of the consumer. Consumers make up 70 percent of the GDP, carrying a heavy impact and influence on the American economy. Eric realized that if he could somehow harness and consolidate that consumer power, it could become an unstoppable force in changing business practices and improving corporate social responsibility. He decided to combine two powerful ways this generation engages in its society: online petitions and online spending. By bringing these spheres together, it formed an unstoppable force that effectively targeted issues people cared about. Conditional pledging had consumers pledge to spend money if and only if companies instituted a change in their business practices. Whether for fair wages, cage-free eggs, or recyclable cups, Spendrise is taking advantage of the power of the dollar for good. If companies followed through and implemented these changes, the pledgers would receive gift cards to spend at these businesses. However, if companies do not make changes, the pledges do not go through and consumers are refunded. Eric has received far more embrace than opposition from businesses than expected. He realized that companies want to hear from their customers and improve their business model to increase profits. Establishments have come to recognize the importance of the consumer’s beliefs and how that ties into their spending. Businesses that do well are those with a strong CSR that helps to build a solid brand image. Eric has partnered with NGOs, policy makers and other organizations in order to be more aware of what the current issues are so that Spendrise can work to make a difference. One of these non-profits is Sustainable Fisheries Partnership. SFP is working to transform the fish industry’s business practices by having more supply chain transparency. From consumers, to NGOs, to governmental organizations, private enterprises and policy makers, Spendrise has this incredible capability to work across sectors and bring them together to work towards a common goal. Spendrise allows us as consumers share with companies what our beliefs are and what we are deeply passionate about. In order to address complex systemic problems like human-trafficking, it requires a multisector collaboration. With Spendrise’s platform, this cooperation is finally possible.
84 E. Benjamin Skinner Senior Vice President, Tau Investment Management E. Benjamin Skinner is an award-winning author and journalist who has been studying the U.S. and global political economies, specializing in modern-day slavery. His book, A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face with Modern-Day Slavery, articles and investigations have appeared in such outlets as Time, Newsweek International, The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and on ABC's Nightline, where one of his book's chapters was adapted into an Emmy-award-winning episode, "How to Buy a Child in Ten Hours." He is currently a Senior Vice President at Tau Investment Management. TAU Investment Management, LLC, is an active growth-equity investment firm that transforms global supply chains. By upgrading and de-risking supply chains, TAU uses capitalist solutions to solve capitalism’s worst failure – the undervaluation of human and natural resources. By investing to enhance the operational performance of manufacturers, TAU delivers value to all stakeholders, including investors seeking both superior returns and social and environmental benefits. Slavery is not a metaphor for underpaid workers. Slavery is about people that are disposable in the eyes of their employers, kept by threat of violence, and paid only to subsistence. It is very common that victims or their families are threatened or attacked if they go to authorities. The majority of slaves are in India and there are more slaves in South Asia than in any part of the globe, the best estimate being between 15 to 20 million. Approximately 800,000 to 2,000,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year. In the US alone there are about 14,000 to 17,000 people trafficked every year – a total of one new slave every half hour. Ben believes that in order to end slavery, we must attack fundamental cycles of dependence targeting businesses especially. Ben believes that individual stories capture the attention of the world better than statistics. Corporations can make changes effectively and in a manner that affects the lives of those in their supply chains to a greater extent than most governments can. TAU Investment Management is accelerating the inevitable by helping corporations that are ready to modernize, be more efficient and be more profitable. TAU has about 1,000 companies in their pipeline, where they are helping solve issues such as lack of trust between officials and customers, and shaping up businesses including through the reduction of energy, the increase of worker dignity and retention and the expansion of production, to name a few goals The key to change is using leveraging points with key decision makers. There is a hunger for a new investment model that accelerates supply chain transparency and provides products and services that are free of slave labor. In the past efforts were towards government policies to end slavery and that set the framework, but now the work needs to be with corporations to produce quick and efficient change. This is how Tau plans on ending supply chain slavery, and freeing workers around the world, once and for all.
85 Curtis Sliwa Founder & Chief Executive Officer, The Guardian Angels The Guardian Angels, started in 1979, uses volunteers, including inner-city youth, as safety patrols to help protect communities around the world. By making young people part of the solution rather than casting them as part of the problem, The Guardian Angels empowers youth to take pride in their communities and contribute to the safety of their neighborhoods, clean up their communities, and safeguard their streets. As a result, there are now more than 130 Guardian Angels safety patrol chapters throughout the world in 18 different countries, with new chapters started in new cities and countries every year. In the 1980s Curtis Sliwa formed the Guardian Angels as crime and violence exploded in the Bronx section of New York City. The city was doing very little to stop trafficking and to rescue the underage girls who were being recruited by the thousands. Pimps would take their money and keep them imprisoned. The Guardian Angels – unarmed, volunteer patrols – began to walk the streets of New York in order to deter crime. Now the Guardian Angels have spread to cities across the United States and around the world. Most of the trafficked victims that the Angels encounter are underage Asian or Korean women, and some from Central America and Eastern Europe. Many of the girls came to New York via the Port Authority, and were trying to escape dysfunctional situations at home. Traffickers kept them in hotels or motels in New Jersey and then brought them to New York to work in the sex industry. Unfortunately, the law rarely prosecutes or punishes these establishments. The election of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani means less and less street activity; however, there has been a movement behind doors and into massage parlors, many of which are in high-rise tenements that have been illegally subdivided. Owners often threaten women — many of whom cannot speak English — with deportation, harm of their families, and more. Guardian Angels walk into these “flash” massage parlors and confront the owners. The Guardian Angels partnered with a Lutheran priest who agreed to give the girls shelter and connect them with social services. Rescued girls are then able to seek permanent housing, employment, and more through the Lutheran church and other groups that come to their aide. Curtis has seen human trafficking unfold across America. The worst city for unsolved cases of missing women is Cleveland, Ohio. Ariel Castro was a well-known member of the community, serving as school bus driver. In the span of ten years, he was able to pick up three different women who suffered unspeakable torture. The women would be locked up in his home, but when he was at present he would allow them to roam around the house, and even open the door to tempt them. Eventually, he could leave the door wide open and none of the women would run, traumatized by their abuse. He would host guests and parties in his backyard and the women would not cry for help. From day one, the Guardian Angels searched for these missing girls. Upon their release, after one of the girls escaped with the baby she had been forced to have from being raped by Castro, the Angels discovered that the women had heard the group calling out for them as they patrolled the streets. One of the young women, Michelle Knight, as be honored at the Guardian Angels’ annual dinner and has become a valiant spokesperson for other women suffering in similar situations. Recently, Curtis held the International Convention of Guardian Angels in Florida, where sex trafficking is a huge problem. There, they decided to continue forming new partnerships and rescuing people with local groups and state authorities.
86 Nina Smith Founding Executive Director, GoodWeave GoodWeave International is an international non-profit organization working to end child labor in rug and carpet manufacturing. They believe their market-based approach to ending child labor can be replicated across other sectors. A leading abolitionist group, they provide educational opportunities and social services to children of carpet weavers. The GoodWeave label is the best assurance that no child was used in the making of any rug or carpet. Founded in 2001, GoodWeave began with a single principal standard: no child or forced labor should be allowed in the rug and carpet manufacturing. They utilize a market-based approach to incentivize the end of child labor; to disrupt widely accepted trends; free children; and liberate bonded laborers. At present, 85 percent of rugs are made in Asia. Many of the countries in the region have a history of using bonded and child labor. In addition, the industry is characterized by fragmented production. As fragmented supply chains are often associated with bonded and child labor, carpet and rug manufacturing are of particular importance to modern abolitionists. They begin their work by monitoring the production process that largely takes place abroad. In Afghanistan, the majority of the estimated 2 to 4 million laborers working in the carpet industry are women and children. In Nepal bonded and child labor is on the rise has increased in recent years as the Nepalese attempt to meet the demand for their number one export: carpets. And instances of child and bonded labor in India remain high. Working against that trend, they are currently partnered with 140 importers and retailers around the globe. In addition, they recently went through a multi-year process to update standards and better define exactly what their label means. By agreeing to work with GoodWeave, manufacturers ensure that every door is open for inspection. This is because abuse cannot be properly identified without wholesale access. Brands who license with them agree to meet their standards and pay licensing fees. These fees are then used to support GoodWeave’s social and rehabilitation programs. GoodWeave further arranges education for children under the age of 14. Children of carpet weavers must go to school or the parents cannot work for them. As a result, families are motivated to educate their children and not employ them. In addition, GoodWeave funds and operates day care programs for children of carpet weavers, getting them into education early while enabling their mothers to concentrate on their work. In Afghanistan, as many of the women work at home the organization instituted its first home schooling program for Afghani children. If for those over 14 years of age there are vocational training opportunities. Since 1995, GoodWeave have rescued 4,000 children and educated over 13,000. However, they say their largest impact has been in their monitoring initiatives. Rather than an annual audit, GoodWeave partners are subjected to random inspections. In spite of their tremendous success and diverse partnerships, many large corporations are still hesitant to get involved with a program like this. Many others still refuse to talk about bonded and child labor in public. As such, Nina Smith emphasizes the need for increased public awareness. Through blogging, social media or supporting partnerships initiatives, GoodWeave aims to demonstrate how buying power could end child slavery in the carpet industry. At present GoodWeave says that 168 million children remain laboring in supply chains. It is up to us to ensure that all of the carpets we purchase are slavery free. Make sure they have a GoodWeave label. After all, your buying power has the power to end child labor in the carpet industry once and for all.
87 Carol Smolenski Executive Director, ECPAT USA Ending Child Slavery At the Source (ECPAT) USA started out as an Asian-based organization, committed to ending travelers coming to the continent to sexually exploit children. By 1996, the organization realized that they needed to start conversations not only about sex tourism, but also about all forms of child sex-trafficking. ECPAT now conducts a broad band of work in 80 countries, working diligently to fight against commercial sexual exploitation through advocating for protective laws and policies and promoting corporate social responsibility. No figure exists to enumerate how many children are sexually exploited; the statistics widely used are old and obsolete, and in many ways unsupported by credible statistical methodology. ECPAT uses the number 100,000; the National Hotline for Missing and Exploited Children documented 500,000 reports of exploitation in 2013. This disparity illuminates the importance of ECPAT’s work towards protecting both prepubescent children and teenagers in their quest to abolish slavery at its source. After surviving unmentionable violence and trauma, children are often prosecuted and detained as criminals because of the ways in which they are treated under state law. Under federal law, however, anyone who is ‘induced to perform’ a commercial sex act is a victim of human trafficking. When this legislation passed in 2000, it was the first of its kind to provide federal-level assistance to insist that children should not be bought or sold and that they deserve the right to protection. ECPAT-USA works diligently to advocate on the state level to ensure that children are not prosecuted for crimes committed against them. After The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act passed in 2015, the ECPAT staff published an editorial in the Washington Post, encouraging prosecutors to view trafficking through this legislative lens. ECPAT continually publishes reports on how poorly some states handle child trafficking cases. They strive to support state Safe Harbor Laws and are now focusing on educating youth by providing students in NYC schools with tools to know what leads to exploitation and what rights they have to combat it. Parallel to their focus on children, ECPAT worked with policy makers, child protective services, teachers, and travel industries to create the Code of Conduct, focused on sex tourism in Sweden in 1998. Initially, it worked on passing legislation so that sex offenders who were abusing children outside of state borders could be prosecuted when they returned back to the United States; later, it spread to aiding in Private Sector work by outlining six steps to help prevent sexual exploitation in the industry. In 2004, ECPAT introduced the Code of Conduct at UNICEF in the U.S., and the Carlson Corporation became the first to sign on. Currently, they have 44 companies, associations, and non-governmental organizations on board with its regulations, as well as high profile companies like Hilton, Wyndham, and Delta. ECPAT originally encouraged Carlson to implement the Code in poorer countries overseas, but it did not take long to discover that commercial sexual exploitation was overtaking the U.S. ECPAT recently partnered with the American Hotel and Lodging Association Educational Institution to create an e-learning module in efforts to improve the Code; four major companies have licensed it and are offering it to staff at all of their properties, enabling employees to appropriately handle suspicious activity and strenuous situations at any time. Because their determination never ceases, ECPAT USA persistently succeeds in making effective changes to combat commercial sexual exploitation on the global sphere, and are currently seeking partnerships at universities to further grow their outreach efforts.
88 Vincent Stanley Director of Philosophy, Patagonia Patagonia is a recreation retailer that provides environmentally friendly outdoor apparel and gear. They began as a small climbing gear business, and their roots still lie in alpinism. Their mission is to build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. In 1965, Chouinard Equipment emerged as a small, innovative company that made quality alpinism gear. The company grew and began to sell active sportswear in 1970, a completely new concept at the time, and the clothing division was named Patagonia to evoke one's next far-flung adventure. Patagonia took off, and to this day, they retain the disciplined commitment to quality products first begun by Chouinard. Vincent Stanley has worked with Patagonia for over forty years, and he is a witness to the company's incredible growth and a shaper of its unique culture. In the 1980's, Patagonia moved all of their product sourcing to factories overseas. Until 1990, the executives never visited the factories, assuming that good quality cannot come out of bad factories. However, when they decided to make a visit, one of the factories would not allow them to come. They began to look into the issue and found numerous human rights violations within the system. One of the worst ways slavery is perpetrated in the garment industry is when factories with good conditions subcontract work to factories with bad conditions. This method lengthens the supply chain and causes much of the exploitation found in the clothing industry. In response to their new understanding as well as to President Clinton's "No Sweat" Initiative launched in 1993, Patagonia decided to take a stand and verify their supply chains. According to Vincent, in the late 1990's and early 2000's, Patagonia decided to open up their supply chain in order to decrease cost. Their move ended in disaster with a decline in quality and a loss of customer rapport. But Patagonia learned from their mistake. Many businesses believe one can only deliver on two out of three when it comes to quality, delivery, and price. Patagonia used to believe that idea, but realized after 10 years that it was necessary to focus on all three, and to have social responsibility as the crux that guides all three things. Therefore, they created a social responsibility division to ensure just business practices. Within the last decade, Patagonia has grown to focus on two main objectives in their social responsibility division. The first is to provide a living wage to the workers in their factories, a goal that had not been met in over 200 years in the garment industry. Since a living wage is defined as the amount necessary to support a family of four, the living wage is a vital standard to meet. Since it is not in the economic interest of the company or the consumer, Vincent emphasized how a living wage must be consumer-driven. However, since much of the public is unaware of the injustice that occurs in the garment industry, it is the onus of those who care to educate those who do not know about just consumer practices. The second goal Patagonia's social responsibility team has is to verify their supply chains through not only inspecting their first tier factories, but also their second and third tier subcontractor factories. This second objective was even harder to meet, as it requires extensive research, but Patagonia believes the hard work is worth it. It was shocking to Vincent when he learned that in their Taiwanese factory was essentially a hotbed of human trafficking, where immigrants contract work and pay thousands of dollars to a broker in order to find a job. Patagonia now works with Verite, an organization that works to fix the broken contractor system in Taiwan. Through their dedication to social responsibility, Patagonia has become a leader in the clothing industry: not only for their quality products, but also for their commitment to justice.
89 Ehb Teng Founder, Diginido Labs, The Wren Initiative & ATHack! Diginido Labs is a web application and mobile design/development studio that focuses on projects fostering social good. The Wren Initiative is a freelance group that disrupts the economics and flow of trafficking through technology and underground grassroots campaigns and by providing assistance to non-profits. ATHack! functions as a foundation for facilitating discussions and launching social impact projects between activists and technologists through social good hackathons, while working to collect reliable and credible data on human trafficking. What does the world look like without human trafficking? What are the prejudices that would remain? How must we redefine our approach of criminalization? How do we address “male culture”? And how do we help people fulfill their needs and self-actualize? Technology entrepreneur, artist, and musician Ehb Teng addresses these important questions, and many others, through his comprehensive activism efforts. The poignant images from his childhood spent watching his mother suffer abuse informed the direction of his life, pushing him to work towards ensuring that others don’t experience emotional, mental, and physical entrapment or violence. Ehb has since dedicated himself to focusing on the philosophical issue of freedom and what it means to be truly free. As an entrepreneur, he is a builder and a problem solver; as an artist, he understands the intangibles that link people at a human condition level. It is through these different roles that Ehb is able to recognize that human trafficking is one of the biggest problems regarding freedom in the world, and he constantly strives to make a benevolent difference. He sits on the boards of directors of Motivating Inspiring Supporting & Serving Sexually Exploited Youth (MISSSEY) and Hack for Big Choices, the latter organization of which internationally engages change makers to provide such talented entrepreneurs with tools to empower themselves in solving critical community issues. In the past three years, he has started three different organizations aimed at utilizing technology to target human trafficking. Through his work pioneering Diginido Labs, The Wren Initiative, and ATHack!, Ehb beleives that because gathering data on clandestine trafficking is incredibly difficult, solutions need to be sourced from a 360 degree perspective that brings all stakeholders to the table. Citing the currently available statistics is impermissible. There are many other problems afflicting the space: most data is self-reported by survivors skewing results; organizations falsely represent or do not understand how to properly acquire and apply data; date; many countries do not report data correctly or at all while others have poor methodological practices. Corporations, however, are starting to see responsible sourcing as something they need to address, and Ehb remains positive that the conversation regarding human trafficking will continually improve as the space incorporates proper statistics into its efforts. A slave free world, free from poverty and war and materialism, is possible to create. Ehb is at the forefront of the fight towards pushing society away from the male culture that perpetuates such human rights violations. Many boys grow up in highly competitive and violent environments, exposed to porn and a lack of education of gender equity and equality. Through his outreach efforts, Ehb wants to solve the data problem, create a “shelter academy” for trafficking survivors to self-actualize, and mandate first responders and medical professionals to help with data collection. After all, anything is possible when brilliant minds and technology collide.
90 Allison Trowbridge Partner, Just Business Founded in 2006, Just Business began as a project of the non-profit Not For Sale, as a response to human trafficking and labor exploitation, and has continued to invest in and incubate profitable and forward- thinking ventures dedicated to positive impact in the world. Allison began her career working for world-renowned anti-trafficking organization, Not For Sale, which was founded to bring cohesiveness to the modern abolitionist movement. Utilizing a holistic, all-encompassing approach, Not For Sale, bridges knowledge to action to encourage people to take notice of trafficking and the thirty million individuals enslaved around the world today. Allison believes that in order to address modern slavery holistically, engagement from the business community is necessary. Although non-profits play a crucial role in the abolitionist movement, direct services to victims are critical but those alone cannot end human trafficking in the long term. Aiming to prevent slavery from happening in the first place, Not For Sale launched a series of initiatives to raise awareness of human trafficking and affect real change. One of their first initiatives was the Montara Circle. Bringing together fifty global leaders, from major business leaders to sports stars and political voices, the Circle began by thinking of innovative ways to address this global challenge. Focusing on human trafficking and modern slavery in the South American Amazon region, these leaders broke up into several issue groups. Each addressed different aspects of combatting modern slavery and human trafficking. It was during this conference that the group - ‘Just Business’- came together as an incubator for social initiatives. Following the Montara Circle, Just Business realized that the for-profit community can effect great social change by incentivizing the work of abolitionists. Shortly after the conference, Just Business launched REBBL, a fair trade tea company that would source from the region and put their profits back into the abolitionist movement. Now carried in Whole Foods and other big supermarket chains in the United States, this tea will soon be available globally. Just Business also began investing in Tau Management. Defining themselves as capitalist solutions for capitalism’s failures, Tau Management seeks to increase manufacturers’ profitability and scale while improving the lives of workers and the environment. Tau Management believes that by creating the factories of the future, they can decrease costs by increasing efficiency and productivity. This work will thus provide an economic argument to the end of human trafficking that serves to strengthen the moral one. Organizations like Just Business and Tau Management continue to motivate other businesses to follow in their footsteps. In recent years, many others have followed suit. Organizations like: Bliss Complete Organics an ethically- sourced tea company, Raven + Lily, a clothing and accessory company, and the Nomi Network, an organization that creates economic opportunities for survivors of human trafficking. By empowering potential victims and survivors of human trafficking through sustainable employment, these types of for profit ventures can help themselves whilst incentivizing the global economy to end their plight. There have been four abolitionist movements in history, England in the 1800’s, the US in the mid-1800’s, Belgium in the 1900’s, and the one occurring at this moment in history. Freedom only comes with the total end of all forms of slavery from every corner of the earth. For the staff at Not For Sale, Just Business and their collaborating organizations, there is much more work to be done in that aim.
91 Ray Umashankar Director, ASSET India Foundation ASSET (Achieving Sustainable Social Equality through Technology) India Foundation aims to provide children of women in the sex-trade, and those rescued from sex trafficking, in India with basic information technology skills and secure employment opportunities. By harnessing the technical aptitude of this neglected and underserved population, ASSET hopes to fulfill the needs of a global market through using knowledge empowerment as a method of preventing children from entering the sex industry. When his twenty-three year old daughter returned from India and said she wanted to help human trafficking victims, Ray Umashankar realized there was an unmet need in his home country that he could help fill. After researching the issue further, Ray found that most organizations working with trafficking victims taught them basic, low-income skills such as selling bags and groceries, skills insufficient to support a family and get them out of the sex industry. In view of the low level of care offered to India's trafficking victims, Ray and his family got involved, and decided one of the most profitable skills to teach people is in the realm of information technology. ASSET's first center was started in 2007 in Chennai, India. After training girls from ages 16 to 18, ASSET would place the girls within companies in India. For example, a coffee chain hired many of ASSET's trainees for inventory and cash register management. ASSET collaborates with a variety companies to ensure they can utilize as wide a breadth of resources as possible to these girls. For instance, Infosys, a major software developer, has provided 100 used computers to ASSET for its center in Forbesgunj on the India-Nepal border where sex work is the only option for more than 150 girls in the 16 to 18 year old age group. ASSET also works to provide loans to former sex workers to allow them to prosper. For example, in the southern state of Karnataka, interest free loans totaling $100,000 have been provided by ASSET to 500 former sex workers to start income generating businesses so that their daughters and granddaughters will stay in school and not enter the sex trade. Through working with different companies, ASSET has helped many women find work that will allow them to live in freedom. In addition to their work with information technology, ASSET also works with other charitable organizations to address a wide range of aid for trafficking victims. In partnership with Nobel Laureate Kaila Satyarthi's organization, ASSET has been involved in the rescue, rehabilitation and education of more than 200 girls trafficked from tea estates in Assam. In addition, they are starting programs that will ensure that girls will stay in school and not fall victims to sex trafficking in 400 villages with the capacity to impact nearly 300,000 girls in the next three years. ASSET has also embarked on a major fundraising effort for building an emergency shelter for its partner Prajwala in Hyderabad by contributing $25,000. Prajwala to date has rescued more than 12,000 girls from sex trafficking and due to political and other pressures is being pushed out of its current location. Not only do women need programs to recover from being trafficked, but there are also more personal needs, which must be met as well. In rural areas of India, resources are scarce and people must learn to live without basic necessities, such as sanitary napkins. ASSET is investigating the manufacture and distribution of low cost sanitary napkins in rural India so that girls will stay in school and avoid those illnesses caused by using dirty rags and newspaper. Through their multiple outreach efforts, ASSET is creating enormous change in India. Their success is fueled by their passion for bringing the broken and ostracized to a place of healing, and they will continue to have great success due to their various endeavors to support victims of human trafficking.
92 Jeremy Vallerand President, Rescue: Freedom Rescue: Freedom International exists to rescue victims of human trafficking, to provide holistic aftercare services, and to prevent the growing travesty of exploitation. Rescue Freedom supports a growing network of service providers in six countries who are familiar with and sensitive to the culture and community within which victims live. By mobilizing resources, knowledge, and funding, Rescue Freedom works together with their partners to restore lives broken by sexual slavery through programs such as night shelters, safe houses, medical clinics, and vocational training. Jeremy traveled to India seven years ago with no real conception of reality of sex slavery in India. After visiting the Red Light District of Mumbai, one of the largest red light districts in the world with an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 women and children in enslaved, Jeremy recalls that he was broken and unable understand how that level of injustice could possibly exist in the world. Yet, despite the squalor, he also had the opportunity to see homes where survivors were rehabilitated. He returned to Seattle with a mission: if this were my family, what would I do for them? The collaboration between Rescue Freedom and the Climb for Captives program was born. Climb for Captives was an effort by Jeremy and his team to climb Mount Rainier and raise $14,000 in two-weeks for survivors of trafficking. Then, in 2012, Jeremy founded Rescue: Freedom, whose mission is to empower and restore the lives of sex trafficking victims and survivors. Focused mainly on hyper-local efforts, Rescue: Freedom believes that rehabilitation is best when embedded within the communities they serve. This enables the organization to build relationships while creating the environment of trust needed to bring and keep girls out of the flesh trade. While many people think that all that we need is to provide freedom to make it work; but Jeremy says this is rarely the case. They have to rely on the community for help. Creating the Faith Alliance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST), Rescue: Freedom has connected with service providers that focus on bringing international best practices, as well as services to aftercare facilities on the local level. While some aspects of the anti-trafficking community lends itself to centralization (such as operating a human trafficking hotline or changing a governmental policy), others efforts, such as aftercare services are much better served with a decentralized approach. By working in local communities to send children to school or college s well as to give adults vocational training, Rescue: Freedom is meeting both the needs of victims and their communities. However, Jeremy cites one specific area of disagreement between the anti-trafficking and free speech communities that he believes needs addressing: pornography. Jeremy believes that pornography has been couched in the ‘freedom of speech’ language for too long, and that the public does not have the will for a substantial discussion regarding it. For Jeremy, perhaps there is nothing more important than raising awareness and discussing the integral role pornography plays in human sex trafficking to end sexual exploitation in general. For the Rescue: Freedom team, empowering survivors is their ultimate goal. They want to highlight efforts that empower survivors including purchasing survivor-made products or donating to an aftercare provider near you. The next stages for the organization in the anti-trafficking movement include a consolidation of resources. By providing holistic aftercare services on the hyper-local level and empowering survivors via international support, Rescue: Freedom is working to prevent and end the growing travesty of exploitation.
93 Andrew Wallis Chief Executive Officer, Unseen Unseen works for towards the eradication of slavery wherever it is found by providing survivors with safety, hope and choice. They support and develop frontline projects that actively seek to help vulnerable people from becoming enslaved both in the United Kingdom as a destination country and in source countries. They also work to raise awareness of human trafficking and deliver training courses to inform and equip people to spot the signs of trafficking and subsequently know how to address it. Andrew became involved in the fight against trafficking eight years ago when he met with a police officer to see how they could provide support for victims. The officer was frustrated because trafficking had not been made a priority in the force, and the only policy he could execute in order to save victims, was to arrest. The officer indicated that safe survivor housing was necessary to provide support for these individuals, and he agreed to become a trustee of Andrew’s organization and connect him to anti-trafficking forces across the Kingdom. The charity began as not just a safety net for survivors, but also as an advocate to prevent slavery from happening. On the micro level they work directly with survivors giving them access to services and long-term vocational training and employment to help them grow their resiliency and self-esteem. On the macro level, Unseen helps train law enforcement in the identification of victims, fosters partnerships across the abolition space, and helps with the reporting of trafficking cases to authorities. Unseen is now focusing on partnerships with business community to help them tackle trafficking. Slavery affects businesses and with the growing demand from consumerism for corporate transparency, Unseen seeks to bring awareness and end to supply side slavery in their supply chain. As the world moves socially conscious consumerism, it is to their benefit and is value-added for businesses that take on this responsibility now. The biggest obstacle Unseen has faced thus far is the unwillingness of organizations to collaborate. There is an overwhelming amount of competition for funds and the production of useful information. But Unseen believes its commitment to work with the government and encourage businesses to talk with the government will eventually reap reward and foster the power to make real and lasting change. The end goal of Unseen as an organization is to put itself out of business - meaning to put end trafficking and live in a world without slavery, once and for all.
94 Jody Weiss Founder, The Sports Pledge The goal of The Sports Pledge is to engage the commissioners of sports leagues, the sports teams within these leagues, the athletes that benefit from playing, the sponsors who fund these sporting events, and the fans who attend or watch the game(s) to sign The Sports Pledge as a statement of solidarity in endorsing sportsmanlike behavior and in protecting women, children and vulnerable men. Along with this Pledge is an invitation to state an action that Pledgers will perform within 365 days to help ensure that women, children and vulnerable men are protected and are not used as objects of exploitation, violence, or servitude anywhere in the world. Jody Weiss began her fundraising work on the 1996 Olympics. Soon after she realized that she did not want to spend her life raising money for causes that did not mean anything to her. So, In the early 2000s Jody founded PeaceKeeper Cause-Metics, a cosmetic company focused on fundraising for human trafficking issues. However, as the message to end trafficking must also reach men and boys, Jody decided to meet them in the space they most love, sports. Jody launched the platform Sports Pledge For Freedom to combat systemic violence in the sports industry. Jody notes that sports have a long history of violence, in some cases hundreds of years, and outbreaks of violence peak on game days. Violence also comes in the form of sports investment. For example, in Qatar, there is one death every two days in order to construct the World Cup Stadiums. The Sports pledge was founded to combat all types of violence by enlisting athletes to commit to protecting vulnerable individuals worldwide. The Sports Pledge works by targeting professional, college, amateur and high school athletes in varying sports. Athletes can then use the site, SportsPledge.org, to invite sports leaders to sign the pledge and commit to protecting vulnerable women, children and men. The overall goal is to have athletes re-embrace the true ideals of ‘sportsmanship.’ All funds donated to the platform will go to awareness programs or to creating assorted tools that help athletes and fans better deal with frustration after games. In the next three years, The Sports Pledge wants to work towards the creation of legislation related to the violence committed by, or in the name of, athletes. Jody would also like to create ‘The Sports Pledge Commission on Violence in Sports,’ a roundtable with athletes and managers that addresses root causes. In addition, The Sports Pledge seeks the addition of language to player contracts that ensures a zero tolerance on violence. The Sports Pledge also hopes to recruit corporate and alcohol sponsors to change the language of sportsmanship. In general, The Sports Pledge hopes to create a new ‘cool’ idea of protecting the most vulnerable amongst us. While Jody admits the conversation on this issue is very different in the West then it is in the developing world, The Sports Pledge hopes to introduce tailor-made and culturally-appropriate language for pledges in Africa or Asia that will appeal to their norms and values. The Sports Pledge invites us to state an action and end the cycle of violence in athletics. It states, we are capable male and female athletes who choose to put the ideals of true sportsmanship and fair play ahead of worn out gender norms that do not allow either gender to thrive and excel.
95 Shandra Woworuntu Sex Trafficking Survivor & Advocate Shandra Woworuntu is a survivor of human trafficking. She strives to educate women and children as a strategy to prevent servitude, violence, abuse and trafficking. Slavery can happen to anyone, just as anyone can potentially become a trafficker. This is not an issue only for people in poverty. Shandra uses her power as a survivor to build a network of survivors, creating an environment where everyone can feel open to speak about their experiences without feeling judged. When Shandra managed to finally escape her traffickers, nobody believed her story and she was forced to live on the streets until she finally was able to convince a U.S. Navy soldier to call the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on her behalf. That same day, the FBI went to the brothel where she escaped and they saved the other women and girls. Many people do not believe that trafficking happens in the U.S., in our backyard, in our own neighbor’s homes. Trafficking is not just a few stories or a myth, it is a reality and there must be a movement to work with one another to bring it to an end. After a victim escapes and becomes a survivor of human trafficking, it is very important to consider economic support. Often, survivors end up in shelters and get a very small stipend (Shandra received just $25 per month for her years of pain and suffering). Once these survivors leave the shelters, their lack of education can make it very difficult for them to survive or find a job. Sometimes immigration status can cause them to be deported. Shandra emphasizes the importance of helping survivors learn how to earn a living and live a fulfilling happy life. It is very important to connect survivors with someone who can help with their immigration status, transitional housing, education and training, medical services, life survival information (for example, how to open a bank account or successfully interview for employment). In order for survivor services to improve we need to push for more funding to be able to empower them to grow and move past the shelter lifestyle in order to be able to choose where they want to live. Transitional housing is key to reintegrate survivors into the community, but not enough housing is available, and beds are one of the primary problems in survivor services that could be easily addressed through increased funding from the government, civil society and private donors. Education, for example, on identifying the signs of trafficking or the raising awareness about the existence of help hotlines is necessary in order to bring an end to trafficking. Survivors cannot be blamed for their situation and victimized a second time for what they experienced once they are taken into custody by authorities or freed from their traffickers. Organizations also need to shift their focus on what really matters and collaborate rather than fight each other for funding. Shandra hopes that by choosing to share her story with the world, more people will be made aware and take action against modern slavery and trafficking.
96 Lynn Zovighian Managing Director, The Zovighian Partnership The Zovighian Partnership imagines a Middle East that chooses entrepreneurship as the mechanism for solving problems. A family-owned social enterprise, they are working hand in hand with next-generation leaders to help facilitate this change in the region. They are building their Middle East peace by piece, in partnership with society. Collaborating with the Saudi Arabia based philanthropic organization, Ibtissam, they are fighting to eliminate modern-day slavery in our Middle East. Lynn Zovighian founded The Zovighian Partnership in 2014 as a social innovation incubator to build up and manage professional philanthropic opportunities in The Middle East. Leading the initiative along with her father, she dedicates most of her time to running The Partnership’s impact portfolio, called the Peace Collection, which focuses on furthering peace and empowering youth and women in the Middle East. Lynn is also Chief Executive Officer of Ibtissam, or Smile, a philanthropic organization in Saudi Arabia that aims to eliminate modern-day slavery in the region. One of their first projects was to conduct an audit of human trafficking in Saudi Arabia. Working in cooperation with the Royal Family, and after months of strategic analysis and investigation, they realized that they had to dismantle long-held notions about the slavery while working within the regional framework. In this volatile region, life is often subject to market fluctuations and regional crises. As such, there is a transactional characteristic to business in both the traditional and underground economies. That notion can be particularly damaging in the industries that do not have natural accountability or ethics in place. Further human trafficking occurs outside of traditional societal norms and thus remains largely hidden. For that reason, much of Middle Eastern society does not understand that slavery is a marketplace and an industry. Realizing this, The Zovighian Partnership and Ibtissam work throughout the region to build intellectual capacity and disrupt the social behaviors that incentivize slavery. Her recent efforts have included supporting refugee and vulnerable host communities in Lebanon, and working closely with the Yazidi community in Iraq. Child marriage remains a tempting proposition for many poor families throughout the region. In Lebanon, a nation struggling due in part to an influx of Syrian refugees, some see dowries as a secondary source of income. The Zovighian Partnership and Ibtissam have collaborated with the Clinton Global Initiative and the Pilosio Foundation for Building for Peace, to build a temporary school for girls in Lebanon. They realize that it is not enough just to educate girls, but it is also essential to empower these girls to be breadwinners in their families. To do so, they aim to disrupt the dowry system that incentivizes child marriage in the region. They also hope the school will also serve to diversify the economy of the surrounding areas, as there will be a need to hire staff for the institution. But, as long as the war in Syria continues, it will continue to spur many of the social and medical traumas behind human trafficking and modern slavery of today’s Middle East. Lynn’s Hakeem Initiative targets this issue. The Hakeem Initiative gives children in warzones access to premium emergency medical care for life threatening diseases and injuries. Supporting capacity building of local hotspots and documenting meaningful developments in their medical database, the Hakeem Initiative offers medical consultation, emergency surgeries, and long-term treatments to the children most affected by conflict. The Zovighian Partnership and Ibtissam are fighting to eliminate modern-day slavery in the larger Middle East by examining the Islamic State’s (ISIS) use of sex-slavery and human trafficking, child brides sold at the borders of Lebanon and Jordan, the marketplaces demanded by the oil and gas industries in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and the medical necessities for victims of such longstanding conflicts.
For more information on the Nexus Working Group on Human Trafficking & Modern Slavery visit TinyURL.com/NexusHTMS or follow us on Twitter & Instagram @NexusHTMS To sign up for our newsletter, visit TinyURL.com/HTMSSignUp To learn more about how you can get involved with our efforts, email Melissa Jane Kronfeld at MelissaK@NexusYouthSummit.org © The Nexus Youth Summit, 2016

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#EndSlaveryNow_SecondEdtition2016

  • 1.
    #EndSlaveryNow! A Discussion withActivists, Survivors, Influencers & Visionaries in the Modern Anti-Slavery Movement Second Edition 2016 Edited By Melissa Jane Kronfeld Editorial Team Juanita Adames Chloe Chang Simone Ispahani Megan Legband Jenna Manders Molly Mintz Kathryn Sommers Michelle Sucameli The Nexus Working Group on Human Trafficking & Modern Slavery
  • 2.
    This compendium isdedicated to the more then 45 million people enslaved around the world…. … who one day shall be set FREE.
  • 3.
    PREFACE The Nexus HumanTrafficking and Modern Slavery Working Group (Nexus HTMS) was launched in New York City during February 2014 with the goal of exploring the issue of modern day slavery and human trafficking in an effort to leverage the unique skills, talents, and access of the Nexus Youth Summit members to change domestic and international policy, promote partnerships among and between civil society and governments, explore options for social impact investments in this space, and end the plight of slaves and human trafficking victims. According to the United States Department of State, modern slavery is a crime, which includes forced and bonded labor, migrant labor debt bondage, sex or human trafficking, involuntary domestic servitude and child soldiering. Human trafficking, or the trafficking in persons, is when someone obtains or holds a person in compelled service. According to United Nations, human trafficking is a form of modern slavery that subjects children, women, and men to force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor. The Nexus Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery Working Group aims to mobilize resources and individuals to invest in high impact solutions that address the root causes of human trafficking and combat modern day slavery. We want to help advance the mission of organizations combating trafficking and modern day slavery; inspire next-generation donors and millennial activists to combat human trafficking and modern day slavery; and bridge knowledge gaps, silos and lack of resources with communities of dialogue and wealth to combat human trafficking and modern day slavery. In pursuit of our goals and in support of the movement, myself and my co-chairs Patrick Gage and Diana Mao have hosted 25 months’ worth of weekly information conference calls and webinars featuring more than 90 sessions and over 100 different speakers focused on how we will and can end modern slavery in our lifetime. The following volume compiles the full breadth of information acquired during the course of this project. Each session is featured as a one-page summary, including background on the associated organization and/or presenter. We hope you find it as inspiring as the past year and a half has been for us. Extra special thanks must be given to amazing women of the editorial team – Chloe, Molly, Juanita, Simone, Megan, Kathryn, Michelle and Jenna – without whom the project would have never come to fruition; to the founders of the Nexus Youth Summit - Rachel Cohen Gerrol and Jonah Wittkamper - for their guidance and inspiration; to the speakers featured in this compendium for participating in this unparalleled project; and to all the members and supporters of the Working Group who continue to fight tirelessly and ceaselessly against slavery each and every day. I hope the wealth of knowledge contained in the following pages educates you, stimulates you, but most importantly mobilizes you to join our fight to end modern day slavery once and for all… Because if not us, then who? Melissa Jane Kronfeld Founding Member & Co-Chair July 2016
  • 4.
    INDEX Ernie Allen International Centrefor Missing & Exploited Children Page 1 Christina Arnold Prevent Human Trafficking Page 2 Dan Austin 88 Bikes Foundation Page 3 Brooke Axtell Allies Against Slavery Page 4 David Batstone Not For Sale Page 5 Bazzel Baz The Association for the Recovery of Children Page 6 Ryan Bealer & Anna Jaeger Caravan Studios & Safe Shelter Collaborative Page 7 Robert Beiser Seattle Against Slavery Page 8 Ryan Berg The Aruna Project Page 9 Betsy Bramon U.S. Department of State Page 10 Jeffrey Brown, Jane Charles & Seirah Royin The Cast & Crew of the Film SOLD Page 11 Mary Caparas New York Asian Women’s Center Page 12 Guy Cave Geneva Global Page 13 Ambassador Lou C.deBaca U.S. Department of State Page 14 Gerardo Reyes Chavez, Laura Germino, Sanjay Rawal, Smriti Keshari & Christie Marchese The Cast & Crew of the Film Food Chains & The Coalition for Immokalee Workers Page 15 Kay Chernush & Michele Clark ArtWorks For Freedom Page 16 Father Leonir Chiarello Scalabrini International Migrant Network Page 17 Britten Chroman, Genevieve Kimberlain & Tish Lara David Lynch Foundation Page 18 Lori Cohen Sanctuary For Families Page 19 Brooke Crowder The Refuge Page 20 Mary David Human Rights Advocate Page 21 Justin Dillon Made In A Free World Page 22 Reverend Que English The New York Faith-Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking & Domestic Violence Page 23
  • 5.
    Nathaniel Erb Worthwhile: GO& Dashing Emancipation Page 24 Judge Laura Safer Espinoza, Laura Germino & Sean Sellers Fair Food Standards Council & The Coalition for Immokalee Workers Page 25 Thomas Estler Freedom Ladder Page 26 Tim Fain & Jacob Marshall Violinist / Composer & MORE Partnerships Page 27 Terence Fitzgerald International Justice Mission Page 28 Katie Ford Freedom For All Page 29 Alison Friedman U.S. Department of State Page 30 Tina Frundt Courtney’s House Page 31 Patrick Gage Carlson Hotels Page 32 Cara Gardner & Stacie Reimer Amara Legal Center Page 33 Sarah Gardner Thorn Page 34 Ensemble Cast Girl Be Heard Page 35 Pearl Gluck Writer & Director of the Film The Turn Out Page 38 Molly Gochman The Red Sand Project Page 39 Sarah Godoy & Rebecca Sadwick UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation Page 40 Elca Grobler Red Alert (India) Page 41 Nick Grono The Freedom Fund Page 42 Laura Hackney AnnieCannons, Inc. Page 43 Fergus Hanson Global Fund To End Slavery Page 44 Brooke Hathaway End Slavery Now Page 45 Lima James LifeWay Network Page 46 Duncan Jepson Liberty Asia Page 47 Patricia Jurewicz Responsible Sourcing Network Page 48 Siddharth Kara Harvard University Page 49 Mara Kelly United Way Worldwide Page 50 Emily Kennedy Marinus Analytics & Traffic Jam Page 51
  • 6.
    Kevin Kish Bet TzedekLegal Services Page 52 Vandana Kripalani Bombay Teen Challenge Page 53 Meghan Lazier & Robin Newman Say No More Page 54 Laura Lederer Centurion Global Page 55 Jimmy Lee Restore NYC Page 56 Rachel Lloyd Girls Educational & Mentoring Services Page 57 Danielle Lohan & Amanda Weikel The Samaritan Women Page 58 Stephanie Lorenzo Project Futures Page 59 Diana Mao Nomi Network Page 60 Dr. Shawn MacDonald Verite Page 61 Ed Marcum Humanity United Page 62 Peter Mihaere Stand Against Slavery Page 63 Jessica Minhas I’ll Go First Page 64 Kenneth B. Morris Jr. Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives Page 65 Sarah Jane Murray & Benjamin Nolot The Nefarious Trilogy Page 66 Dr. Padmini Murthy New York Medical College Page 67 Brad Myles Polaris Project Page 68 John Nehme Allies Against Slavery Page 69 Michele Newsome Florida Baptist Children’s Homes Page 70 Lisa T.D. Nguyen The Senhoa Foundation Page 71 Consolee Nishimwe Rwandan Genocide Survivor, Author & Activist Page 72 Yvonne O’Neal Episcopal Diocese of New York Task Force Against Human Trafficking Page 73 Emily Pasnak-Lapchick U.S. Fund for UNICEF Page 74 Morgan Perry Exodus Cry Page 75 Gerardo Porteny Young Minds for Gender Equality Page 76 Andrea Powell FAIR Girls Page 77
  • 7.
    Alezandra Russell Urban Light Page78 Raleigh Sadler Let My People Go Page 79 Sophia Sanders Stolen Youth Page 80 Conchita Sarnoff The Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking Page 81 Joe Schmidt ENDCrowd Page 82 Eric Shih Spendrise Page 83 E. Benjamin Skinner Tau Investment Management Page 84 Curtis Sliwa The Guardian Angels Page 85 Nina Smith GoodWeave Page 86 Carol Smolenski ECPAT USA Page 87 Vincent Stanley Patagonia Page 88 Ehb Teng Diginido Labs, The Wren Initiative & ATHack! Page 89 Allison Trowbridge Just Business Page 90 Ray Umashanker Save the Children Page 91 Jeremy Vallerand Rescue: Freedom Page 92 Andrew Wallis Unseen Page 93 Jody Weiss The Sports Pledge Page 94 Shandra Woworuntu Sex Trafficking Survivor & Advocate Page 95 Lynn Zovighian The Zovighian Partnership Page 96
  • 8.
    1 Ernie Allen Founder, InternationalCentre for Missing & Exploited Children Ernie Allen has worked for over 30 years fighting for the rights of missing and exploited children. He founded the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children heading a global missing children’s network of 22 countries. Having served in government and organizational operation for decades, Ernie continues consulting in the abolitionist movement. Ernie’s introduction to human trafficking and modern slavery began some 30 years ago. While serving in government in Kentucky, he began hearing of children disappearing from group homes and shelters. Law enforcement largely ignored the issue, while social services organizations were limited in their capacity to help. With high profile cases like that of Adam Walsh and others gripping the nation, then President George H. W. Bush sent Vice President Dan Quayle to Atlanta, highlighting the significance of the problem and the commitment of our government to solving it. At the request of the Justice Department, Ernie consulted on the murder investigations. In 1981 Ernie assisted in facilitating a national conference on the crisis of missing and exploited children. Creating a 29-point action agenda, they pursued a plan that would address a whole range of problems associated with this issue. In 1982, Congress enacted the Missing Children's Act, which enabled the entry of missing child information into the FBI's National Crime Information Center database. Two years later, The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was founded. After thirty years, Ernie says that although we have stronger laws and a more organized response to these events, there is still so much more to do. The single greatest challenge is that human trafficking remains a business throughout the world. Still dramatically under-recognized and underreported, Ernie says it is in part because of myths that perpetuate stereotypes about this crisis such as: trafficking only happens overseas or in high crime areas; victimized children are criminals wish to pursue sex work; or that traffickers are easily discernible from ‘good’ members of society. As a result, the public and law enforcement agencies often do not understand the nuances that perpetuate this industry. Government shelters are inadequate to deal with this problem. They do not have the services or the capacity to assist victims trying to escape. Another huge issue facing abolitionists is that sex- trafficking victims are subject to prosecution as sex workers in many areas around the country. The threat and reality of jail for these men and women can inhibit their speaking out. Ernie stresses that the public needs to understand the migration that is taking place in the human trafficking industry. Once hidden in plain sight, traffickers now lure new victims and facilitate their exploitation by using sites like Backpage.com. The internet has expanded the influence and reach of traffickers. It is for this reason that Ernie continues fighting for more studies, better data, and more attention placed on this issue. He believes that through research, we can force policy makers to admit the true depth of the problem. This, he says, will hasten the development of new laws and services that will address the needs of victims and survivors. At present, institutions around the globe allocate only $124 million dollars a year to fighting human trafficking. Ernie is now working to create a foundation that would dramatically increase that number. He aims to appropriate $250 million dollars annually matched by donations from governments and individuals. This money will be spent globally to build capacity around the issue, from increasing activities that help victims and survivors, to advocating policy changes and empowering law enforcement. along with the ways we combat it. This is not a new issue, Ernie reminds us, nor is it a fair fight but we must continue to use our voices and our money to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.
  • 9.
    2 Christina Arnold Founder, PreventHuman Trafficking Prevent Human Trafficking (PHT) is a Washington, D.C., based non-profit organization working to build a bridge between South East Asia and the United States to prevent human trafficking. PHT empowers individuals, organizations and governments to tackle the root causes of human trafficking through direct support and technical assistance and the organization uses its expertise and networks to promote best practices and inspire sustainable solutions in the movement to prevent human trafficking. Christina Arnold is a survivor. Raised by her father’s Christian cult in Thailand, her formative years were shaped by working all the time, taking care of other children, and cooking for 70 people all while being watched constantly. She was never paid for the work she rendered and finally escaped the cults clutches in the late 1990’s with the help of her grandparents. Back in the United States, Christina began teaching English to Thai orphans, where she says, she began to understand their stories as a facet of an international crime. Yet, when she went to speak about survivor’s experience’s on Capital, again she was rebuffed. Now Christina now leads Prevent Human Trafficking, one of the oldest anti-human trafficking organizations in the United States. Founded in 1999, Prevent Human Trafficking was only the second organization in the United States to educate people and address the root causes of trafficking. Her experiences in Washington, D.C. led her, Chris Smith, and Senator Paul Wellstone to sponsor the “Trafficking Victims Protection Act.” Passed in 2000, victims of trafficking who testify against their traffickers are offered T-Visas. The key for prevention says Christina, is tackling debt bondage. Second or third generations of families are still paying off loans to traffickers. The complexity within which human traffickers operate cannot be fixed simply by buying freedom. Prevent Human Trafficking’s Thailand Program aims to prevent the avenues within which traffickers work. Through their microcredit program, Prevent Human Trafficking provides funds for families who they know traffickers generally target. These funds ensure the safety of their children by preventing human traffickers from positioning trafficking as an easy way to make money. The families are either not sophisticated enough to know their children will end up in a brothel, or lack the funds to have a viable alternative. In a country that survives political insatiability often and constant socio-political interruptions, prosecution is often difficult, when and if it happens at all. For the children they cannot prevent from going into trafficking, Prevent Human Trafficking has also created a program to rescue them. Prevent Human Trafficking’s Leadership Program places rescued child victims of trafficking in a two-year training program. The children are taught to read, speak, and write Thai as well as English. They are then instructed in their legal rights and Thai law. But without major changes in Thai society, the effects of these can be difficult to sustain. The head investigator of Thailand’s anti-human trafficking task force has been given asylum in Australia due to death threats. And, as many economists note, trafficking is often economically driven and by providing innovative sociocultural and economic approaches to combatting it, Prevent Human Trafficking is on the forefront of advocacy, recovery, rehabilitation, and reintegration.
  • 10.
    3 Dan Austin Executive Director,88bikes Foundation The 88bikes Foundation endows bicycles to girls throughout the world, especially the heroic survivors of human trafficking. They partner with vetted, locally-run non-governmental organizations, purchase bicycles from local vendors, hire local labor and connect each survivor one-to-one with her donor. It is all part of what the organization refers to as Joy–Based Philanthropy - elevating happiness to a human need. Since 2007 they have endowed nearly 4,000 bikes to youths in seventeen countries. Dan and his brother founded 88bikes after taking a bicycle ride across Cambodia. The brothers wanted to give away their bikes to orphans, but there were 88 children in need. They started a fundraiser and gave 88 bikes away, but they wanted to do it again. When the Foundation gives a bike to the young women, she is also provided with a picture of her sponsor and world map of where the sponsor lives. Creating the circuit is important philosophy: the donor and the recipient are equal, and this creates a circuit of philanthropy. The bikes also inspire entrepreneurship. For example, Elma from Serbia loaned her bike at $1 per ride to her neighbors. 88bikes supports these entrepreneurial behaviors. Six months after a bike endowment, volunteers follow-up to measure the girls’ happiness. The pictures and smiles keep the organization going. Bikes break down, but that moment of happiness has an impact that is greater than we realize. You would never know the pain of their past by virtue of their optimism and ambitions. Individuals from a powerful and vibrant donor base donate all the bikes. The donors come from every sector of society to raise the funds necessary to continue to purchase and distributes bikes. For every $88 the foundation purchases a local bike to give away. They collaborate with other organizations in the Philippines, Cambodia, Serbia, Bihar, Northern India, and Southeast Asia. 88bikes would love to spread their impact in Cambodia and India and to Indonesia, Myanmar, Kenya, and Ethiopia. Every location offers challenges, but strong partners on the ground can help mitigate those challenges. The foundation wants long-term viability for their partners. If a bike breaks down, 88bikes replaces it, so partners must track progress on the ground and the effects that the bikes have on the children and their communities. For example, in an Afghan village the organization gave bikes to the boys but asked to allow the girls to ride too. Everything is volunteer-based now, but the foundation wants to have projects funded and to hire folks to execute faster on the ground. Dan recounted one story about a Serbian girl named Saka, who was trafficked to a brothel in Kosovo where she was chained to a room and raped 35 times a day. Once she was liberated and received a bike, she told the partners that it was the first time she felt beautiful. Dan feels that the focus of his work should be on the future, not the sadness in their past because they are defined by something more than their trauma. Dan fights for a world of equality, where people understand the struggles that fellow human beings are going through; a world in which we are all vulnerable and which we all take care of each other.
  • 11.
    4 Brooke Axtell Director ofCommunications & Engagement, Allies Against Slavery Allies Against Slavery develops community networks that build slave free cities. To that end they, engage and mobilize the community through advocacy, education and activism initiatives while supporting and empowering local survivors of human trafficking alongside their partners and coordinate the Slave-Free City Network. They believe in pursuing justice for the exploited and enslaved. Brooke became an advocate for victims of human trafficking after being exposed to child pornography in her own youth. Not realizing that she was a victim of trafficking, it was not until years later when she was connected to a counselor that she began to heal from this experience. Her history taught her the important connection between domestic violence and human trafficking, particularly in the United States. Brooke says that trafficking victims in the United States often do not self-identify; a problem she continued to see years later in her work. Brooke’s experiences have affirmed to her the importance of having conversations about domestic violence and human trafficking publicly so as to engage the public and increase awareness. She believes that we must be committed to deepening the conversation around the spectrum of sexual violence, as there are lots of entry points for identifying the presence of other forms of exploitation. To that end, on a mission to continue her advocacy, she was invited to speak publicly as a survivor and advocate for victim’s domestic violence at the 2015 Grammy Awards. By sharing her story on such a public platform, she believes she inspired women to reach out and seek help. She started receiving messages from women all over the US. Some identified as victims of domestic violence, others of sexual assault or trafficking. Many had overlapping experiences. Her work has only strengthened her belief that survivors deserve to be loved and heard. In January 2015, to continue her efforts she joined Allies Against Slavery in Austin, Texas. Allies Against Slavery seeks to end slavery in Austin. They view trafficking and slavery as a systemic problem that affects economies, institutions and individuals. As such, in order to accomplish a slave free city, they map out spheres of influence by leveraging the synergy of grassroots and strategic initiatives. Through this, they aim to build a holistic model that addresses the entire problem. They work with the University of Texas to map Austin's Slavery Footprint while gathering a more accurate understanding of the local nature and prevalence of the problem. Allies then coordinates with a network of stakeholders from eight key sectors to fill gaps identified in the local continuum of solutions. By developing partnerships across in Austin, they are able to view human trafficking in a strategic way so as to create shared definitions of the problem and of what the solution is going to look like as well as creating a platform for shared accountability. For the organization, the end game is ending human trafficking and not the sustainability of one non-profit. In that regard, Allies provides financial assistance to partnering organizations to aid survivors during recovery. They also host sponsored events that allow them to provide back to school supplies, summer camp packs and other support initiatives to survivors and their families. By working with their partners they are better able fill the gaps in care for local survivors of human trafficking. Brooke emphasizes the need for short-term shelter, counseling and intervention as well as reintegrating survivors into society, while simultaneously preventing new victims. Allies Against Slavery will continue to partner across sectors, so that one-day they can say that in Austin, no one is being trafficked or enslaved.
  • 12.
    5 David Batstone Founder, NotFor Sale The work of Not For Sale is to provide survivors and at-risk communities in five countries (the United States, the Netherlands, Peru, Romania and Thailand) with safety and stability, education, and economic opportunities. To break the cycle of exploitation, Not For Sale provides survivors and at-risk communities with shelter, healthcare, and legal services, first attending to the most basic needs of individuals who have suffered extreme trauma. They believe that once their physical and emotional well being are established can they begin to work together toward long-term opportunities for education and employment. David became passionate about trafficking when he discovered that one of his favorite local San Francisco restaurants was using slave labor, having trafficked over 50 children through this one establishment. David decided to take a year off to travel and learn more about trafficking, and upon his return he wrote a book to generate a broader base of awareness. This was the beginning of Not For Sale. For the next three years he held hundreds of campaigns in 85 cities to raise awareness. Awareness however, David learned, is not enough. The next step was to hold companies responsible. Not For Sale began talking to for-profit entities and creating tools to hold them accountable for their manufacturing and souring practices. Because slavery is embedded in the supply chain, many large companies have proved unresponsive in order to avoid what is perceived as additional marginal costs. But change needs to happen in regards to the internal protocols in order to make strides in the broader corporate behavior. David wanted to try to create a model where justice and compassion are embedded in business. The charity, Not for Sale, needed to become sustainable so that David could focus on funding the issue internally. In 2006 David launched his first company REBBL Tonic, which became a positive model for creating the jobs David was asking other companies to create, and a positive model for fighting exploitation and trafficking. Embedded in the marketing of the project is the concept of justice in the consumer lifestyle and the awareness that transformation is possible once people receive dignity in their lives. REBBL Tonic (among his other projects) funds the work of Not For Sale. David now has eight for-profit companies in his portfolio, all aligned with Not For Sale, creating jobs for victims and funneling 2.5 percent of the gross revenue of every product back to Not For Sale. Not For Sale is now working on conducting and sponsoring more studies on the relationship between the lack of economic opportunity and injustice. In the next five to 10 years they will continue to work on increasing transparency. David is working on a program of self-empowerment for a victim that includes a sales model, which measures change in individuals to make sure they are more empowered when they leave the program. The program is all encompassing and includes a thorough understanding of the role played by a secure shelter, the community around the victim, and skill based training. With this tool, he can assess the proficiencies and proclivities of these individuals and help them best achieve their goals. Now, David is turning his attention to Europe in order to create creating more demand for the products, and more jobs for survivors.
  • 13.
    6 Bazzel Baz Founder &President, Association for the Recovery of Children The Association for the Recovery of Children (ARC) is an organization comprised of former and active Intelligence, Military, and Law Enforcement personnel, dedicated to the recovery of missing and exploited children - both foreign and domestic. At their core, the members of the ARC believe that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Therefore, they are committed to recovering abducted children, and have done so with a 100 percent success rate. A former Marine and Central Intelligence Agency Paramilitary Case Officer, Bazzel Baz has seen violence in many forms. However, for him the most poignant reminder of the cost of violence around the world is its effect on children. In the civil war in Somalia during the 1990s, Bazzel discovered two little girls cowering in the debris of war; his heart ached for the devastation these girls faced in the midst of the chaos in which he fought. Bazzel served his country because he is a patriot and believes in the importance of saving the lives of fellow soldiers. His core motivation is to do good in the world. However, when he saw the collateral damage of war in the eyes of those two girls, Bazzel realized he had to do more. He found a place in New York City that would shelter the two girls, and so he returned to Africa to rescue them. As he researched the issue, he realized that very little was being done to help similar children because of judicial and financial constraints. The problem seemed enormous and almost impossible to face, but Bazzel acted because he asked himself: If I do not, who will? Bazzel began the Association for the Recovery of Children because he is passionate about doing rather than simply knowing about abolition. He believes knowledge leads to responsibility, and he feels responsible to act using his gifts and experience in order to rescue children from hostage situations. While organizations can put up posters and advertise to end trafficking or to save missing children, nothing will happen if we individuals do not act on the information they acquire. Bazzel believes that without boots on the ground freeing children, there will be no freedom. In addition to taking action, Bazzel also believes in holding people accountable. While raising awareness about the injustice of human trafficking is important, slavery will not end until more people stand up and do something about it. Although most do not have the ability to be able to bring captives home, pursuing practices that lessen slavery can make a difference. By consuming pornography, Bazzel points out, individuals are furthering the industry of human trafficking. He urges all of us to ask ourselves: are we personally doing everything we can to end human trafficking? He encourages everyone to teach their friends and family about the reality of human trafficking, donate money to organizations like the ARC that are actively working to end human trafficking; and to keep people and governments accountable regarding practices that fight slavery. This includes refusing to engage with pornography, verifying supply chains, buying fair trade items, and volunteering your time and talents to abolitionist organizations. Bazzel believes in the power of acting strategically to bring about change in the world. He and his team of unpaid volunteers go around the world to save children, putting to work the wealth of experience gathered serving in the world’s best trained militaries and most elite fighting and intelligence forces. In addition to rescuing children, ARC partners with organizations to help rescued children be restored from trauma. Although ARC is successful, Bazzel wants to rescue more children and find more pathways to encourage abolition through legislation and education. Because of his passion, fueled by his love of justice, children, and his faith in God, Bazzel is an inspiration to a new generation of freedom fighters.
  • 14.
    7 Ryan Bealer &Anna Jaeger Chief Technology Officer & Program Intern, Caravan Studios; Creator of Safe Shelter Collaborative Caravan Studios is a division of TechSoup Global dedicated to using technology to create applications targeted on fixing societal problems. The company pioneered The Safe Shelter Collaborative as a project designed to improve access to shelter for survivors of trafficking. Supported by Polaris and the Sanar Wellness Institute, among other organizations, the Safe Shelter Collaborative increases the capacity of shelters to help survivors, provides technology to maximize the ability to find available shelter beds, and acts as a means to source funding for hotel rooms as emergency shelters when appropriately necessary. Statistics show that within forty-eight hours, an exploiter will approach 1/3 of newly homeless youths. 80 percent of trafficked youth are homeless when they are trafficked; vulnerable, scared, and without a safe place to sleep, these adolescents are willing to make drastic compromises like participating in “survival sex” in order meet the circumstances they are faced with. Most shelters use outdated technology, and don’t have enough beds to adequately provide for those who need them. Anna and Ryan are working tirelessly to counteract these issues by using technology in addressing the hierarchy of needs involved in homelessness. The technology the Safe Shelter Collaborative uses allows for trafficked persons to find shelter even if their specific shelter cannot house them immediately. The application inputs basic survivor demographic information into an online questionnaire without collecting any personally-identifying information, and subsequently submits an alert via email, text message, and/or automated voice call to all the shelters in the local region, inquiring about whether the other shelters have an available bed for the rescued person. This dramatically cuts down on the amount of time spent scouring shelters manually looking for available space and almost eliminates the re-traumatization of the survivor needing to recount his or her story over and over again. If there are absolutely no beds available at any geographically accessible shelter, the last resort step is to use the SafeNight application to find a donor-paid-for hotel room for the survivor to spend the night in. The Safe Shelter Collaboration was launched in 2015; and now seventeen agencies in New Jersey have begun using the service. The median shelter response time has been 6.8 minutes, and every request for a bed was met with at least one response of “Likely Bed” in less than thirty minutes. Currently, the technology’s “Locate A Bed” feature is live in the Bay Area and New Jersey, while the “Fund A Hotel” feature is available in New Jersey, California, Colorado, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Texas. Agencies are responsible for managing survivors cases and solidifying relationships with them, so while they do not have any direct feedback from survivors on how they feel about the technology, Anna and Ryan are positive that their efforts are making a powerful, exceptional impact.
  • 15.
    8 Robert Beiser Executive Director,Seattle Against Slavery Founded in 2009, Seattle Against Slavery gives human trafficking survivors in the community an opportunity to take their skills and abilities and put them to use. Aided by a community board of advisors who are survivors of sex trafficking, the organization engages in a diverse array of tactics to combat modern slavery. Advocacy work, educational services, interventions, policy formations, and community mobilizations are just some of the aspects of the survivor-based work the organization undertakes in its efforts to create a an aware, education, compassionate, and slave-free society. Robert Beiser was working at Microsoft when he realized how strongly he wanted to make an impact on international crises and situations in his city, Seattle. He quit his job and got involved on advocacy campaigns with Repair the World as a facilitator for people who cared about issues like gender and racial equality. In 2010, he had the opportunity to create a service-learning program with an organization in Thailand, and learned about the local economic development in the rural areas of the country. Eye-opening and emotional interactions with Thai community members who were overworked and abused made the experience exponentially pivotal. Specifically, talking with a fifteen-year-old girl Muslim girl from Northern India who had been sold and taken to Thailand led Robert to the decision to join the fight against human trafficking back home. When thinking of trafficking, it is easy to stigmatize developing countries like Thailand as the only places where slavery exists. Regardless, exploitation is just as much of a domestic issue as it is an international issue, and Robert’s work at Seattle Against Slavery reinforces this fact. The organization is structured to be led by survivors of trafficking and service providers, ensuring that the model is informed by those that are directly benefitting from it. Mobilizing sixty to eighty educational volunteers annually, Seattle Against Slavery trains public groups like the Rotary Club and the Junior League by request, and also incorporates homeless youth, immigrant health providers, and cities themselves into their advocacy and prevention educational outreach efforts. Receiving funding from private donors enables Seattle Against Slavery to focus on policy, translating their efforts into lobbying and having meetings with mayors and other legislature officials across the nation. Activating businesses, schools, faith-based organizations, and local municipal agencies allows Robert to engage the wider community in joining the anti-slavery movement. One way in which Seattle Against Slavery spreads awareness of enslavement is through its No One Should Be Forced posters, designed with help from anti-trafficking providers and survivors. Notably, they do not use the term “human trafficking” on the flyers, and as a result of this multi-state initiative, there has been a 250% increase in calls to the Polaris Hotline, which signals to Robert that their efforts are making an impact. On the other hand, however, a growing number of people are being exploited, and that increase is definitely connected to economic disparities. To account for increased homelessness and higher rates of sexual assault and youth prostitution, the organization positioned its prevention curriculum to offer a broader range of resources tailored to different audiences with different needs. Currently, Robert and the organization’s other staff coordinators are focused on disrupting the commercialized sex industry unfolding on web-based platforms like OKCupid. Impassioned by the success of their initiatives, they continue to tirelessly expand their efforts, spreading their educational format to start conversations that will increase awareness, understanding, and the prevention
  • 16.
    9 Ryan Berg Founder &President, The Aruna Project The Aruna Project exists to bring and sustain freedom to those exploited in the brothel system through employment marked by holistic care. By mobilizing thousands to take part in Aruna Runs across the US, everyone can be a party of bringing freedom to the enslaved. By offering employment to those who have stepped into freedom, everyone can sustain their freedom and restore the liberating power of choice. Eight years ago, a news story about children rescued from sex trafficking changed Ryan life. Shortly thereafter, he began his work to end human trafficking by traveling to brothels in India. Seeing for the first time the inhumanity of a slave who is sold repeatedly, Berg decided he needed to create sustainable employment for these women. First however, he needed to understand how sex trafficking works. Berg went back to the brothels in the Red Light District and interviewed the leaders of multiple organizations working to understand this problem. He saw how the process evolved from selling women in and around the country, to forcing them into prostitution. Interviewing a number of survivors enabled Ryan and to understand somewhat of how this problem thrives. The Aruna Project found poverty to be the driving force behind the trade. The survivors Ryan met shared similar difficulties. It is extremely difficult to get survivors adequate employment simply because there are so many people and so few jobs. For women who are 18 and older there is a conception that they legally considered and ‘freely chose,’ prostitution as a profession. To combat the stigma and end the cycle, Ryan founded The Aruna Project, to get people ordinary involved in the fight to free women from bondage. The Aruna Project’s solution is to run, free, empower, employ. Ordinary people throughout the world will run in an Aruna 5K run and/or walk event in honor of an exploited woman and in order to raise awareness and the funds necessary to end this type of exploitation. This money will then be in use to help bring then sustain her freedom. Aruna has more than 20 registered runs throughout the continental United States and they are hoping for 25-30 more by the end of the year. All money raised at these events is sent to projects in India. These projects include skill training, literacy classes, and a significant counseling process. The last landing point is employing the women. The Aruna Project runs a production facility in India for survivors to create the products that participants receive at Aruna races. The employment phase is in its initial stages but in the future, Aruna wants to create sustainable work environments in very poor areas to make sure people do not have to go into either sex work to begin with. For the future, The Aruna Project is trying to connect each product to a story. They want to become a “story factory,” whether via print or film, because stories do wonders in engaging audiences. Additionally, they hope that professional level races in larger markets will bring out thousands of supporters. The Aruna Project hopes that with these runs they will employ numerous survivors through their businesses and business partners. This will provide a safe and secure environment for women to grow, create, and build a firm foundation for their future.
  • 17.
    10 Betsy Bramon Senior PolicyAdvisor on Gender-based Violence, Development & Technology, U.S. Department of State Office of Global Women's Issues The U.S. Department of State’s Office of Global Women’s Issues strives to ensure that all issues regarding women are wholly integrated into U.S. foreign policy. Preventing gender-based violence, like human trafficking, is one of the Department’s foremost tasks, as well as focusing on adolescent girls’ wellbeing, promoting women’s economic participation, and protecting women’s peace and security before and after conflicts occur. In order to understand human trafficking within a broader human rights context, Betsy Bramon focuses on the structural realities that create vulnerabilities. A person’s economic status, education, age, sex, gender, and broader environmental circumstances influence whether he or she is able to withstand humanitarian crises, natural disasters, war, and/or political instability – and therefore whether he or she will be susceptible to trafficking. After conducting extensive humanitarian efforts across the globe – from outreach efforts in The Netherlands’ red light districts to service work for such major anti-trafficking organizations as Free the Slaves, Polaris Projects, Courtney’s House, and FairGirls, to engaging social enterprise development with Hagar International in Cambodia – Betsey continued her career at the U.S. State Department, where she has tirelessly spent the past five years advocating and fighting for humanitarian women’s rights. She immersed herself in legal frame-working and victim-centered approaches to rehabilitation through grant- making and foreign assistance management at the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Later moving to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Betsy helped politically transitional countries understand and respond to the risks women face when basic civil liberties are not guaranteed. Her experiences prior to joining the Office of Global Women’s Issues enabled her to help start the Gender-Based Violence Emergency Response and Protection Initiative, a program focused on providing shelter, relocation, medical and legal services, and other targeted aids to those facing gender-based threats or violence. The U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally, released in 2012 by President Obama, is a key policy tool used by the national government to integrate gender perspective when dealing with violence internationally. The Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues at the U.S. Department of State is privileged to improve the Strategy so it can continually attend the needs of foreign policy when battling trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence. Humanizing the issue of human trafficking is an intersectional, imperative goal. Because the trafficking movement has been seemingly isolated from the broader human rights movement – possibly because trafficking is viewed as untouchable since it seems so unbelievable – Betsy believes it is essential for the trafficking space to continue connecting and uniting with other sectors of the human rights community. When these frameworks collide, the greater movement as a whole can creatively collaborate with different organizations to strategically target human rights violations at their source. The efforts of Betsy and the U.S. Department of State's Office of Global Women's Issues do not go unnoticed. Now focusing on the intersection of gender-based violence and technology, with ties to subjects like online harassment and online privacy issues, the Office continues to legislate for women’s overall safety and security, further perpetuating instances where acts of gender-based violence can be prevented before they even unfold.
  • 18.
    11 Jeffrey Brown, JaneCharles, & Seirah Royin The Cast & Crew of the Film SOLD Based on true tales, SOLD, is the story of Lakshmi who journeys from a pastoral, rural village in Nepal to a gritty brothel/prison called Happiness House in Kolkata, India. Through one extraordinary girl’s story, SOLD illustrates the brutality of child trafficking, which affects millions of children around the globe every year. The film’s mission is to spread global awareness about trafficking and to raise substantial funds for organizations in India, Nepal, and the US, which rescue, rehabilitate, and empower survivors of trafficking. Written in vignettes targeted specifically to a teenage audience, SOLD has become the first entry point for youth to understand that slavery still exists. Through the book and the subsequent film, young adults are able to see the world through the eyes of thirteen-year-old Lakshmi; a young girl trafficked from Nepal to India for sex slavery. The book may be a work of fiction yet the inspiration behind it is not. During the films research phase, Seirah, Jane, and Jeffrey traveled to India and Nepal three times to meet with organizations as well as the survivors of India’s sex trade. Outreach in this region of the world is extremely important. In the Hindu worldview, victims are seen as those suffering from a previous life’s bad karma. Families will sometimes not accept back trafficked children and in some cases, victims will even be re-trafficked due to these belief systems. The filmmakers behind SOLD are creating a fund to combat both the stigma and the practice. They are hoping to mobilize community support, as the two primary causes for trafficking in Nepal are a lack of education and poverty. Jane cites the need for bottom up support and so they incentivize families with food in exchange for their daughter to attend school. When a child is kept in school, they are 80 percent less likely to be trafficked. Their work of combating both the stigma and the practice of sex slavery in India and Nepal is in conjunction with several other global initiatives. However, these projects remind us sex slavery is not always so far away. Jane also co-founded Stolen Youth, a non-profit in Seattle that raises both awareness and funds for victims of sex trafficking in Washington. This organization provides wrap around services, more beds, technical assistance, and partners with businesses to save the exploited youth of Seattle’s streets. Thus far, they have helped over 100 people per and raised almost one million dollars in the last three, but estimates place the number of exploited youth in Seattle at around 300 to 500 children and teenagers. Through programs such as Child’s Reach, their mission is to keep all children in school. The different aspects of their Child’s Reach project include training teachers, building toilet facilities, and raising awareness that empowers both children and adults alike. They bring survivors to schools to tell their stories with the aim of prevention. This inspired Starbucks in Seattle to start a training program for at-risk girls with the aim of getting them off the streets. This program is now expanding. For both Jeff and Jane, the most important aspect of their work is listening to the communities they service. And whether it is with their parents or through foster care, both Jeff and Jane believe that through education and reintegration, the global community can combat and prevent sex trafficking. Nepal, India, and Seattle, are recognizing and addressing this heinous crime. Although the movie may have finished production their work has just begun.
  • 19.
    12 Mary Caparas Project FreeManager, New York Asian Women’s Center The New York Asian Women’s Center was established thirty-four years ago with the core message that commonalities between survivors lie in their shared economic vulnerability. The organization focuses on their clients’ work to learn more about the dynamics of their trafficking experiences, and operates a plethora of different projects to help Asian women reevaluate their lives after being exploited through sex and labor trafficking. Analyzing the issue of modern slavery from a micro and macro level enables Mary Caparas and the other employees of the New York Asian Women’s Center to visualize what changes need to be made in the modern slavery space. The Center is upheld by a staff of over seventy employees—approximately fifty of which are mental health workers, social workers, community organizers, and other forms of trained advocates. Between the organization’s diverse staff, a total of eighteen Asian languages are spoken, as well as Spanish. It is these individuals that enable the Women’s Center to provide aid and care to the multitudes of women, men, and children that require their services. Operating a 24-hour hotline allows the Center to provide counseling and referrals to clients in need, regardless of whatever language they may speak. One of the many successful projects run by the Center is Project Free, established as an anti-trafficking initiative eleven years ago to fight slavery through an umbrella-like structure. Within Project Free staff members provide survivors with culturally and linguistically appropriate counseling, and are trained for specialized case management, while an in-house attorney and legal department provides the Center’s clients with immigration and visa assistance. Safe shelter services are available for survivors of both domestic violence and trafficking. Many of the individuals who advantage the New York Asian Women’s Center’s services are women around the age of forty, and have suffered from relational or worker abuse—their desperation for income and lack of knowledge regarding worker’s rights and regulations contributed to their life circumstances and challenges. Additionally, the Asian Women Empowerment Program allows women an alternative to incarceration or subjection to fines, continuing their incredible activism efforts. Physically present in New York courts since 2011, the A.W.E. program provides the women the initiative serves with some choice in what they need in their lives through elective programming, developed from feedback from past survivors involved with the Center. Legal Immigration Consultation, English as a Second Language, and Economic Empowerment Workshops are example of such emboldening educational efforts offered onto survivors of modern slavery. The A.W.E.’s previously mandated attendees have started to return to the Center, marking the entire initiative as a success, since they are utilizing their own volition to continue gaining knowledge and skills to better their lives! Mary is hesitant to offer the world “solutions” when discussing proposals for change, since the word implies that there might be a concrete fix-all to magically impact the slavery space. Nevertheless, by combatting the spread of misinformation on trafficking and trafficking cases; educating immigrants on their rights and investing in their education; and identifying the roots of trafficking are three targeted ways to make a difference. Economic desperation is one of the main reasons why so many immigrants end up in trafficking situations—by understanding the importance work has to individuals in New York and around the globe, humanity as a whole can be more culturally mindful and self-efficient in the effort to combat slavery.
  • 20.
    13 Guy Cave Managing Director,Geneva Global Geneva Global provides custom services to individuals, foundations, nonprofit organizations, and corporations worldwide, helping them to reach their goals and achieve greater social impact. Currently, Geneva Global is working in two areas to implement the large-scale plans of the anti-trafficking work being done by the Freedom Fund. Combatting slavery in India and Thailand. Guy has worked extensively with trafficking victims in the United Kingdom as well as for Save the Children in Burma. Geneva Global is at the forefront of combatting labor trafficking and modern slavery in South East Asia. Geneva Global is working in two areas to help implement the work of the Freedom Fund and combat modern slavery. Their first project, connected to international supply chains, focuses on labor trafficking in the low- caste regions of South India. In this region, labor trafficking is prevalent with as many as 60 percent of the female population having been forced into labor. Traffickers offer young women an apprenticeship and tell them they will give them a lump sum payment only at the end of the program. As it is difficult for low-caste women to be married off, there is an incentive for them to join. Once involved, the women have limited access to telephones and live in hostels to work 12 to 16 hour days with no pay. Indian officials are also complicit in the labor trafficking behind mill labor, knowing they employ children under 14 years old and yet, refusing to let them leave. The intent of governmental and industry officials to hide the practice ensures the demand for cheap labor is met. And there is a lack of coordination between government and police, as well as a lack of desire to combat corruption in any sphere, and weak connections to international retailers and brands. To combat this, Geneva Global is working with organizations on the ground that provides support for victims of human trafficking in real time. But India is far from an exception in terms of the government hiding or allowing the pervasive use of labor trafficking. Geneva Global is also combatting Thailand’s seafood industry and Costco’s supply chain slavery. In this case, traffickers persuade Burmese Migrants to travel to Thailand for work. Once there, traffickers inform victims they owe more and more money over time to keep them in debt bondage. Making matters worse, local police contribute heavily to the labor and bondage chain of the seafood industry. Geneva Global is fighting these practices by giving funding to the grass roots organizations in the societies where these problems thrive. They are also coordinating with international supply chains to organize workers to get them access to services. Simultaneously, Geneva Global is working with retailers to put pressure on suppliers. The solution must be both bottom up and top-down. On the ground, there needs to a bottom-up approach yet, these organizations also need to de-incentivize the use of slave labor at the very top of their structures. Geneva Global fears that local businesses will just work harder in the future to hide instances of labor trafficking and slavery. To prevent this, Geneva Global is working in multiple sectors across South East Asia to one day end human trafficking in the region. For Thailand and India to end slavery, Guy suggests making it a question of managing their international reputations. By working to strengthen local-business, Geneva Global can help industry leaders maintain commercial relations with the West without fear of scandal. For Geneva Global, the answer is greater police involvement at the local and national levels as well as encouraging consumers to buy ethically fair wage products and push retailers to engage in good practices. Geneva Global stresses the importance of international buyers contracting auditors to increase the chances of catching traffickers in real time. Finally, Geneva Global wants international brands to accept that cheap prices should not be at the expense of your workers.
  • 21.
    14 Ambassador Luis C.deBaca U.S.Department of State, Office to Monitor & Combat Trafficking in Persons The Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons leads the United States’ global engagement against human trafficking. The office pursues policies, partnerships and practices that uphold the ‘3P’ paradigm of prosecuting traffickers, protecting victims, and preventing trafficking. The office and US missions worldwide meet regularly with foreign governments to gauge progress and identify and examine recent trafficking trends. The DOS anti-trafficking office was established in 2000 in accordance with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act as an update to the post-Civil War slavery statutes. The Office is divided into four sections: reports and political affairs, international programs, public engagement and resource management and planning. Through these departments, they aim to promote the guarantees of freedom from slavery set by the U.S. constitution and furthered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As the former Ambassador at Large to the Office, Ambassador C.deBaca coordinated U.S. activities in the global fight against modern slavery. In 2014, the Ambassador addressed Congress following the release of the Office’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP). The TIP report is the US government’s principal diagnostic and diplomatic tool to guide relations with foreign governments in combatting human trafficking. The report consists of country specific action plans and increasingly focuses on the implementation of laws that fight the practice. The aim of the report is to prompt legislation, policies and protection mechanisms that advance international understanding of modern slavery. In spite of tremendous progress to decrease the number of those trafficked around the world, the Ambassador notes that in order to continue this progress, there must be increased access to information: the number one problem is an imbalance not just in power, but in information. When you change the information balance you change the balance of power. To that aim, he emphasizes the need to change some of our more traditional approaches. For example, the United States has a set of ‘Safe Harbor’ laws, meant to protect child victims of human trafficking. Developed by the individual states to protect child victims of modern slavery and sex trafficking, these laws are intended to address the inconsistent treatment of children in federal and state laws. Previously, children victims of human trafficking could be charged as sex workers in spite of federal statutory rape laws. Although they serve to protect children, the Ambassador notes issues can arise. At present, he says, there are more laws passed bringing attention to victim rehabilitation. But victims also need their records expunged so that they can resume a normal life and attain viable employment. At this time, these law only deals with victims of sex trafficking, despite slavery also flourishes in the labor market. During the Bush Administration, the Ambassador believed that the US did not have an approach that dismantled human trafficking. To that aim, the Office tried to pass a bill that would require Homeland Security to seize goods produced by bonded labor. However, protecting foreign-born adults and children can be a political issue in the United States. In order to combat global slavery the anti-trafficking community needs to encourage compassion from politicians and promote the abolitionist cause. Recent years have seen The Office focus on bridging the gap between knowing where the offenders are, how to prevent them from future offenses and how to keep communities safe. The Ambassador believes we owe it to ourselves and to the world to make up for what we have done to each other. Once we increase the access to information and use that information to promote the abolitionist cause, we may one day see a slave free world.
  • 22.
    15 Gerardo Reyes Chavez,Laura Germino, Smirti Keshari & Sanjay Rawls The Cast & Crew of Food Chains & The Coalition of Immokalee Workers There is more interest in food these days than ever, yet there is very little interest in the hands that pick it. Farmworkers, the foundation of our fresh food industry, are routinely abused and robbed of wages. In extreme cases they can be beaten, sexually harassed or even enslaved – all within the borders of the United States. Food Chains, a documentary filmed produced by actress Eva Longoria, reveals the human cost in our food supply and the complicity of large buyers of produce like fast food and supermarkets. Their story is one of hope and promise for the triumph of morality over corporate greed – to ensure a dignified life for farm workers and a more humane, transparent food chain. Many Americans do not realize that the end of institutionalized slavery did not end bonded labor in the United States. It simply forced the practice underground. For many farm workers in America, the reality was that of violence, sexual assault and threats against their lives, which forced them into chains. In the 1990’s, tomato farm workers in Immokalee, Florida, began organizing against the human trafficking and slavery they saw in their local farm communities. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) pioneered a ‘multi-sectoral’ approach to slavery prosecution. Believing that, ‘the most effective weapon against forced labor is an aware community engaged in the defense of its own labor rights,’ they coordinated with the FBI and local law enforcement to uncover, investigate and assist in the liberation of over 1200 enslaved persons across the United States. The CIW also co-founded the Freedom Network USA and the Freedom Network Training Institute, which continues to be used regularly to train law enforcement and non-governmental organizations to recognize both the signs of human trafficking and to assist those trapped. Although incredibly influential in empowering workers on the supply side, the CIW understood the need to address the ‘demand side’ of the US produce market. As corporations can profit from the artificially low price of US produce, their actions can incentivize the use of human trafficking and slavery. In order to address this, the CIW launched the Fair Food Program. Supported by corporations like Walmart and McDonalds, this program communicates with farms all across Florida to inform workers of their rights, and allow them to report abuses. If a case of slavery is reported, growers are referred to The Fair Food Standards Council, the third party organization created to oversee compliance. Should a specific complaint of abuse be validated, that grower will no longer be able to sell to big buyers. As a result of their work, tens of thousands of tomato farm laborers have been interviewed and educated by the Fair Food Program. The CIW now says that there have been no reported cases of sexual harassment in ‘Fair Food fields.’ Although the CIW has accomplished a tremendous amount in relation to the tomato industry in Florida, violent practices and slavery still exist in the fields of other crops. But by educating consumers, buying habits can change at the grass roots level. The film aspire to build a critical mass of people willing to divest themselves from corporations and products tainted by slavery and human trafficking. But the movement also needs assistance from corporations. First, in order to ensure compliance, they need corporations to take the lead in engaging and convincing growers and consumers to comply with this program as they can pressure other companies that refuse to take a stand. They also need the support of the public to end slavery in America by realizing that doing so benefits everyone, not just those victimized by the practice. Ultimately, we need systemic change. As such, the Fair Food Program has helped to eliminate forced labor in the Southeast United States and education campaigns continue to empower global communities to defend labor rights. However, we the consumers, remain the best weapon against human trafficking and slavery.
  • 23.
    16 Kay Chernush &Michele Clark Creative Director; Founder, President & Executive Director of ArtWorks For Freedom Artworks For Freedom uses the power of art in the fight against modern-day slavery. Engaging people through photography, media, dance, and other forms of art allows for a heightened understanding of the complex issue of contemporary slavery and trafficking. Operating on the basis that art touches viewers in visceral ways, the organization utilizes multi-faceted awareness campaigns to shine an unrelenting spotlight on human trafficking. Michele Clark and Kay Chrenush each had their own personal experiences with human trafficking before they collaborated through ArtWorks. Michele, a former professor at Israel’s University of Haifa, actively worked on anti-trafficking policy and advocacy as the co-director of the Protection Project at Hopkins. She then went on to assist the European Union to meet its anti-trafficking commitments through legislative and policy reform, victim services, and prevention programs as the first Director of Europe’s Anti-Trafficking Office at the Headquarters of the Organization for Security and Cooperation. Now teaching human rights and women’s empowerment courses at George Washington University, Michele thrives as Artwork’s Executive Director with Kay, the organization’s founder, president, and creative director. As a professional photographer, Kay was tasked with taking pictures for the Trafficking In Persons report, published annually by the U.S. Department of State’s Office for Combatting Human Trafficking. She traveled the globe, photographing refugee camps, brick kilns, Thai brothels, those in debt bondage, the red light district, child laborers, and other horrific, inhumane mistreatment of human beings. Her emotional experiences encouraged her to continue to use her talents to create compelling images that dignified the victims she met. ArtWorks began with Kay’s first exhibit, shown in the Netherlands and later, across the United States, Kay held portrait sessions and talked with individual survivors, learning their stories and empowering them to recognize their own strength. Now, these pieces are shown across the world. Viewers are able to empathize with these survivors, sensing their stories through this pictorial representation of trafficking. The organization continues to promote advocacy through an amazing coalition of artist-activists. Through their global travels, Michele and Kay recruit local artists in efforts of building a stronger international community of awareness and to further advance their cause. ArtWorks also partnered with New York-based organization Groundswell to create a moveable mural series made by high students, entitled “What You See Is Not Who I Am”, that relays the messages of domestic servitude, sex trafficking, and labor trafficking through an uplifting, hopeful perspective. Artworks hopes to grow their funding and broaden their audience even further. Their goal is to develop and formalize a network of artist-activists to further focus on the important questions they have already raised through their outreach work, and want to commission new work in different creative areas, like opera. In order to solve a problem, the organization believe that people need to be able to see the issue with their own eyes and feel inclined to make an impact. Art invokes this necessary emotional response, making Michele and Kay’s efforts even more successful as they push for a call for action towards the omnipresent issue of human trafficking. But, like so many in the movement, these women feel as if their work is never done. But by urging for a unanimous move away from the clichés and stock photos that seemingly cloud the space, Artworks For Freedom provides the opportunity to shift the media narrative on trafficking and slavery, both organically and forcefully.
  • 24.
    17 Father Leonir MarioChiarello Executive Director, Scalibrini International Migration Network The Scalibrini International Migration Network’s (SIMN) vision is to foster a global network that serves migrants, refugees, internally displaced persons, seafarers, and itinerants, and advocates for their dignity and rights worldwide. The mission is to safeguard and promote the rights of there people and others like them, on the move, in this globalized economic system. SIMN fulfills its mission through supporting an extensive network of centers of research and study, social service centers for migrants, refugees and seafarers, shelters, senior centers, orphanages, medical clinics, kindergartens, schools, vocational centers, and cultural centers. SIMN works closely with other entities at the national and international level, promoting comprehensive service programs and advocating for the dignity and rights of migrants and their families. The Scalabrinian Congregation was founded in 1887 by Bishop John Baptist Scalabrini to accompany and assist millions of Italians who were migrating to the American continent. During the 1960’s the Scalabrinian Congregation extended its mission to all migrants worldwide which eventually lead to the founding of the Scalabrini International Migration Network (SIMN) in 2005. The Scalabrinian Congregation has been involved in three main areas of human trafficking: first, advocating for the protection of victims of human trafficking; second, raising awareness in countries where human smuggling is particularly problematic, especially Italy, the United States and Brazil; and third, promoting policies and conventions suppressing human smuggling and human trafficking. SIMN unites seven centers located in major cities on five continents, each devoted to deepening the understanding of migration, with synchronizes goals and efforts. These centers monitor the development of international migration flows, policies and related issues, including human trafficking trends and challenges. All centers are organized with similar departments and programs dedicated to research, academic publications, documentation, conferences, and other educational endeavors. Considering prevention of human trafficking to be the first step to eradicate this new form of slavery, SIMN is promoting programs in three specific areas: first, job creation, development, and education programs to tackle the root causes of human trafficking; second, the creation of a network of shelters and migration centers to stop demand of forced labor and human trafficking; and third, to push national, regional and international information campaigns to prevent human trafficking. SIMN members are promoting advocacy programs worldwide in order to stimulate the implementation of policies and programs to prevent human trafficking, protect the victims of this new form of slavery, and to persecute the perpetrators of this crime. SIMN is involved in different partnership programs between governments, the United Nations, international organizations, and civil society groups involved in prevention, protection, and prosecution programs to stop human trafficking. The partnership with the Global Freedom Network, promoted by Pope Francis and other religious leaders, as well as the Catholic Coalition against Human Trafficking, and the NGO Committee to Stop Trafficking in Persons (NGOSTIP) represent some examples of these partnerships.
  • 25.
    18 Britten Chroman, GenevieveKimberlin & Tish Lara Women’s Initiative, David Lynch Foundation The David Lynch Foundation helps to prevent and eradicate the all-pervasive epidemic of trauma and toxic stress among at-risk populations through promoting widespread implementation of the evidence-based Transcendental Meditation (TM) program in order to improve their health, cognitive capabilities and performance in life. TM is a simple, effortless mental technique that allows the mind to settle on its own and get a deep sense of rest. It can be practiced on a chair or bed for 20 minutes with the eyes closed. It is an ancient mind-body-soul practice that has been affirmed and validated through modern scientific studies over the last 40 years. One of the biggest issues that victims of human trafficking deal with is post-traumatic stress, which is in scientific terms, a chronic excitation of the amygdala – also known as the anxiety center of the brain. TM allows this center to calm down and lessen the ‘fight or flight’ response in order to allow chronic anxiety begins to decrease. People who cannot sleep and rely on medication (even over extended periods of time) have found they are better able to rest, even after just one first week. One of the David Lynch Foundation’s initiative’s is the “Quiet Time Program,” which gives 10 minutes of TM in schools (K-12) in the morning and evening. The program is implemented most often in low income schools with high dropout and high murder rate areas. The Foundation also hosts a TM program working with veterans suffering from PTSD. Through this program they began to hear stories of sexual trauma and abuse from female soldiers while they were in the military. Their findings led them to begin to explore the link between women, abuse, violence and TM. This was what led them to found the Women’s Initiative, whose main goal is to bring TM to women and girls in need primarily survivors of domestic violence and incarcerated women. The Women’s Initiative implements TM with not only the clients, but the staff as well. After learning TM, the staff reported a 50 percent decrease in stress and burnout. The clients have reported less stress during their court cases and also report feeling more “balanced.” The Women’s Prison Program within the Women’s Initiative focuses on women who have been incarcerated and looking to get back on their feet. The Women’s Initiative’s largest international program is in Cambodia where over 300 girls have learned TM. There are also programs in Uganda and Thailand. Domestically they have partnered with Children of the Night, in Los Angeles, where they have successfully helped students overcome outbursts of violent and dramatic behavior. Some of the challenges of the TM technique with victims of human trafficking are that the populations tend to be transient, so it can be hard to access them over time and continue follow-up. Another challenge is funding, since most foundations do not yet fully understand the healing value of meditation. Regardless of these obstacles, the Foundation continues to look for new partners for their TM program, with results speaking for themselves.
  • 26.
    19 Lori Cohen Director, Anti-TraffickingInitiative, Sanctuary for Families Sanctuary for Families is New York’s leading service provider and advocate for survivors of domestic violence, sex trafficking, and related forms of gender violence. Every year, Sanctuary empowers thousands of adults and children to move from fear and abuse to safety and stability, transforming lives through a comprehensive range of services including clinical, legal, shelter, children’s and economic empowerment services. Sanctuary for Families consists of clinical social workers, psychiatrists, and shelters for victims of domestic violence and their children. Through their work, they have found that many clients are victims of trafficking via their significant others and or their families. A number of the victims they treat are internationals; those that entered trafficking when they immigrated to the United States. Sanctuary for Families says that most have gone through psychological torture, sleep deprivation, and varying forms of physical or mental abuse. The methodology of human traffickers is somewhat well known. Through the Internet or via the use of a personal relationship such as boyfriend, family member, fiancé, or lover, traffickers will force their victims into sex labor. By keeping their victims in a constant state of mental exhaustion via physical, mental, or economic abuse, traffickers maintain the upper hand. Some victims even report having to turn over 100 percent of their earnings. Many do not know their rights and are falsely told that they will be arrested for prostitution if they alert authorities. If and why they are arrested ‘on the job’, a pimp will often hire a lawyer or attorney to protect themselves and their victims from incarceration. This sustains the cycle of abuse inherent in most human trafficking cases. Sanctuary is conscious of the language they use to describe past experiences. For example, a position of “power” verses one of “vulnerability” is important when identifying and treating a domestic violence victim. Through their crisis management program, they work with clients who may or may not know they are victims. Legal assistance is also available to the women who want to get out of ‘the life.’ There is also a conscious effort by Sanctuary to emphasize the labor-trafficking pretense of sex slavery. Many victims are trafficked believing they will cross the border for a better life. Only when they make the journey do they realize traffickers are selling them into slavery. And it is not just criminal gangs or cartels who sell them. Sometimes, it can be members of their own family. Additionally, Sanctuary for Families provides training to encourage survivor leadership. A number of women in their program have gone from being marginalized victims to reaching out to others and becoming a leader in defense of victims’ rights. By transforming the way the women see themselves, Sanctuary for Families is providing meaningful services to combat the post-trafficking lives of its survivors. Lori suggests there are a few things to consider in the fight against human sex trafficking: why is trafficking profitable? Why are there more shelters for animals than there are for victims of human trafficking? Lori believes that we need to create strategies that will make trafficking less of a taboo and less profitable. She cites their biggest struggle is with clients who admit to being trafficked and then change their mind and disappear, or who choose to no longer seek help. For this, Sanctuary for Families approach is to not fight with someone’s perspective, but giving them space to come to it themselves. With resources such as Hopeline – a program by Verizon wireless that services victims of domestic violence with new cell phones and the training to make these women economically self-sufficient, Sanctuary empowers thousands of adults and children to move from fear and abuse to safety and stability.
  • 27.
    20 Brooke Crowder Founder &Executive Director, The Refuge The development of a place where child survivors of sex trafficking can find safety, and have access to the proper therapeutic services for healing from the trauma they have endured, has been a long-time passion of Brooke Crowder. The Refuge was launched in November 2013 to that end. The primary purpose of The Refuge is to develop The Refuge Ranch, a long-term therapeutic farm outside the city of Austin, Texas with on-site comprehensive services for girls, ages 11 to 17, who are survivors of sex trafficking. 100,000 American children have gone through the sex trade and most survivors began when they were younger than 13 years old. Despite being afforded opportunities, many young people do not speak out or run away from trafficking situations due to the psychological bond that is formed between themselves and the trafficker. That bond allows the trafficker to manipulate the victim, sometimes creating an image that the trafficker is their “protector.” The Refuge Ranch is located in Austin, Texas, and is where survivors can receive long-term care to recover from the deep physical and mental wounds they suffer in a post-slavery life. They receive services at the ranch such as child welfare and juvenile justice. The Refuge has 50 acres of land that was donated by a family in Austin. It took size months to prepare the architectural design for the ranch, allowing for a wonderful creative space and housing in cottages large enough to host four girls each. They try to place girls with similar background and experiences together, allowing for a sense of community. There is a school program on the premises, uniquely designed for the girls including one-on-one counseling, art and music classes. There is a social space with a gym and home theater, as well as a multi-faith sanctuary and yoga studio, where the girls can establish a sense of safety, normalcy and community. In the last year, The Refuge has worked on building community partners, which they believe is the key to the success of operations at the Ranch. The partnerships will determine how to respond in a holistic and transformative way for each survivor. Although The Refuge is a Christian faith-based organization, they do not have any mandatory Christian activities and they accept girls of all faiths. The long-term goal of The Refuge is to establish places of healing with holistic care and sustainable funding streams. This would allow them the opportunity to duplicate the model in other parts of the country and provide their unique services to survivors across the United States.
  • 28.
    21 Mary David Human RightsAdvocate An advocate for victims of trauma, Mary David is an internationally recognized human trafficking expert. Formerly the United Nations Advisor on women and children for the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, Mary is currently a freelance writer and motivational speaker. She is a graduate of The George Washington University Law School, where she specialized in international human rights law. Mary works to unite different sectors of society against human trafficking in policy, fashion, film, and the arts. Her current work focuses on the plight of slaves in Mauritania. Mauritania holds the number one ranking for slavery in the world. Abolished only in 1981, the provisions and governmental protection of slaveries practice are widely known despite laws banning it. The Arab population has been the ruling elite over the Black African Haratins for centuries, and this continues through to today. As there is very little education for the slave community, elites are all-powerful. It is not a crime in Mauritania to rape slaves, force genital mutilation, or to force a marriage. Slaves have no inalienable right to move with their spouses and children as they are viewed as property. Courts in Mauritania have intimated that these people are similar to cows and sheep. Estimates place the number of enslaved peoples in Mauritania at one out of every five. Even Mauritania’s President, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, said in 2013 “slavery is alive and well” in the nation. While there are two specific laws banning the practice and making it a punishable offense with a mandatory prison sentence; Mauritania’s constitution says that the acceptance of Sharia law featured in their preamble effectively nullify these provisions. The legislative changes of 2003 and 2007 were largely written due to international pressure and not the sincere desire to address the harm of slavery. The challenges of addressing slavery in Mauritania are numerous. It is difficult to quantify what is happening on the ground. It is also particularly difficult to get the people to scrutinize the slave trade or its institutions. Internal dynamics instill a belief that slavery is the victim’s fault and many are indoctrinated to believe there is no alternative. Freed people in Mauritania do not have an easy-post slavery life either. Rehabilitation processes take a long time and freed slaves suffer discrimination in all aspects of society. To combat slavery in Mauritanian society, Mary has several suggestions. First, highlight the condition of slavery today in social media, op-eds, research, and more. Within the country itself, access to cell phones and social media is limited among the enslaved populaces. However, we can utilize these technologies to continue the international pressure that led to previous legislative changes. Secondly, lobby Congress and the UN to investigate slavery in Mauritania and place sanctions on economic aid if it contributes to the slave trade. As Mauritania is heavily dependent on foreign aid for their food and military assistance, it is essential to leverage the international community to continue pressing for change. The consistent lack of access to education and resources for the Haratin will continue their enslavement. For this, Mary suggests groups like such as the Malala Fund should be involved in the efforts to educate the Mauritanian population. As more than 50 percent of people in the country are under the age of 24, it is essential that their voice are heard in the future of the their state.
  • 29.
    22 Justin Dillon Founder, MadeIn A Free World Made In A Free World believes that changing the world takes everyone. They are a network of individuals, groups, and businesses working together to disrupt slavery and make freedom go viral. They produce innovative campaigns, on the ground projects, consumer engagement tools, and business solutions designed to get slavery out of the system. Their dream is simple. One day everyone and everything will be Made In A Free World. When former rock star Justin Dillon found that one of the women in his audience was a victim of human trafficking, he did something about it. Investigating how to create a movement that responds instead of reacts, Justin founded Made in a Free World to combat human trafficking and slavery. He began the movement with “Call + Response,” a rockumentary, released in 2008 by Fair Trade Pictures to support human rights activism against human trafficking and slavery on a community level. Realizing people needed to communicate directly with the brands that may be using labor trafficking, he created a SlaveryFootprint.org, a website that adjudges how many slaves work for the user. This website gives people no option but to acknowledge their role in this crime, and the estimated 30 million plus people currently enslaved by labor traffickers globally. Justin is using disruption as a call to action. Made in a Free World is an organization that allows people to communicate directly with brands to call for an end to labor trafficking. He launched the organization to ask companies what they can do to end slavery. Justin cites the lack of data as the biggest issue in the fight to combat human trafficking. Primarily, businesses do not have the data to know where or how slavery affects them. To heighten global awareness, in the last three years, they have utilized data from Slavery Footprint and created a database for the risk assessment of goods in regards slave labor. For the first time, Made in a Free World has made it possible for businesses to search their supply chains for any hint of slavery. Furthermore, by altering the way individuals engage with companies, Made in a Free World is adding a new conversation piece to corporate accountability and is shaping the conversations we have regarding awareness of slavery in our modern world. Their strategic vision for the future focuses on three things, movement building, field projects, and the business solutions mentioned above. Utilizing tools such as the Slavery Footprint, Made in a Free World wants to create a global movement of awareness that gives people an understanding of the issue. Secondly, they believe people want to participate directly with the abolition of this issue. By creating field projects, Made in a Free World hopes to tailor high impact products to encourage larger community participation. They are beginning on this front with a project to rescue boys in Ghana. Like their mission states, Made In A Free World is empowering individuals, groups, and businesses with innovative solutions to end the system of slavery together. They have worked hard to make clear wins in this fight.
  • 30.
    23 Reverend Que English Chair,The New York Faith-Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking & Domestic Violence With over 2,200 children subjected to trafficking in the City of New York according to the New York State Office of Children and Families, 280,531 Domestic Incident Reports filed in New York City in 2013 and 843 domestic violence homicides reported in the five boroughs between 2002 and 2013, The New York City Faith-Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking and Domestic Violence seeks to educate, train and equip faith leaders to effectively combat these atrocities. Reverend Que English has started a movement of thousands. She believes that when we see an onslaught against our young children, we must do something. This movement, founded by the Reverend and The New York Faith-Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking and Domestic Violence is now looking to recruit thousands more. Theirs is a movement to become advocates and to educate, understand, and get behind policy that creates real change. The New York Faith-Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking & Domestic violence has mobilized 200 houses of worship to be safe havens for survivors. In 2016, their goal is to open 500. They want to continue their efforts into 2017 with an additional 1000 safe spaces. This brings the faith-based community into the fight against human trafficking by creating safe spaces and partnerships with local law enforcement and non- profits. The Reverend is now asking religious leaders to create more groups in their respective houses of worship to raise awareness around human trafficking and to remain sensitive to survivor plight. The Coalition also calls for congregations to support agencies and organizations that provide services for survivors. The Reverend reminds us that it is not enough to just go through training and obtain certificates. It is also important to take action after we have received knowledge. Launching Not On My Watch NYC with their headquarters on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx, English says its important to address the problem at it’s roots, which is an issue of demand. The Coalition is also asking for congregations and parishioners to become a Not on My Watch site by placing bumper stickers on your car, wear the bracelets, talk to people and create a zone of safety and acceptance for survivors and women at risk. It is only through community and collaboration that the fight against trafficking and domestic violence can be fought and won. In 2016 the Reverend’s priorities are focused on expanding capacity and offering more services and opportunities for survivors. The New York Faith-Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking & Domestic Violence is also launching a documentary series entitled The Redemption Project, volunteering for agencies that provide care packages for survivors, and supporting organizations such as Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS). By making it her mission to combat domestic violence and human trafficking right here in New York City, Revered Que and The New York Faith Based Coalition Against Human Trafficking & Domestic Violence are ensuring that faith leaders, congregations, and communities learn to end trafficking before it starts. While she admits they still have so much work to do, she has faith that tomorrows spiritual leaders will interpret the scriptures and join him in the fight to protect our young children, women, and girls here in New York City. They keep moving forward to end human trafficking and domestic violence in New York because they will not allow it to happen – on their watch – anymore.
  • 31.
    24 Nathaniel Erb Co-Founder, Worthwhile:GO & Partner, Dashing Emancipation Worthwhile: GO is a program to enable passionate advocates to bike for freedom and raise money to support efforts to end slavery. Dashing Emancipation is an annual fashion show and art exhibit to raise awareness about the plight of human and sex trafficking. Nathaniel Erb has long had a passion for human rights and an eye for adventure. While in college, although he knew what he loved doing, he could not quite figure out where his passions fit. Throughout his time in University, he worked in Honduras focusing on poverty alleviation. However, his life would drastically change when he moved to Nepal in 2012. While there, Nathaniel met CNN Woman of the Year, Pushpa Basnet, who operates a home for children that would otherwise live with their incarcerated parents in Nepal’s prisons. He would spend an entire summer working with her and the children she cared for while their parents served their sentence. Surrounded by the Nepalese and immersed within their society, it was there he discovered how endemic human trafficking had become. One local told him, ‘if you don’t sell your neighbor into slavery, they will sell you.’ Nearing the end of his college career he returned to America, but not give up the fight to end human trafficking. While working at United Nations Economic Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and writing his thesis on human trafficking, he met Jay Atlas through Facebook. Jay was walking across America to raise awareness of the plight of human trafficking victims and to end the practice. Together, they planned a trip. Jay would walk and Nathaniel would ride his bike across the United States from Seattle, Washington to Key West, Florida. Throughout their trip, they would raise awareness and connect to every anti-trafficking organization they could find along their route. At the end of his trip, Nathaniel knew that he had found his issue and could not imagine doing anything else. Continuing his momentum and combining it with his passion for adventure in 2014, he partnered with Worthwhile Wear. He knew he wanted to create an active element that invites others to join the fight and raise funds to combat human trafficking. Building upon his original biking across America idea, he created Worthwhile Go. The active element of Worthwhile Wear, riders ride across the country to meet and engage with everyone, from senators and state delegates to school and community groups. Worthwhile Go completed its third trip - from Fargo, North Dakota to San Antonio, Texas – in 2015. Shortly thereafter, Nathaniel began volunteering at The Samaritan Women, where he took charge of their advocacy programs. Realizing there were gaps in his research, he started asking The Samaritan Women what they need and what they wanted to see. It was then he learned of the difficulties survivors of human trafficking face in Maryland. Nathaniel then spent the next six months helping to create the first law to ensure college access to survivors of trafficking. Passed unanimously last May, survivors can attend any college in Maryland and only pay one fee. One of the first such laws in the country, Nathaniel believes it demonstrates that this is actually a positive economic investment for the state. Nathaniel is now opening his own firm, the first in the state of Maryland to focus on trafficking-related legislative advocacy full time. He also plans to look deeper into the issues that feed modern slavery like, poverty, homelessness and drug addiction.
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    25 Judge Laura SaferEspinoza, Laura Germino & Sean Sellers The Fair Foods Standards Council & the Coalition of Immokalee Workers The Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ (CIW) anti-slavery campaign has uncovered, investigated, and assisted in the prosecution of numerous multi-state farm slavery operations across the Southeastern US, helping liberate over 1,200 workers held against their will since the early 1990’s. CIW’s worker-driven social responsibility model is being emulated and adapted to fight worker exploitation in settings as diverse as dairy farms in Vermont, tomato fields in Morocco, and apparel sweatshops in Bangladesh. The already stunning success of CIW’s model is now poised to serve as the foundation for even greater progress for low-wage workers, suppliers, and corporate buyers in the years ahead. Driven by worker’s standards and created by those individual’s in the field experiencing these problems first- hand, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers fights to educate laborers as well as policy makers on the rights of low-wage workers in the United State agriculture industry, the first ever initiative of its kind. The CIW and Fair Food Standards Council believe that workers are in the best position to create the standards that address abuse. In this way, the CIW leads education sessions for 10,000 workers so that they are aware of their rights and are well-versed representatives in the fight against exploitation. With workers at the forefront of combatting and reporting abuse, farms that fail to comply with the CIW standard are placed on probation. If they continue to fail in their efforts, CIW and the Fair Foods Standards Council suspend all working relations with them. In real terms, that means exclusion from selling to 13 major suppliers including fast food chains and supermarkets across the United States. While 40 percent of the calls to the CIW complaint hotline are found to be invalid, the Fair Food Standards Council and CIW are proud of their diligent fact find process. CIW’s audit process to ensure valid complaints include an in-depth hour-long interview with each crew leader or farming supervisor as well as conversations with at least 50 percent of the workers on the property. CIW then triangulates all of that data with company records to create a report that states clearly whether the farm is compliant with the Fair Foods Standards. Farms found non-compliant are given 10 days to make changes. By creating safe environments for workers to labor in and ensuring punishments for non-compliant farms, the CIW and Fair Standards Food Council are preventing human trafficking before it even begins. In the future, The Fair Foods Standards Council sees an immediate expansion in the Florida tomato industry while launching a multi-state effort in the North Eastern United States. They are also in discussions to broaden their work from tomato farms to different crops. Other organizations are looking at the Fair Foods Standards Council’s model and utilizing it to meet the demands of their industries. While the difficulties of monitoring compliance and creating binding legal agreements between workers, farms, and suppliers cannot be understated; the implementation of CIW and Fair Standards Food Council policies has freed many from bonded labor. The United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights has described the Fair Foods Program model as “smart mix of tools” that “could serve as a model elsewhere in the world.” By creating a safe place for laborers, farms, and suppliers, the Fair Foods Standards Council and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers are ensuring the “liberty, and justice for all,” of our national anthem truly includes every worker in the United States.
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    26 Thomas Estler Founder, FreedomLadder The Freedom Ladder is dedicated to making the world safe for children by educating them about issues like human trafficking while in addition to equipping them with the tools to handle these situations. They envision a world free from child exploitation by creating a culture that respects and honors people. Freedom Ladder works with law enforcement agencies, child welfare organizations, and artists to design effective tools with captivating narratives to inspire young people to protect themselves. Their comic book, Abolitionista, became a powerful story that educated students about human-trafficking while feeding into their imaginations. Thomas Estler, the founder of Freedom Ladder, wants to reach every child before they are victimized. And he doing so through Japanese manga, a popular comic book style in the United States. Thomas decided to adopt this style and partner with graphic artists to create a manga, Abolitionista, which address the warning signs of human trafficking in the frame of a Nancy Drew detective mystery. In order to write a captivating story about a very sensitive and difficult topic, Thomas had to write a tale that did that highlights the red flags of human-trafficking without reading like an educational pamphlet. He decided to build the story on the premise of a young detective, Eden, who is gathering clues about her missing best friend, Delilah. Thomas incorporates the standard warning signs of trafficking into the story like visible signs of abuse, birth control, disappearing from home or school, new phones, a change in dree or physical appearances, or new health problems. In the second half the story, Thomas begins to get deeper into the problem of human-trafficking but to do this he had to look at the subject with the perspective of a youth. He realized that the word: human- trafficking, was confusing and intimidating, but slavery was something children understood. The history of the slavery in America is taught at schools across America so Thomas decided to introduce the concept of human-trafficking through the historical context of slavery. Main character, Delilah, had an ancestor that was brought over from Africa as a slave. This realization helped Delilah see that she was actually enslaved by someone she saw as a boyfriend. Abolitionista has had an overwhelming response from educators, children and survivors. He has seen how the book helps girls recognize and identify manipulating relationships in their own lives. Thomas has also gotten responses from parents praising the book. The success of Abolitionista has pushed Freedom Ladder to expand what they can do with manga. Abolitionista has already been translated to Spanish in order to reach a larger audience and thanks to a popular demand, Thomas and his team is already working on the second volume. Thomas loves manga because it is made to be in a series and this allows him to add onto a story and introduce new books when there is new information coming out about human-trafficking. Thomas is constantly researching, talking to survivors and his working closely with an FBI Victim Specialist on the key issues and trends pertaining to human-trafficking today. Thomas also has partners in the Philippines, India and Malaysia to work on creating more comic books that reflect the culture and trafficking stories common in those regions. These international comic books would be invaluable to American students as well as they teach more about this global issue. All the work that Freedom Ladder and Thomas is doing is to equip the next generation of abolitionists to live safe, powerful, and inspired lives.
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    27 Tim Fain &Jacob Marshall Violinist & Composer,12 Years A Slave; Co-Founder, MORE Partnerships MORE Partnerships aims to promote partnerships among artists, brands, and causes. The company helps to explore and activate relationships with organizations and leading innovators in the arts and technology. 12 Years a Slave is a film documenting a free man’s journey through capture, slavery, and freedom. The film is an adaptation of the 1853 autobiography of Solomon Northup. Jacob spent ten years playing music and touring with a band. To his surprise, Japanese fans sang every word even though they couldn’t speak English: they had a deep, shared emotion. From this, Jacob realized that music has the power to transcend the barriers of culture, ideology, and language. In addition, he has learned how to collaborate with the fan base in a small and meaningful way: in 2009 he built a campaign that allowed fans to participate and donate to humanitarian organizations. Yet in order to scale impact on the ground, they needed partners and the smartest way to engage artists is to partner with them in a meaningful way. Brands have been doing more Community & Social Responsibility (CSR) projects, plugging in their consumers to social ends, and courting artists for cultural relevance. Jacob dedicated himself to understanding and facilitating partnerships between brands and bands. It is necessary to see a problem from multiple angles and embrace multi-disciplinary solutions, and so with that spirit in mind, he co-launched MORE Partnerships. Tim may be the greatest living violinist, but he also wants to build his legacy around ending human trafficking. While working on a documentary called Untouchable, he learned about the “lower caste” system, modern slavery, and the lack of opportunity in Nepal and specifically for Nepalese girls. Then Tim started to learn that this is happening even in America: in Seattle, Oregon, Los Angeles, and nearly everywhere slavery continues to exist today. Being the father of two girls determined him to ensure that girls would not have to suffer prostitution. He also wanted to use music to inspire people, because listeners open themselves to an issue without fear. His script and musical work on the Academy Award winning film 12 Years a Slave helped to depict the transformation of the lead character from abduction to freedom. Tim considered how the music and words would work together to achieve a glimpse into the downward progression of Solomon’s internal spiritual life. The subtle shifts in mood and tempo as well as the timing of phrases bring about an unsettling effect and have strong impact. Many times a sense of empathy drives people to want the change. Jacob and Tim want to help more people around the world feel a sense of connection through music. Technology can also be used to cultivate empathy. Jacob uses the realm of mobile applications to connect people to causes because there is an urgent need for empathy: it is the criteria for slave free world. There are artists who create beautiful work and communicate to large audiences, and they want to play a part in ending human trafficking. Practically Jacob and Tim collaborate with a number of caring artists; this joined experience has a greater reach. At the heart of art is a simple idea: individuals put things together as a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Many times the pair will invite an interdisciplinary coalition of people to have a meal and talk about how they can work together in an interesting way. Each person has different resources, and having the space to enjoy a good meal and let the conversation unfold is important for setting the tone. Both Tim and Jacob agree that what drives people into slavery in the first place is desperation. The legal side of the issue is reforming, but there is an economic dimension as well: national businesses must examine and clean their supply chain. There needs to be an increasing transparency in the global supply chain. Artist Nina Simone discussed freedom, stating freedom is ‘no fear.’ In a slave-free world people can live without fear.
  • 35.
    28 Terence Fitzgerald Senior Directorof Program Design & Evaluation, International Justice Mission The International Justice Mission (IJM) is a global organization established to ensure that a country’s public justice system works justly and fairly. Broadly, IJM focuses on ending violence against the poor; more specifically, IJM focuses on rescuing victims of slavery and human trafficking and convicting their abusers. The organization also seeks to monitor and evaluate the nature of the crime (total amount of victims), the experience of victims (how they were treated, both by traffickers and the public justice system), the state of the public justice system (practices on which the system runs), and the effects of its programs (how IJM has helped). Terence has been a crucial member and program developer for the IJM team for eight years. Most of IJM’s staff members are natives of the country in which they work, which gives them insight into the lives of both victims and perpetrators. Prevalence studies are the main way of capturing the scale of the crime and IJM works with criminologists brining undercover investigators to sample locations, having them interact with potential victims, and collect field data. This methodological approach has allowed IJM to bring to light to a great deal of once hidden information. The vast majority of slavery is an economic crime: the goal is to make money and gain a competitive advantage in the market. For example, in India, traffickers use the caste system to identify potential victims and keep them subdued, however their primary motivation is making money. The immediate benefit of IJM’s rescues is that victims are finally given the freedom they deserve. IJM also works to restore survivors’ dignity and help them live happy lives. The organization’s programs have resulted in the rescue of approximately 20,000 people. Before the arrival of IJM in a country, there exists a “state of impunity”: perpetrators believe they will not be punished for their crimes. IJM fights this impunity by improving local public justice systems. When traffickers are arrested, refused bail, brought to court, and sent to prison, they re-evaluate the risk of committing trafficking crimes. If criminals know they will be punished for breaking the law, their willingness to break the law goes down. The organization also trains and equips police and prosecutors to better do their jobs. For example, IJM embeds investigative training in officer training programs. It also seeks to prioritize trafficking by creating special police units, and mentor and cooperate with prosecutors and police on casework. Over time, IJM’s role transitions to technical support rather than “on the ground” assistance. The mission considers it a success when police units start to lead their own raids. IJM’s public justice system studies are based on a case-file review; IJM gets access to and analyzes old case-files and uses that information to track errors and/or major problems in the system. In many places, the fight against trafficking is hampered by a lack of accurate information, so IJM shares its research openly. For example, IJM shared its Cambodian study with the country’s leaders and other anti- trafficking organizations, and asked these people to critique and use it in their own work. IJM also engages in dissemination at conferences around the world. You can find information on all of IJM’s studies at www.ijm.org/studies.
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    29 Katie Ford Founder, Freedomfor All Freedom For All partners with on-the-ground organizations that create long-term, systemic changes to end slavery in the countries where they work and to save lives by freeing people who are held in slavery. They also advise companies and their advisors on how they can save lives by following pre-existing measures to manage their supply chains and remediate problems within it. FFA recommends different initiatives and programs that will help eradicate the rampant problem of forced labor. FFA also focuses on producing material to raise awareness about modern day slavery for a variety of usage, such as education, presentations and conferences. Katie worked as Chief Executive Officer of Ford Models and in 2008 she decided to leave her job and focus on the anti-trafficking initiative, Freedom for All, where she spearheaded awareness campaigns reaching 400,000 viewers. A person who is trafficked can be used over and over again throughout their life in labor or sexually abused many times a day. Sometimes entire villages are enslaved and young boys and men are forced to work where they become completely dependent on the trafficker. The common grounds for trafficking are typically restaurants, farms, modeling, hotels, salons, door-to-door sales, etc. Children are also the most vulnerable, and traffickers prey on many different vulnerabilities - the most common being poverty. In Ghana, for example, children as young as three years old are being forced to untangle nets under fishing boats resulting in many drownings. Many victims of human trafficking do not have a way out due to lack of access to technology, isolation, threats with violence, and the like. This is why the Freedom For All focuses on training local people to understand and recognize trafficking. The organization has rescued 61,000 victims of sex slavery and human trafficking, from ages 8 to 22 years old. Once Freedom For All discovers an effective intervention of human trafficking, it can sometimes be replicated within country or in different companies. However, in Ghana the intervention plans are not generally replicable. FFA has partnered with the department of immigration in Brazil to warn people about fake work agents. Many young girls and boys are being lured with the promise of a contract and career in modeling or soccer. The Brazilian government has taken action against this predatory behavior. They have declaring that if they discover any supplier engaged in slavery, the government will cut funding until they can, within a two year period, ascertain that there is absolutely no slavery in the supply chain. The list of companies in Brazil that have signed on to the anti-slavery initiative list is one-third of the economy. The solutions proposed by the Freedom For All to bring an end to human trafficking include police training in the US, providing more housing and job services for survivors in the US, teaching about modern day slavery in schools, engaging the model industry about scam agencies, and creating a culture where young people are informed and believe they can make a difference.
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    30 Alison Friedman Deputy Director,U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor & Combat Trafficking in Persons The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) at the United State Department of State was established in 2010 and works with foreign governments, international organizations, and civil society to develop and implement effective strategies for confronting modern slavery. In addition, the office is responsible for bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, targeted foreign assistance, and public engagement on trafficking in persons. Its main goals are to prosecute traffickers, protect victims, and prevent trafficking. As Deputy Director of the TIP office, Alison is committed to fighting human trafficking, and her office is the only office in the Department of State that ranks other countries on an annual basis in regards to their efficacy in fighting trafficking. Although this choice creates friction, it is also a significant movement that effects real change. The annual Trafficking in Persons report released by the office every year, ranks the countries and details the trafficking situation in each of them. This research has spurred new laws and initiatives in many different places. In fact, according to a Duke University study, a country is two times more likely to pass an anti-trafficking law after being downgraded by the report. Unfortunately, the office receives just under $20 million per year in funding from the government for their worldwide initiatives, and therefore are seeking to partner with potential donors in future to share information about ideas that State Department cannot fund. In the United States, one of the best ways to fight human trafficking is to make it a part of the nation’s political agenda. Politicians such as Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator Sam Brownback, and others have picked up on this issue in the past. However, since there was not a huge outcry against human trafficking, the problem was not addressed as fully as it could have been. If the general public becomes interested in fighting the problem, more can be done to eradicate human trafficking. Some practical ways to raise awareness include getting the word about trafficking hotlines and the issue of slavery in general. Citizens can also engage with their mayor and school board to try and spread this information, as well as petitioning their state and federal Congressmen. In all, establishing a political base that will support the fight against human trafficking would be one of the most effective ways to eradicate slavery from the United States. One way for American citizens to fight human trafficking is ensuring that they are ethical consumers. Alison was introduced to the fight against human trafficking because her family was in textiles, and they came up against the problem of verifying supply chains. Supply chain verification is a real opportunity to create a standard for what is expected of businesses that holds them accountable. It’s a sound business practice to eliminate bonded labor in a business’s supply chain because it ensures one’s laborers are qualified and creating good products, as well as being paid fairly for their work. Alison also emphasized the importance of programs that empower survivors to live their lives fully. Religious organizations are wonderful resources, and they need to step up to the task. There are some real opportunities in our globalized world to connect survivors with their interests, but we need to figure out how to better integrate survivors back into society. As immoral and abusive as human trafficking is, it’s fundamentally an economic crime. That means there is a way to change it.
  • 38.
    31 Tina Frundt Founder &Executive Director, Courtney’s House Courtney’s House is a drop-in center working with youths, both boys and girls, from ages 12 to 21. Founded in 2008, the organization fearlessly searches for children who are being forced into prostitution on the streets, in brothels, strip clubs, private homes, and hotels. The House embraces the rescued children and brings them into a safe environment where they and their families can heal, recover and develop hopeful, dignified, and influential lives. As a survivor of domestic sex trafficking herself, Tina relentlessly fights to protect children from sexual exploitation and the devastation that comes from it. When she was trafficked, she thought that she was to blame, and therefore is fully aware of how difficult it can be to overcome the trauma caused by the experience. Tina also was never given nor was she aware that she could get access to a wide range of services, so her organization was founded to help others facing similar difficulties. Courtney’s House works to find missing kids on the street and online, and to provide support groups, counseling services, and a hotline for survivors. The Courtney’s House hotline differs from the Polaris trafficking hotline, because the latter is a tip-line while the House hotline is a help-line where survivors can call in to find out more about services and get immediate support from the House team. The organization also provides preventable training methods to and for law enforcement and other service providers around the country. If officers can better understand the different types of control over survivors - including gang control, pimp control, and family control – they can better serve and protect victims. Tina also recognizes the need for employees of the foster care system to be better trained to recognize trafficking. Currently, foster kids cannot access the services they need, and many are trafficked. It is very difficult to recognize a victim, since all different races and gender identifications are trafficked. Many individuals from the LGBTQ are trafficked, in part because many LGBTQ youths are forced to leave their homes when by families unwilling to accept their sexual identification, making them an increasingly vulnerable population. Tina believes we need a better standard of care for young survivors; LGBTQ youths included. The kids at Courtney’s House resume their education immediately after their rescue, though many parents of survivors rely on homeschooling as a first step. Some survivors face bullying, and Courtney’s House helps families deal with this eventuality. However, support groups serve as the most effective means for support and are the most important component of the program for most of the kids in the House program. Two percent of the referrals that come into the House are from law enforcement; most referrals come from parents, the foster care system, friends of survivors, and the survivors themselves. The vast majority of survivors, when they contact Courtney’s House for the first time, are still in “the life” – even when they begin participating in the House programs. It can take many years for survivors to mentally and physically escape the trauma they have endured. Courtney’s House confronts a range of challenges – including the severe mental health issues of their clients and the demand for the growing number of children being entered into their programs – but they continue to work with survivors and challenge established norms about their acceptance by and reintegration back into society.
  • 39.
    32 Patrick Gage Member, TheCarlson Family Foundation & The Carlson Global Hospitality & Travel Company The Carlson Family Foundation represents the commitment of the Carlson family to give charitably to humanitarian and community affairs. Through investments in education, mentoring, children and youth at risk, and youth mentoring, the Carlson Family Foundation actively participates in creating strong and healthy communities, and a competitive workforce. The Carlson Global Hospitality and Travel Company is a member of ECPAT and a corporate leader in the fight against slavery and trafficking worldwide. As a leader in business tourism, Carlson maintains a majority stake in Wagonlit Travel and operates 1,300 hotels in more than 150 countries. Since 1999, the Carlson Family Foundation has taken a corporate and people’s approach to combatting human trafficking. Their approach requires ethics training for all employees focusing on the language of human trafficking. This is partnered with a Code of Business Ethics and Conduct Language for Suppliers, as well as philanthropy and advocacy via the Carlson Family Foundation. Employee trainings include discussions on how best to observe, identify, and properly report any suspicious or illegal activity. These trainings feature Not My Life, a ten-minute documentary about child trafficking and exploitation funded in part by the Carlson Family Foundation. Employees are then required to report any illicit behavior to a manager and every hotel has a certified trainer to ensure even franchises are prepared for such an eventuality. Placed in each Carlson hotel, a back-of-house poster is in use to raise employee awareness and help them to identify critical situations. This ensures that at every step they are encouraged to report any illicit activity. Along with their employee training, Carlson utilizes a Code of Business Ethics and Conduct for their suppliers. As many of the products we buy today are tainted by modern slavery, especially sweatshops and child labor, Carlson maintains a Supplier Code of Conduct, which ensures suppliers update their contracts with anti- trafficking language. Sometimes their big suppliers go to third parties to meet demand, and that is where the slavery and trafficking are most prevalent. To combat this, Carlson audits their supply chains that move to third parties. Although this may create friction over costs, Carlson believes that if large companies do not tolerate supply chain slavery at any level, they can effect a major change in combatting human trafficking. Carlson also makes ensure that travelers and customers are aware of the issue when traveling to countries where child sex tourism is high. This is their way of showing support for the movement inside and outside the US. On all itineraries originating in the United States going to countries with high risks for child-sex tourism Carlson places the National Human Trafficking phone number for both inside and outside the United States of America. Finally, through their advocacy and philanthropy, they petition governments, educational institutions, and the private sector to prevent and combat human trafficking. While they admit that measuring the impact is tough, as traffickers do not release numbers and victims are unable to raise they hand and be counted, they measure their successes by the number of hotels with certified trainers and monitoring employee training at the hotel level for compliance. Additionally, they cite new anti-trafficking laws and larger social changes. Working with key partners such as the World Childhood Foundation, they are able to combat the pushback associated with the costs of this program. Through their hotel loyalty program, Club Carlson, they allow members to donate to the World Childhood Foundation and advocate for event sponsorships or adopting organizations that help to break the cycle.
  • 40.
    33 Cara Gardner &Stacie Reimer Board Member; Founder & Executive Director, The Amara Legal Center Founded in September 2013, the Amara Legal Center provides free legal services to individuals whose rights have been violated through commercial sex trafficking, in the Washington D.C. area. The Center focuses on helping victims of domestic sex trafficking, as it is a less popularly discussed issue in the United States. Amara is committed to providing excellent legal aid, raising awareness about the rampant spread of domestic trafficking, and finding ways to reform the public’s treatment of domestic slavery in the United States. A 13-year-old girl named ‘Jessica’ met a young man while living in Maryland. He promised to take care of her and give her things, and for a young girl without a good home life or support system, his words were just what she wanted to hear. When he started running low on cash, he told her she needed to start working so they could keep up their lifestyle. Jessica agreed, and her boyfriend began to sell her body to get money. This is just the beginning of Jessica’s story, and hers is a real life example of the 300,000 minors at risk of being trafficked in the United States. The average age of entry into the sex industry is 12 to 14 years old, and often the victims have already been sexually abused at home, in homeless shelters, or the foster care system. Many of the victims are female or transgender, hold a criminal record, and are African American or Latino. Chronic runaways and young boys are also in danger, but their risk is often overlooked. There are significant cracks in the school system in Maryland, as some students will pimp others, and school employees are untrained on how to recognize signs and report suspected instances of human trafficking on school grounds. As Jessica continued her relationship with her pimp, she dropped out of school and was arrested and charged with prostitution at 18 during a police raid. It is common for victims to become addicted to drugs and alcohol, and they are frequently unable to obtain a driver’s license. Trafficked girls will often have children as well, but, as with so many others, Jessica lost custody of her children. Finally, at age 22, Jessica was able to escape her pimp, but she now lives without a family support system, high school diploma, or government issued ID. Jessica has had no job training and does not have access to mental health or legal services. In addition, her previous buyers often threaten her and harass her to come back to the industry. While Jessica’s plight is grave, Amara Legal Center is an organization able to help Jessica overcome her most pressing legal problems. Amara helps victims of trafficking obtain restraining orders, regain custody of children, and expunge records, and it provides Victim Witness Advocacy and Policy Advocacy in the Washington, D.C. area. Amara Legal Center has recently submitted a law that will expedite clearing the record of sex trafficking survivors or those who have been arrested for prostitution, which they hope to see it passed in the Fall 2015. Sex workers are often looked at as criminals, but the anti-trafficking movement can work with the sex workers rights movement to prevent the kinds of brutalities against women perpetuated within the sex industry and help provide them with their legal rights. Amara Legal Center is also working to train social services and service providers on effective solutions to help trafficking victims, raise awareness through monthly events and social media, as well as working with clients, often comprised of trafficking victims, in the legal sector. In ten years, Amara hopes to be a provider of technical training for nationwide awareness of what survivors of sex trafficking need in terms of legal services. In Washington, D.C., thousands of trafficking survivors have unmet needs, and Amara Legal Center is on the forefront of helping these survivors as well as working against human trafficking. The justice system must be reformed so that these victims are not seen as criminals, but as victims in need of help. Social services can work with other private organizations like the Amara Legal Center to provide the help trafficking survivors so desperately need.
  • 41.
    34 Sarah Gardner Director ofDevelopment, Thorn Thorn drives technological innovation to fight the sexual exploitation of children. Partnering with organizations across the tech industry, government and NGOs, Thorn leverages technology to combat predatory behavior, rescue victims, and protect vulnerable children. The Thorn Technology Task Force is comprised of more than 20 technology companies that lend their knowledge, time and resources to the work that Thorn does. Founded in 2009 by two philanthropists, Thorn is a global leader of innovating technology to combat human sex trafficking. With the introduction of the Internet, child pornography greatly increased, as did the platforms for its dissemination. Law enforcement was not capable of keeping up with the demand. Realizing the need for a larger initiative, Thorn began by starting a Technology Task Force of 25 companies. These companies, including as Facebook, Google, Pinterest, AOL, Twitter, Firefox, and others have their engineers meet twice a year to tackle the dissemination of child pornography at its roots. Thorn has discovered that three out of four victims of human trafficking are trafficked online. The average age of entry into trafficking is 13 years old and over 70 percent of those sold online have come out of the foster care system. Pimps and pedophiles look especially for vulnerable children like those in foster care. To combat this vulnerability, Thorn approached Digital Reasoning to create an algorithm that compares the language and keywords in the titles of ads on BackPage.com to determine a likelihood of age score. This score then denotes whether or not the person in this ad is a minor or legal adult. Further compounding Thorn’s fights are the pages that say, “Donations are non-negotiable.” This means that she is charging but the ads remain. The two owners of Backpage have won court cases relating to these algorithms by citing their freedom of speech, which includes the solicitation of donations. This is despite the fact that in most cases, prostitution is illegal. Thorn thus began to use technology to combat child sex trafficking at the internal level. The BEFREE Text Shortcode is a collaboration of the Polaris Project/National Human Trafficking Hotline, Twilio, and the Salesforce Foundation. Launched in the spring of 2013, the BEFREE text shortcode enables trafficking victims to text for their freedom. Since its launch, 674 new trafficking cases have been opened and over 1,100 new text-messaging conversations have started. Employing a similar algorithm as the one in use to determine age, this ad will guess the gender of the person seeing their advertisement. If the algorithm believes it to be a woman, they will send them the BEFREE ad. Working to fight child pornography has also driven Thorn to platforms such as the “dark web,” and illegal movie download sites. They designed and implemented a deterrence program that would act as a “red light,” to those googling these images with pop-up ads will pop up that say “We know where you are” (to scare) or “Stop- ask for help” (for assistance to get out of what they are doing). Their deterrence program has 1500 people hitting their page each day. Along with their GEMS (Girls Education and Mentoring Services) pilot launched in June of 2014, Thorn’s current priorities are to support awareness initiatives for BEFREE. With the GEMS programs, they want survivors of human trafficking to be empowered and re-integrated into society. With the backing of two philanthropists covering overhead and admin costs, Thorn sees itself as an incubator that is not afraid of failure in the innovation stage. Currently Thorn is in a nine-month test phase with law enforcement in Arizona, and in phase two, they seek to build a cloud-based tool that they will test in different cities. Finally, they are campaigning to teach very young children the importance of their digital footprint. By using technology to fight the sexual exploitation of minors across tech, government, and NGO platforms, Thorn works to dismantle the presence of trafficking in the digital world.
  • 42.
    35 Girl Be Heard GirlBe Heard is a nonprofit organization that aims to help young women write, direct, and perform original works based on pressing issues in their communities. Art enables understanding; by taking performances on tour around the nation and to high-profile venues like the United Nations, Girl Be Heard enables individuals to comprehend widespread issues like sex trafficking in an artistic, humanizing, and approachable ways. Art and theater play an influential role in the larger social justice movement. Theater provides people who might not otherwise be heard with a platform and voice to share difficult stories. Art activism allows for more than one complex story to be told at a time; as talking about sex trafficking is meaningless without including discussions on poverty, rape, sexuality, education, and privilege. Girl Be Heard was founded in 2008 by a group of young girls who came together to discuss world issues like politics and feminism. Their dynamic synergized because their work speaks to diverse audiences around the globe. Regardless of age, gender, race, sexual orientation, or creed, issues like trafficking affect everyone, and participants were emboldened to take ownership over their own stories and experiences in a cathartic, creative manner. In 2011 the organization developed its first full=length show, and has since been performing fragmented excerpts of “Trafficked” in every country from Taiwan to Trinidad. Compiled of testimonies, poetry, dance, and movement, their performances are constantly evolving to incorporate current statistics and emotions. Below are two pieces performed in this show.
  • 43.
    36 CARNA I used tothink there wasn’t a part of me you hadn’t touched. Stripping naked before the mirror, in the dead of night when my body is brilliant against the dark of the room, My body was a classic textbook timeline, Dates and times and bruises tattooed on In thick spidery ink, Across the jagged edges of my toenails, and the jutting ankle bones, October 18th, 3:49 AM Etched between the soft hair that grows on my knees, and on the thighs that chafe on long walks February 3rd, 12:30 pm Dug into the vulva shaven for reasons long forgotten, The tummy with the slight bump March 15th, 7:13 pm Scratched across the dip of my ribcage, Plastered across the collarbone. July 8th, 11:21 AM As I slept, I hung with moonsilk thread A dreamcatcher, woven thick enough to hold the weight Of a thousand nightmares Near my head, And yet you, you hacked and slashed your way into my brain While I tried to sleep, I woke screaming with your face gleaming Across the backs of my eyelids, the weight of your psychosis Weighing in my mind in my bones in my skin tugging tearing pulling it down Into greying bags that hung below my eyes I used to think, that there wasn’t a part of me you hadn’t touched I ignored the needs of my internal organs, I scrubbed my skin with a harsh sponge They say that skin cells of anyone you touch stay with you for Seven long years But I was eager to lower the wait time, I changed myself, right down to the inner layers of my hair strands, So that I wouldn’t have to see the body you laid claim to Every single day. Exhausted from years of running, running almost every day for four years, Running Almost 8,500 miles and changing my hair colour four times and spending hundreds of dollars on makeup a change in religion, two new tats and seven piercings and two homes and three apartments, and an eating disorder that permanently changed my insides, There was nothing to do but slam my fists in the mirror and beg the heavens for a fucking answer. As the shadows of the room give way to streaks of pale morning-light, in the silence of the room I hear my answer, I feel my answer. Inside my ribcage, the constant thudding. Shattered only in metaphor, the bulbous blood pumping fierce beast in my chest forged on. I used to think There wasn’t a part of me you hadn’t touched. But deep within my magma infused core, Is something no man, whether with fingers bony and cold, or with drills and machines built for fracking, Could ever crack.
  • 44.
    37 AMSTERDAM She stands deadweightin the door frame, Fingering the thick cloth of the velvety curtains that cover her window When she has a customer. Jet black hair, blackening eyes, She is striking against the dark background of her habitat. Her thick accent masks her fear as she says Any more questions? I have given her some euros to talk to me about her life. She takes me by the hand into the soft purple lit bedroom Decorated with end table, mirrors, a twin sized bed with blue And violet covers and sheets, a single pillow flat as a piece of wood, And the vague smell of…vanilla? Musk? To mask the scent of sex Points to the tools of her trade, scattered on shelves And in crevices beside the bed, one by one Ties and handcuffs. Fluffy and metal. Dildos. Many sizes. Strap on—many straight men like. Condoms. Latex and non latex. For allergies. Lube. Obviously. And there, tissue for the mess. Always many boxes. I can barely hear the life of Amsterdam’s canals outside over the thudding of Music that echoes through the vast brothel. Through that door… that is where we all live. It feels like I can see for miles. A hallway coated in red velvet and dim lighting, hundreds of women Who can dance and sing and play Nina from the Seagull, Shaving their legs and their nether regions, Combing and dying their hair bleach blond, Smoking hot ended cigarettes, Not sleeping but not fully awake, Lost hunting through fog For a dream that never showed up. “How did you get here?” They told me I was going to be a dancer…ballet. I do ballet. That much is evident from her slender lean limbs, and The graceful sharp turn of her head as her eyes dart round and round Round the room round the street round me. You want the sex? No, I tell her, no that’s ok. Thank you for talking to me. Ok good. You’re too young to be here. Don’t do this. Now go. I leave her doorway and boys in the street turn and whistle Hey girls can we join you? They spit and laugh and laugh and laugh, It hits our ears hard and shrill and childish While she clenches, and unclenches her fists, And returns to pose, arms and legs akimbo, in her windowsill, Eyes turned towards the blue, blue sky.
  • 45.
    38 Pearl Gluck Filmmaker, TheTurn Out Pearl Gluck is a filmmaker that has produced and directed numerous of films that explore representations of gender, class and faith in cinema. Her films have been premiered at internal festivals such as Cannes among others. She also brings her passion into the classroom by lecturing about the different aspects of film making at Penn State, Ohio University and Emory University. Her most recent film, The Turn Out, is a look at the role of prostitution in the trucking industry. The Turn Out is a documentary-based film that follow trucker Crowbar, who meets a 16 year-old named Nevaeh, asking if he’d like some company. But as he begins to learn more about Neveah’s story, he learns that she was trafficked by members of her own family. This experience forces Crowbar to reevaluate his perception and approach to the women and girls he has seen truck stops. The Turn Out is based on two years of investigative research into the sex industry in Southeast Ohio by filmmaker Pearl Gluck who produced this film to bring awareness to the widely ignored problem of sex-trafficking in local communities. Pearl gained an interest in sex trafficking after befriending a trucker five years ago. As she learned more about the trucker community in Ohio and was exposed to different anti-trafficking posters directed towards truckers. Pearl started to realize that there was a real problem of sex-trafficking right in the middle of these small towns. With Pearl’s Jewish background and connection to the Holocaust community she realized how the human-trafficking occurring today mirrors the oppressed generation of Jews in the Holocaust. She began to feel convicted to do something. Pearl’s goal with her film is to address the underlying causes of what it means to be a bystander to sex trafficking. Similar to the Holocaust, sex slavery is also an issue of those who stand in a silence and allow these atrocities to continue. Through her research, Pearl discovered that Athens, Ohio was surrounded by extreme poverty and a lack of education; residents simply do not realize the wrong in selling their family members. In an interview with Rebecca Miller from the Athens County Children Services, Pearl learned about the prevalence of intra- trafficking within families. Rebecca’s insight made Pearl take a new direction for her female lead Nevaeh, who would be forced into prostitution by a relative. However, another aspect of sex-trafficking that Pearl addressed was post-trafficking life. What happened to survivors that were fortunate enough to escape? Pearl met Judge Paul Herbert, to learn about a program he started called CATCH Court. Judge Herbert offers victims an opportunity to receive help and an expunged record from prostitution if they are able to complete this two-year specialty court program. Survivors get an education, learn about basic life skills, and attend AA and NA meetings while under the protection of the court. Pearl spoke to the first graduate of this program, Barbara Freeman, who was trafficked for over 20 years. She was locked in a cycle of domestic violence and drug abuse until she was saved by a police officer who brought her into Herbert’s program. She successfully finished the program and launched the Freeman Project to combat sex-slavery. Pearl’s hope is that her film brings awareness to sex-trafficking as well as the psychological and physical impact it takes on victims’ lives. On one side there are the captors and kidnappers, on the other are the victims. In the middle is the rest of the world, who allow this tragedy to continue by either paying for these inhumane services or doing nothing about them.
  • 46.
    39 Molly Gochman Philanthropist &Artist, The Red Sand Project Molly Gochman is an experimental artist. Her projects are aimed at bringing together the collective experiences of many people to promote greater understanding. She believes that strong first step to empowering socially excluded populations, particularly women and girls, is to create transformative, systemic and cultural initiatives that demand a world where we all have the opportunity to participate fully and freely. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Molly Gochman grew up the daughter of a human rights lawyer. Raised with this unique perspective, originally she sought a similar career. However, after discovering that her heart was in art, she changed paths to become the woman she is today. Art, Molly believes, presents an opportunity for people to questions things for themselves. Following the passing of her father, Molly was faced with many life transitions back to back. Her house was condemned and she decided to take a break from art. It was during this time of transition, she learned more about human trafficking and modern slavery. Unsure of where to begin, she called and connected with many human trafficking organizations to see how she could help. It was then she says that she decided to use her art to promote a progressive cultural change. The Red Sand Project is an activist artwork piece that uses participatory sidewalk interventions and convenings to create opportunities for people to question, connect and take action against human trafficking. Beginning in Miami, Molly asked the public to place red sand into sidewalk cracks. Participants are then asked to document their sidewalk transformations on social media using #RedSandProject. She chose sidewalk cracks because like socially excluded populations, they are often looked over. By transforming them through these interventions her aim was to re-envision these once looked over sidewalk cracks as opportunities for art and conversation. Worried about reactions from the public, she says it was the response from survivors that gave her the courage to continue the project. Over a year later, red sand has been poured in countless cities around the world. Always interested in the usage of space, she began looking at larger ways she could use space to highlight exploitation in America. It was then she began thinking about what would become the evolving earthwork in Houston, Texas - Border, USAIMX. Molly explains that corruption, poverty and violence have forced thousands to flee from Central America and Mexico to the United States in search of security and support. However, rather than finding a safe place, these men and women often face discrimination and experience some degree of exploitation. With that in mind, Molly created a two-foot wide and nearly 300-foot long trench filled with red sand that mirrored the border between the United States and Mexico. During this phase, in spite of its bright color, the red sand was not visible to passers-by because it was level with the grass surrounding it. Molly notes, like human trafficking itself, the installation was hidden in plain sight. Phase two brought the piece into the open by adding soil on top of the sand. Now nearly three feet high and surrounded by picnic tables, the piece serves to engage the Houston public with the reality of human trafficking and exploitation. Art, once a guilty pleasure, has now transformed the life of Molly Gochman. An artist with a conscience, she now uses her work to expose one of the largest yet most secretive humanitarian crises in human history. But that’s not all. A prolific philanthropist, she works closely with partnering organizations, like the Freedom Fund, to promote research and best practices that advance the abolitionist cause. Inspiring all of us to look a little deeper and speak a little louder, Molly uses her art to give a voice to all in the fight against human trafficking and modern slavery.
  • 47.
    40 Sarah Godoy &Rebecca Sadwick Lead Researcher; Digital Technology Program Manager, UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation The mission of the Luskin Center for Innovation is to unite University of California-Los Angeles scholars with forward-looking civic leaders to address the most pressing issues confronting our community, nation, and world. Faculty and staff conduct research in partnership with civic partners who use the knowledge to inform policy and organizational innovations. The Center is organized around initiatives that seek to conduct and translate world-class research and expertise into real-world policy solutions. Sarah Godoy serves as the lead researcher and content manager of a Google-funded report that focuses on the role of technology in the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC). Her partner, Rebecca Sadwick is the Digital Technologies Initiative Program Manager, overseeing the strategy, direction, and partnerships of this project. Present estimates list that some 20.9 million victims are trafficked worldwide. They are now researching, how traffickers are exploiting technology to advance this form of modern slavery. Originally looking at global statistics, they have now shifted to focusing solely on the United States. One of their first findings was that many people believe human trafficking only happens in developing countries. As a result, recent studies seemed to be primarily focused on foreign-born children trafficked into the United States. This resulted in a lack of information regarding the very real domestic born children who are victims of commercial sexual exploitation. As they began analyzing literature reviews, they realized that the conversation around the definition of human trafficking is very complicated and nuanced. Two nationwide systems collect data on human trafficking victims, the Uniform Crime Reporting Program run by the FBI and the Human Trafficking Reporting System run by the Bureau of Justice. The UCR Program is a program opted into by local law enforcement agencies to create reliable uniform crime statistics for the nation. Human trafficking data began to be included in 2013. Although more localities are now reporting on trafficking, these statistics do not necessarily provide a clear picture of the depth of this problem. Data often focuses on street prostitution rather than on brothels, parlors, and hotels. As such, they have learned that there is not a clear way to define labor and sex trafficking. Additionally, providing information is voluntary and some states have still not yet opted into the Uniform Crime System Program. However, when analyzing the data, they did notice some important trends in American human trafficking. From January 2010 to June 2012, eight out of every ten trafficking victims were trafficked into the sex trade. It is also important to note that 83 percent of those sex-trafficking victims were United States citizens. One of the most problematic issues for law enforcement and advocates are websites like Backpage.com. Backpage is a classified advertising website that has become a favorite of traffickers. The page accepts Bitcoins, a form of digital currency that is electronic and not controlled by anyone. This makes tracking transactions near impossible for law enforcement. Although, Backpage exists on the traditional internet, finding reliable human trafficking statistics from the deep web is simply not possible. Sarah and Rebecca say that in order to break down silos of information, especially among state-based databases, we need to create more unified and accessible resources that empower law enforcement and save lives. The creation of a central, national database for law enforcement officers with real time investigation information could link cases and save victims. In addition, as teens and young adults transition to a more mobile application based culture, the development of anti-human trafficking apps or an app that directly and discretely connects victims to law enforcement officers could also do a world a good.
  • 48.
    41 Erica Grobler Founder, RedAlert Red Alert is a network of grass-roots non-governmental organization that pool knowledge and collaborate in different capacities to fight and eradicate Indian sex trafficking. The organization is fighting sex trafficking through awareness, a forthcoming national helpline, and local partnerships, creating an united voice against sex trafficking in India. Mumbai is home to Asia’s second largest red-light district. Estimates state that girls in Indian brothels are on average raped twenty or more times a day. With at least one million, if not more, children forced into child prostitution in India, researchers believe that every ten minutes, a girl is sold into the flesh trade. The number of enslaved people living in India as a whole is a staggering fourteen million. Elca Grobler founded the Red Alert project to help save the children of India. Their strategic vision is to spark and sustain a movement that will end large-scale sex trafficking in India by 2025. To accomplish this goal, Red Alert is positioning itself to raise awareness about sex trafficking. 80 percent of families who do send their girls away do not know they are sold into sex trafficking. Red Alert wants to teach parents and girls about trafficking whilst at the same time, showing the ‘johns’ their actions are wrong. They are currently working on establishing a national helpline for victims, parents, or families to provide counseling and advice. This will enable them to construct an extensive case database that Red Alert and its partners can use for educational, outreach, and counseling purposes. Their local partner network is already quite expansive with groups such as MyChoices (National), Rescue, Restoration, Safe Homes Prajwala (Hyderbad), Prem Kieran (Mumbai), Bombay Teen Challenge (Mumbai), The Freedom Project (Banglore), and Sanlaap in Calcutta. Additionally, in the last nine months, they have visited over thirty organizations in India and Nepal dedicated to combatting modern slavery. Yet, negative cultural norms regarding women and girls and the social inhibiting caste system are still prevalent. Other issues include economic factors, poverty and widespread corruption. To combat government apathy, Red Alert is proposing partnerships with young and influential Bollywood stars or producers. This will take away stigma regarding the conversation and make it more socially acceptable to talk about. At a time when the economy is weak, and more young women (and even boys and men) are working in the brothels, Red Alert is moving towards increasing discussions around the topic of rape in schools, communities, and in partnerships with other anti-slavery and trafficking organizations throughout the country. There are always challenges to their work but Red Alert promises to be the bane of sex trafficking by consistently and creatively working against the darkness – to fight until they win.
  • 49.
    42 Nick Grono President &Chief Executive Officer, The Freedom Fund The Freedom Fund is the world’s first ever private donor fund dedicated to identifying and investing in the most effective front-line efforts to end slavery. The Fund has developed an independent and global approach to bring together knowledge and capital to deliver results in those countries and sectors with the greatest incidence of slavery. They invest in best-of-class anti-slavery interventions, scaling those that succeed. The Freedom Fund shares its knowledge to encourage best practice and greater collaboration in the sector while measuring impact to improve investment strategy over time. It also works to bring together a community of activists committed to ending slavery and empowered by the knowledge of how best to do so. There are three main factors that contribute to slavery: vulnerability (poverty, immigration status, language barrier, etc.), discrimination (racism, caste system, gender), and lack of rule of law. Slavery is very profitable, drawing in about $150 billion annually according to an International Labor Organization (ILO) report; the majority of which results from sex trafficking. Traffickers generally pay about $2,000 to acquire a victim, but in India traffickers may pay only a few hundred dollars with very little chance of prosecution or ramification. The Freedom Fund focuses on such “geographic hot spots” where it identifies effective local organizations to support. The Freedom Fund was established through a partnership with three of the largest funders in the anti- trafficking space – Humanity United, Legatum, and the Walk Free Foundation. Rather then working separately and in parallel, the organizations determined by pooling their resources and creating a united front, they could more effectively and efficiently hasten and end to the slavery once and for all. Currently the Fund works in Brazil with frontline organizations to bring human rights activists on the ground. It seeks to take the same approach in Thailand, where a massive problem of slavery persists in the fishing industry. The Fund wants to build resilient, slave-free communities where the people are aware and empowered with an accessible livelihood, including access to government services. Nick believes that funding small organizations of former slaves will build a powerful network to fight slavery, and it is using funding to drive that collaboration. Once that network is created, it can begin to scale up. In order to make a difference, slavery needs to become morally abhorrent and normatively unacceptable. In order to achieve that, we need a new abolitionist movement. Governments need to mobilize and prioritize the fight against slavery, and along with consumers, encourage businesses to work towards slave-free supply chains. The Freedom Fund will continue to partner with local organizations, to research on what works best and what can be scaled up, and finally to provide support for victims to come out and stay out. To do so, the Freedom Fund will focus on building resilient, slave free communities where individuals have access to a livelihood in order to support themselves and their families, as well as access to government services and aide. Pressure, therefore, also needs to be brought to bear on countries around the world to provide these services, and to adjust their legal systems so that not only is slavery abolished, but its is prosecutable and punishable by those that traffic and enslave the innocent.
  • 50.
    43 Laura Hackney Executive Director& Co-Founder, AnnieCannons, Inc. AnnieCannons, Inc. is dedicated to destroying the stigma pitted against trafficking survivors in existing work environments. Operating on the belief that anyone can innovate if given the opportunity, the San Francisco organization empowers young survivors of trafficking to learn important computer programming and literacy skills, thus perpetuating a trauma-sensitive space that fosters creative collaboration, successful integration back into the workforce, and promotion of the important issue of trafficking to massive tech companies. After spending years investigating common trafficking threads as a Stanford University researcher, Laura discovered that the anti-trafficking movement had largely focused on enforcing convictions and advocating for proper awareness training – but not on providing survivors with education and career opportunities after they have been freed from exploitation. She co-founded AnnieCannons to fill this gap in the trafficking space. Eponymously named after an early 1900s Harvard astrological researcher who pushed past society standards to become an influential female paradigm in her community and in history, the organization enables trafficking survivors to take control over their lives by regaining confidence in themselves and in their role in society. Instead of talking about their trafficking experiences, students are asked to share their interests and passions as part of their detailed intake process. Emphasis is placed on promoting a positive, label-free environment where individuals feel comfortable asking questions and advancing their knowledge and skills. They are placed into small classes to ensure individualized attention, and take a course on personal finance. To properly educate their students, the organization partners with shelters and technology boot camps to employ survivor leaders from the community and female software engineers, ensuring the curriculum is trauma-informed and technologically progressive. AnnieCannons instructors spend time debunking myths about what the technology industry is like as many of the survivors in the program feel intimidated by coding and the technology field as a whole. Armed with the comprehensive education, AnnieCannons provides a platform for these individuals to confidently undertake job placement, ultimately putting their skills to use in the field. Incorporating survivors into the tech world not only diversifies the industry, but also enables more opportunities to fight the surging connection between trafficking and technology. Large technology companies gain vital awareness of human trafficking through the talent and wisdom of AnnieCannons’ students conversant in software development, online programming, data entry, web design and development, JavaScript, HTML and CSS, and more. The individuals engaged in the organization’s services defy expectations by offering not only the necessary skills to be a qualified tech employee, but also a unique perspective on how to engage technology in a benevolent manner. For example, students work with Facebook to help identify profiles that are recruiting girls into trafficking, as they are personally familiar with the warning signs. As their students continue to thrive, the organization seeks to expand outside of the Bay Area. AnnieCannons is working on partnering with different organizations in Atlanta, Washington, DC, New York, Tennessee, and other states to offer more survivors the opportunity to gain life-changing technological skills. Abroad, AnnieCannons is seeking to implement their services in Romania, as the country features exponentially high human trafficking and unemployment rates. Overall, AnnieCannons’ long-term rehabilitation efforts provide countless survivors with a second chance at success, bringing an exciting future to the tech industry.
  • 51.
    44 Fergus Hanson Executive VicePresident, Global Fund to End Slavery The Global Fund to End Slavery’s mission is to catalyze and coordinate a global strategy informed by rigorous measurement, owned by countries, and at the scale needed to permanently dismantle slaveries systems. Their core objectives are an escalation of the resources and investments available to combat modern slavery. They do so by engaging with countries and businesses to create a global effort coordinating, monitoring, and evaluating investment in the most effective practices as well as programs that combat human trafficking. Fergus Hanson joined the anti-trafficking fight after working at the Brookings Institution for several years in Washington D.C. He noticed that while HIV/AIDS receives $19 billion annually, estimates place funding for anti-human trafficking programs at $120 million a year. This is despite the fact that both issues affect similar numbers of people. Yet the funding gaps appear in other areas as well. There is currently a very limited picture of total anti-slavery spending, as many governments do not record their anti-slavery financing or generally spread their expenditure across multiple departments. Additionally, we do not have a clear picture of what needs to be spent. The organization Free The Slaves estimates that the cost of freedom is around $350/per person. The Global Fund to End Slavery’s vision combats human trafficking on the industrial scale. Thus, the Fund began its work by conducting studies in countries based on the Slavery Index and engaged with governments toward eradication. There are obvious difficulties that arise as a result of the shoestring budgets of most anti-slavery organizations. Very few have any money to spend on rigorous studies and it is often extremely difficult to identify slavery in the first place. Fergus suggests a geo-mapping of known slavery sites and completing more studies on the economic arguments for eradicating slavery. Most analyses rely on data from the pre-war era or even earlier and we currently have no studies on the cost for companies to eradicate slavery from their supply chains. We need new and innovative approaches to garnering our baseline data. To accomplish this, The Global Fund to End Slavery has looked at several innovative models including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria to enhance their sustainability. They want to strengthen coordination between states, monitor evaluations, increase spending, and produce a business model that force humanity to deliver results. This led The Global Fund to End Slavery to propose a new model based on private-public partnerships. With a basic structure of a global board, the fund will act on the advice of anti- slavery experts with national-level strategies to set a global approach that prioritizes certain projects. Governments that align with The Global Fund will then be eligible for more funding. The plan is to use the private sector to incentivize governments to fight trafficking. With the new private-public model of The Global Fund to End Slavery, the Forrest Family (who began the Fund) believes that they finally have a structure that truly addresses the core issues of anti-human trafficking campaigns. By utilizing the data of the Global Slavery Index, they are beginning to conduct baseline surveys to measure slaveries prevalence much more accurately. Working with the State Department and their Trafficking in Persons (TIP) program further enables them to survey every government in the world. Collaborating with other organizations and pursuing dialogues with states, their strategic vision for the future includes consultations with governments and a listening tour in the United States. They also hope to have governments sign up as founding partners. Their mission is to catalyze and coordinate a global strategy informed by rigorous measurement, owned by countries, and at the scale needed to permanently dismantle slavery systems.
  • 52.
    45 Brooke Hathaway Manager, Anti-TraffickingPrograms, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center End Slavery Now (ESN) is an organization dedicating to raising awareness about slavery and is committed to unify the public to end slavery in our lifetime. ESN is a project of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (NURFC), which is an organization dedicated to honoring abolitionists and starting conversations about slavery. The mission of the NURFC is to reveal stories of freedom’s heroes, from the era of the Underground Railroad to contemporary times, challenging and inspiring everyone to take courageous steps of freedom. According to Brooke, the modern anti-trafficking movement faces two essential problems. First, the public is not fully engaged since the movement is less than twenty years old and it is difficult to compare it to other causes about which people care. Second, the group of people fighting trafficking on a daily basis is very small, as compared to the historical Underground Railroad movement, which consumed much of the country. Traditionally, there have been two solutions to these problems: helping victims, such as through recovery programs or economic empowerment of former slaves, and cutting off slavery at its source through resources like anti-poverty programs. While most organizations work in these two important realms, ESN has a mission to target a different method of fighting slavery through engaging the public. Through their method, ESN believes they can create widespread change through a mass movement of anti-trafficking action. ESN is dedicated to building their movement with people who are committed to authentic action and wants the public to be proactively engaged in the fight through avenues like legislative advocacy. With this goal in mind, ESN outlines five steps to building the movement. First, they create awareness by seeing if people have heard of human trafficking. Second, they get people interested through providing information about slavery. Third, they encourage interactivity in ways like going to ESN's resource-laden website. Fourth, they engage people by getting them to participate in real change, such as buying fair trade products and checking supply chains. Fifth, they encourage the public to evangelize through passionately telling their community about slavery and how they can end it together. With such a large and admirable goal, ESN uses three main strategies to work towards their objective. One initiative is storytelling through photo essays, survivor stories, business case studies with companies like Delta or Carlson, and academic research with Historians Against Slavery. Another strategy ESN employs is advocacy through local and national governmental policy advocacy, corporate policy creation, general public education, and partnering with faith-based organizations. A final strategy is through engagement, which manifests in brainstorming and implementing ways for the public to get involved in the fight against slavery. In the next three years, Brooke and ESN have worthy goals to reach. They would like to shift the storytelling angle of human trafficking from sensationalism to hope, create a database of survivors' stories, map antislavery opportunities in nine specific countries, introduce opportunities to advocate for policy change at the grassroots level, and more. Brooke believes a slave-free world is one in which people are willing to spend their money such that slavery cannot survive and are willing to address the fundamental, societal problems that allow slavery to exist. With the efforts of organizations like ESN and NURFC, slavery can end in our lifetime.
  • 53.
    46 Lima James Grant Writer& Education Training Coordinator, LifeWay Network Located in Queens, the epicenter of trafficking in New York, LifeWay Network provides extensive educational and safe housing services to the New York metro area. Through prevention-focused workshops and presentations, outreach efforts, and long-term initiatives, LifeWay engages individuals to learn about trafficking in a localized context, as well as serving female survivors of sex and labor trafficking through tutoring, mentoring, translation services, housing, and more through their Safe Housing Program. Founded in 2007 by Sister Joan S. Dawber, LifeWay has served women from twenty-two different countries, from Mexico to Nigeria to India, and continues to impart a benevolent impact in the tri-state community. Like so many others, Lima Jmes was aware human trafficking, but thought it only happened in other countries. However, when she read a survivor’s story about domestic trafficking and, later, Patricia McCormick’s bestselling novel SOLD, she felt energized to make an impact. Lima began attending anti-human trafficking conferences and events and eventually created an elective university course on human trafficking at SUNY- Albany. She focused on policy while working with the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, and now centralizes her efforts towards educational outreach at LifeWay. Like Lima once was, most people are unaware of the trafficking that is unfolding in their neighborhood massage parlor or nail salon. This only illustrates why education is one of the most essential factors in eradicating human trafficking. Due to this, LifeWay leads presentations for middle and high schools, colleges, parishes, social justice groups, and other community groups to spread awareness of how trafficking infiltrates society nationwide. As well as providing exemplary educational services, LifeWay is the sole organization in the tri-state area that offers safe housing specifically for both female domestic- and foreign-born survivors of sex and labor trafficking. By providing both emergency and long-term safe housing services, LifeWay caters to women aged eighteen years old or older who have come from any sort of abusive background. In emergency situations, women are provided with beds and may remain in the organization’s safe house for a given period of time, from a few weeks and up to several months. Women utilizing the long-term safe housing services can stay for upwards of one year. The Safe Housing program began in 2009. Since establishing two long-term safe houses, called LifeWay House One and Aspire Home, the organization will open a third long-term safe house in 2016. The community model embodied by LifeWay provides each woman with a full support system, replete with a caseworker, service provider, host community, house manager, social worker, and team of volunteers. The host community, in particular, engages the women in fun activities like shopping to help transition them back into normal life, as well as assisting them with any educational programs they are enrolled in, providing mentoring and tutoring services, building resumes, cooking, teaching essential life skills, navigating the New York public transportation system, and much more. Lima notes that sex and labor trafficking appear to occur at equal rates. She, and the other hardworking individuals of LifeWay Network, enable survivors to overcome their pasts to live healthy, successful lives in the future. Easing survivors from a life of slavery and trauma into a normal existence is no easy task, but the organization works seamlessly to promote harmony and happiness onto the women they serve with their corps of dedicated.
  • 54.
    47 Duncan Jepson Founder, LibertyAsia Established in 2011, Liberty Asia is made up of a group of dedicated professionals from different industries that feel strongly that a more effective, coordinated response to slavery is essential and that leveraging technology available to the corporate sector and providing it to the NGO sector will facilitate this response. Liberty Asia’s goal is to provide new solutions to change the way slavery and trafficking is addressed. Where possible, they will work with existing organizations to avoid duplication and to ensure resources are used efficiently. Liberty Asia seeks a systemic change that will constrain the environment in which slavery thrives. Collaborating across sectors, including data and information collection, communications, and with law enforcement, they work to combat the profits of slavery. Duncan believes that slavery is about people and money. Liberty Asia follows the money to prevent and end this institution. They want to leverage the technology of the corporate sector and provide it to the NGO sector to facilitate real response. This begins by working with law enforcement to support effective anti-trafficking investigation and prosecution. The legal framework that victims’ face is often incomplete or inconsistent. Many victims are unidentified, wrongly arrested or isolated, and only about 400 prosecutions happen per year. Through their program Secure Evidence Exchange Knowledge System (SEEKS) Liberty Asia protects the evidence for criminal cases that had previously been lost or damaged. By encouraging effective anti-trafficking investigations and highlighting the incompleteness of the data, Liberty Asia supports sharing best practices across the nonprofit and legal sectors. This information will then enable Liberty Asia and its strategic partners to have a much stronger picture of what slavery in Asia looks like and how best to fight it. Their biggest initiative is to end the money laundering that facilitates and sustains the slave trade. Criminals will hide their illegal profits by means of transfers involving foreign banks or legitimate businesses. It is not that the financial industry does not know that trafficking happens, rather, they are not necessarily obligated to find it in their supply chains. To combat this, Liberty Asia utilizes the banks legal obligation and the risk of injury to their reputation to build robust infrastructures of response. They also hope that by fostering the systems of response with big banks, they will reach the smaller that have less incentive to comply. Finally, for non-financial companies such as hotels or manufacturers, they research regulations and appeal to owner to create long-term obligations. Liberty Asia does not believe shutting down businesses is the answer. Rather, they aspire to change them. For Liberty Asia, it is much more effective for organizations to run anti- trafficking programs that will incentivize the market to fight slavery.
  • 55.
    48 Patricia Jurewicz Founder &Director, Responsible Sourcing Network Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN), a project of the nonprofit organization As You Sow, is dedicated to ending human rights abuses and forced labor associated with the raw materials found in products we use every day. RSN builds responsible supply chain coalitions of diverse stakeholders including investors, companies, and human rights advocates. Currently, RSN works with network participants to leverage their influence in the areas of conflict minerals from the Congo and forced labor in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan to create positive change for brands, consumers, and the impacted communities. Patricia’s background in the fashion industry and public policy inspired her network. After working for clothing giant Gap and the World Trade Organization, she became curious as to how foreign factories treated workers. After discovering widespread mistreatment of workers, she founded the Responsible Sourcing Network in 2010. Many of Patricia’s efforts now focus on raw materials. Egregious human rights violations are traditionally found at the bottom of the value chain. These violations are very difficult to track, since corporations tend to buy a finished product rather than the individual raw materials. RSN examines company material reports so that investors can compare companies’ social impact. RSN’s concerns itself with its risk management and reputational risk associated with the traceability of human rights violations within the value chain. The organization is working with its stakeholders to construct strategies centered on corporate practices, policy and diplomacy and public campaigns. The stakeholders include brands and retailers, suppliers and mills, farmers, and industry associations. Their strategies include three main areas: corporate practices (internal policy, letters to suppliers, local support), policy and diplomacy (SEC, legislation, ILO complaint, OECED mechanism), and public campaigns (consumer awareness tool, published survey, boycott, store/embassy protests, letters/emails, shareholder resolutions). With these tactics, they achieve solutions such as due diligence assessment, supply chain verification, policy recommendations, diplomacy engagement, and rewarding responsible companies. RSN conducted a widespread case study on conflict materials — including tin, titanium, tungsten and gold — and discovered that rebel groups control a huge majority of the mines, as well as the African trade routes that bring them to market. RSN further discovered that the majority of these conflict minerals were widely used in everyday products. In 2010 the Dodd-Frank Act passed, part of which says companies must report to the SEC on whether or not their supply chains include conflict minerals. Many large corporations like Ford, Hewlett- Packer, and Microsoft have agreed to these guidelines. RSN’s second case study concerned forced child labor in the cotton industry. The Uzbek government effectively controls the cotton industry in the country and is able to, therefore, orchestrate the movement of millions of people to the fields in order to reap the greatest profit from the annual harvest. With RSN’s help, 172 companies have pledged to fight trafficking in the Uzbekistan cotton industry. Despite this level of awareness, a recent survey illustrated that 80 percent of brands do not audit their spinners - as opposed to the majority electronics companies that are now auditing their smelters. RSN’s efforts through case studies and multi-stakeholders’ engagement strategies have helped the workforce act more responsibly in regard to raw materials and human rights.
  • 56.
    49 Siddharth Kara Director, Programon Anti-Trafficking & Modern Slavery, Harvard University The mission of the Carr Center is to make human rights principles central to the formulation of good public policy in the United States and throughout the world. They train future leaders for careers in public service and apply first-class research to the solution of public policy problems. The Center uses its teaching capacity to inspire future leaders to make respect for human rights principles a central commitment of democratic leadership. In South Asia, the word slave has a much more nuanced definition than its English counterpart. Defined in the ancient Hindu Vedic texts, the practice has over fifteen different types; four of which are based on debt bondage. Also defined in the Hindu Vedic texts is the caste system. Ranging from Brahmin to Shudra, each Varna has subcastes. Beneath even the lowest caste, Shudra, are the ‘untouchables’ or dalits. Untouchables or dalits are the poorest, minority castes in the region. Many are landless, illiterate and socially isolated. Seeking credit, and a stable income, they may volunteer their labor for a credit agreement. As a result of the societal power asymmetries, the creditor is able to manipulate the agreement and borrower in numerous ways to extract bonded labor. Originally proposed to pay off debts, this system rapidly transforms into slavery and human trafficking. Although as ancient as the Vedic Texts themselves, the British Colonial period saw the popularization of debt bondage and urban slave markets. Following India’s independence, ethnic bias combined with the immense poverty and landless of peasants, begot the continuation of bonded labor. Although agriculture is at the heart of this practice in South Asia, slavery and forced labor are found in many of the regions remedial jobs. Young girls are sold for as little as $20 to work as domestic servants in higher caste homes or carpet weaving, while young boys are often garbage pickers or cigarette and brick makers. Bonded labor is the most extensive form of slavery in the world. Currently, credible estimates place the number of bonded laborers as ranging from 10 to 60 million people. Siddharth estimates that there are 18 to 20.5 million in South Asia alone; of which 97 percent are from the ‘untouchable’ class. Part of the issue is that, the global economy feeds on and thereby promotes under-regulated, low cost slave-like labor systems. Net profits from these systems are estimated to be between $300 per bonded laborer in agriculture and up to $2000 per bonded laborer in brick making. Bonded labor and slavery are not unique to this region. Although credible estimates are hard to determine, there is reason to believe that nations like China and parts of Eastern Europe also have incredibly large rates of bonded labor. One of the largest impediments to eradication in South Asia is the lax enforcement of laws meant to empower laborers and end the practice. However, the penalties for those who use the practice are low. In India, for example, the fine for the use of a bonded laborer is $450, while in Pakistan the fine is $600. In the neighboring countries of Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, currently, there are no fines. Siddharth emphasizes the need for multilateral cooperation in raising awareness of the suffering of bonded laborers and their connection to Western consumer products. Different corporations respond to calls against the employment of this practice differently and compliance varies across countries and industries. However, many are still waiting for someone to force them to pay attention to slavery. As such, Siddharth requests multi-national corporations, celebrities and others of influence to speak up against this practice. Siddharth stresses that in this globalized world, the issues of bonded labor, slavery and human trafficking touch all of our lives and so, he will continue to work to expand the reach and relevance of human rights considerations to all those who influence their outcomes.
  • 57.
    50 Mara Kelly Director, Centerto Combat Human Trafficking & Slavery, United Way Worldwide United Way Worldwide is the leadership and support organization for the network of nearly 1,800 community- based United Ways in 41 countries and territories. United Way improves lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities around the world to advance the common good, which it accomplishes by focusing on education, income and health. The United Way movement mobilizes millions to action—to give, advocate and volunteer, and to improve the conditions in which they live. As the world’s largest privately funded non-profit, United Way has numerous initiatives. But when President Barack Obama asked the organization to combat human trafficking and modern slavery in 2013, United Way has passionately and tirelessly advocated for freedom. To this end, Mara was selected to coordinate President Obama’s faith-based initiatives and partnerships. In order to combat slavery with United Way, Mara has created a comprehensive and holistic approach, bringing 70 non-profit organizations together to accomplish three main goals. First, United Way wants to create cross sector collaboration, where people from different groups can come together and brainstorm creative initiatives looking at demand, supply chain and survivor services. Second, United Way wants to raise public and political support. For example, the Department of State allocates $40 million around the world to combat trafficking per year, compared to the $5 billion per year it gives to combat the ongoing AIDS epidemic, even though there are more slaves in the world now than there have ever been in history. The problem is much larger than many people understand, and United Way believes getting public and political support will be a catalyst for change. Third, United Way seeks to launch a campaign with multiple anti- trafficking organizations and to call upon them to commit to raising $3 billion per year. Mara believes United Way is the perfect base from which to launch this ambitious initiative, due in part to their large and localized presence. United Way’s wide reach of influence allows them to increase awareness and fundraising in communities with experts on the ground, providing a holistic solution with maximum impact. Mara seeks to reframe the issue of human trafficking as a domestic one, since it is often only understood as an international problem. United Way would like presidential candidates to pledge to end human trafficking, as well as support legislation such as the Safe Harbor Law if elected. Mara believes that if and when these powerful leaders bring the issue of human trafficking to the masses, change will occur quickly. Another of Mara’s goals is to have multiple idea forums where leaders in different industries come together to brainstorm ways to end slavery. In June 2015, United Way brought non-profits and faith based organizations together to discuss the issue of slavery and trafficking in America. The organization also plans on holding business and technology forums, as well as a marketing and media forums. Mara hopes to convene 10 to 15 large national organizations and have them select the best ideas that emerge from these events, and commit the resources necessary to make them a reality. The next step for Mara and the United Way team is to dramatically scale the anti-trafficking movement by fostering the political will for funding programs at the necessary level in order to eradicate human trafficking. With the unification of many leaders towards one goal, United Way believes slavery can and will be abolished in our lifetime.
  • 58.
    51 Emily Kennedy CEO ofMarinus Analytics & Creator, Traffic Jam Productized in 2013, Traffic Jam is comprehensive software that enables law enforcement officials to analyze online advertisements in order to accurately monitor, follow, and organize human trafficking data patterns. Marinus Analytics operates the software and gathers inclusive and fragmented online data to make it searchable, thus empowering investigators to find such patterns so they can effectively pinpoint victims and traffickers as they move from location to location and change phone numbers and other contact info. Used by local, state, and federal law enforcement, as well as prosecutors and social workers across the U.S. and Canada, Marinus Analytics and Traffic Jam are fundamental resources in building cases and finding victims. Emily Kennedy learned about human trafficking at a very young age from a leader in her church who had moved to Cambodia’s red-light district to physically pull children out of sexual exploitation. Appalled by the knowledge that girls her own age were being so horribly exploited, she knew she had to get involved. A few years later, while studying at Carnegie Mellon University, Emily interned at The Protection Project in Washington, D.C., and gained invaluable hands-on experience working with domestic and international trafficking legislation. She studied and reported on the evolution of U.S. code over time with relation to victim protection in America, and extended her efforts to her college campus, founding a chapter of the International Justice Mission and serving as its president. Partnering with a passionate friend, Emily made Pittsburgh the first mid-sized U.S. city to introduce legislation to combat sex trafficking in massage parlors. And she felt could contribute even more – when contemplating the focus of her senior thesis, Emily wanted to research how the Internet had affected the business of sex trafficking, intent on proving the specific movement of traffickers transporting their girls across cities and state lines. She interviewed detectives, agents, and analysts, all of whom were using this online data but had to spend countless hours searching for it. Immediately, Emily thought that there must be a better way to work with data to pull meaningful insights from it, and thus began collaborating with the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute. Together, she and the researchers adopted preexisting data technology to combat human trafficking. Traffic Jam, as the technology was named, was then deployed as a highly effective and neccesary product tool for law enforcement nationwide. The software has been used in almost every imaginable trafficking situation – from finding ruanway children advertised online and returning them to their parents, to corroborating victims’ stories and giving detectives important background information for interviews, to apprehending the most dangerous traffickers, Traffic Jam is one of the most modren, effective, and useful tracking tools available. Now, Emily pushes to constantly democratize high technology for the average law enforcement agents to access. She conducts Vice Trainings for new units regularly and supports agencies on sting operations. Recently, she worked with the LAPD to recover nine missing minors and arrest six traffickers, and partnered with Carnegie Mellon researchers yet again to study how big events like the Super Bowl statistically impact escort activity, and therefore trafficking activity. Collaborating with non-profits like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children ensures that the benevolence of Traffic Jam is far-reaching and unwasted. Offering tailored analytic solutions, rather than overwhelmingly impossible manual work, allows for data to be processed exponentially quickly. Scaling up research can be challenging and daunting, but Emily and her dedicated partners are relentless in their quest to diminish human trafficking’s domestic spread. Expanding the next frontiers of research is the hands of this young generation, and Traffic Jam is a prime example of one way in which millennial pioneers are impacting the human trafficking space.
  • 59.
    52 Kevin Kish Director ofthe Employment Rights Project, Bet Tzedek For the past 40 years, Bet Tzedek has provided free, comprehensive legal services for low-income individuals and families in Los Angeles, proving that access to justice makes a difference in people’s lives. They seek innovative solutions to persistent poverty. Whether harnessing the power of technology to overcome barriers or mobilizing communities through collaborative partnerships, they seek to empower the more than 20,000 people we serve every year with the help of hundreds of pro bono attorneys and volunteers. Hebrew for “House of Justice,” Bet Tzedek began providing free legal services to the poor, elderly and disabled of Los Angeles in the 1960s. Bet Tzedek has found there is a spectrum of coercion in the labor market; on the one end, traffickers may exploit child labor while on the other they may use threats and intimidation to maintain control over their victims. Victims seldom pick up and run away and are often only rescued after the intervention of an outsider. This outsider is Bet Tzedek, representing men and women in low wage industries, as they are some of the most susceptible to labor exploitation. Bet Tzedek provides holistic services for people coming out of trafficking situations. Providing safe housing, they work closely with pro-bono attorneys to immediately start the immigration process, as many victims are not born in this country. They further provide civil referrals for victims interested in bringing an affirmative lawsuit. These cases allow survivors to recover damages, such as a pain and suffering, directly from their trafficker. However, fewer than 100 cases have been brought to date, as legal proceedings are a difficult and painful process. In all civil and criminal cases, the victim must face their former traffickers and be cross- examined. It is during cross-examination that victims are often accused of lying about their experiences. In addition, cases may take years to complete. This is part of the reason criminal prosecutions are so rare for human traffickers. As there is an inherent conservatism in the court, a lack of witnesses’ plagues the prosecution. In criminal cases, prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was trafficked. This is further complicated by the common belief that victims could have just walked away. Many do not realize that victims may be from nations without trustworthy law enforcement organizations or may feel pressured by their cultural norms to remain silent. In addition, many judges have minimal experience with victims. Coming from corporate practices, they look for legal precedents to inform their rulings. In these cases, with little established precedent, it is up to the judge’s discretion to decide how much background information is provided to the jury. Kevin emphasizes the need for a two pronged approach in assisting those who want to get out. First responders often do not understand what is going on. Victims are often treated as smugglers themselves or unauthorized immigrants, particularly in sex trafficking. As such, Bet Tzedek works closely with the Los Angeles Police Department, bringing victim advocates to train police and others about human trafficking prior to a raid. Through this, they aim to increase the detection of trafficking in police work. Second, Kevin and Bet Tzedek emphasize the importance of companies monitoring the subcontracting process. Bet Tzedek believes that everyone deserves decent housing, care, safety and fair treatment. With their large network of attorneys, advocates and volunteers, they stand up for those in need when crisis strikes. They say their unique approach combines direct legal representation with powerful outreach, education and legislative advocacy. As Bet Tzedek believes, it is not just about aiding clients, it is about getting to the root of the problem. As a house of justice, they fight for those with nowhere else to turn.
  • 60.
    53 Vandana Kripalani Chief MarketingOfficer, Bombay Teen Challenge & Set Beautiful Free Campaign Started by K.K. Devaraj in 1990, Bombay Teen Challenge has been rescuing, rehabilitating, and reintegrating trafficked women and children in and around India. Now one of the largest non-governmental organizations working in the education and healthcare fields, Bombay Teen Challenge and its Set Beautiful Free initiative strive to create a bondage-free world. Partnering with local government enforcement agencies enables the organization to tackle and challenge trafficking at every stage. Breaking the vicious cycle of poverty, illiteracy, and enslavement in India is fundamental to ending human trafficking in the country; by establishing successful methods of prevention, outreach, and aftercare, Bombay Teen Challenge and the Set Beautiful Free campaign have spent the past twenty-five years restoring hope and dignity to marginalized women and children through education and vocation. Vandana’s entire livelihood – replete with an American university education and a consultant job for Ernst & Young in India – changed when she was kidnapped on a visit to Thailand. Her attacker tried to sexually assault her, but after fighting him with all of her strength, she was able to escape – a fate that few women in similar situations are able to achieve. The life-changing experience made Vandana realize how little she knew about gender-based violence, thus propelling her towards research and reading and ultimately to volunteering and working for Bombay Teen Challenge and its Set Beautiful Free campaign. Battling trafficking in India is a never-ending task. Regardless of the tireless efforts of organizations like Bombay Teen Challenge, trafficking becomes exponentially prevalent instead of decreasing. Because of the devastatingly impoverishment, over 70 percent of all trafficked victims are illiterate with a family income of less than one dollar per day. It is estimated that sixteen million women in the country are victims of sex trafficking, and a total of twenty million are involved in commercial sex work. Kidnapped or lured from their rural homes by relatives or neighbors at age eight or nine, girls are forced into sexual slavery through a combination of coercion, torture, starvation, and rape. They are sold to brothels, where they are deprived of food and water, abused multiple times per day, and confined to small cages. Women that have unsuccessfully tried to flee have had their eyes gauged out, or endured even worse punishments. Once the girls suffer through this “break-in” period, they are forced to have sex approximately eleven times per day, essentially for free; they are required to give their earnings to their trafficker. Sexually transmitted diseases run rampant. When their “debt” to their trafficker has been paid off, the women are then forced to rent rooms from the brothel while soliciting in the streets. They typically become addicted to drugs and many are HIV-positive. Most have at least a one, if not more, children. Sex trafficking in India is described as the most lucrative business, especially because the men involved don’t find any fault in their horrific mistreatment and abuse of women. An extremely high influx of migrant workers has dramatically increased the demand for younger girls in the industry. The caste system perpetuates a society in which the majority of the population is viewed as voiceless, making women of this group prime targets for trafficking. Vandana, Bombay Teen Challenge, and the Set Beautiful Free Campaign visualize several gaps that need to be filled: more research needs to be conducted regarding sex trafficking trends and data, more aggressive laws need to be passed in order to criminalize the act of purchasing sex, and awareness needs to be prioritized in order to steer the national opinion away from perpetuating gender- based violence. Thus far, Bombay Teen Challenge and Set Beautiful Free have rescued a plethora of women from the confines of brothels, and have started the first school in India that caters only to child victims of human trafficking or children of victims, intent on giving them love and hope for the future.
  • 61.
    54 Meghan Lazier &Robin Newman Founders, Say No More Say No More is a card game that helps girls learn about trafficking by reacting to romantic relationship scenarios. For pre-teen girls at risk of sex trafficking, Say No More is a tool that allows them to reflect on uncomfortable situations, healthy relationship boundaries, and practice saying no. For social workers and educators who facilitate the game, Say No More is a tool that allows them to easily get a pulse on risk factors in the groups they already work with and gently introduce the issue of trafficking to an at-risk population. The average ages for victims of sex trafficking in this country are 12 to 14 years old. How do you inform girls about such a complicated issue in a way that is not overwhelming? One way is to introduce a game. Say No More is a card game created to start conversations about relationships and the importance of saying no. Their mission is simple: to allow girls to reflect on uncomfortable experiences and to create healthy relationship boundaries for them in the future. Played with social workers and their female peers, this game enables young girls to speak freely about their experiences while social workers monitor risk factors. While social workers may be familiar with sex trafficking victims, Say No More enables them to teach preventative educational measures and analyze the risk factors of groups they already work with. By tailoring the game to target most affected populations, they are able to discuss these important issues without shame. It is critical for the women at Say No More to create an environment where these things reveal themselves naturally. By looking at emotional signs such as paranoid behavior, exhaustion, or submissiveness, social workers are working to help girls come forward more easily. Only after the post-game discussion with social workers are girls allowed to guess what this game actually discusses. This is not a game just for people who are vulnerable and unaware. All women and girls are all at risk of someone taking advantage of them. All girls encounter difficult relationship situations, it is within how she deals with them that matters. For the women behind Say No More, dealing with these relationship patterns comes with education. In the future, Say No More hopes to expand beyond the 500 preliminary games released in New York City to areas with high sex-trafficking rates. Additionally, they seek to find partners on multiple campuses with controlled environments to collect stronger data. They cite the need and importance of feedback from players regarding Say No More’s impact and what conversations it will change. One of the key challenges of this conversation has been that girls do not self-identify as ones who are currently being trafficked. The women at Say No More and their partners at ECPAT USA believe Say No More can change this. By facilitating stories, situations, and conversations Say No More enables girls and their social workers to talk about difficult things in a non-judgmental environment because games are precludes to serious ideas.
  • 62.
    55 Laura Lederer President &Founder, Global Centurion Global Centurion is a non-profit organization that seeks to fight human trafficking by focusing on demand. This is done through a three dimensional strategy: developing demand-focused research and programs; providing cutting-edge education, awareness and advocacy training; and establishing partnership and collaborative networks in response to this issue. After working at the United State Department of Office of Democracy and Global Affairs, Laura developed a strong curiosity in regards to the demand side of trafficking. She set out to talk with survivors through a series of focus groups, specifically on the topic of the health problems they experienced. Laura discovered a wide range of different health issues, both while they were being trafficked and since they had escaped their captors. For example, 125 women and children who have been rescued from a brothel, 80 percent tested positive for TB. She also discovered that many of these women were actually seen by healthcare providers while they were enslaved and/or being trafficked and had been knowingly sent back to their captors after receiving medical attention. Laura also discovered widespread violence and physical abuse, as well as high levels of narcotics usage among survivors. Laura believes there is a need for increased education for health care providers on how to identify a trafficking victim and utilize their resources in order to keep them safe. For example, the high level of correlation between abortion and trafficking means victims have frequent contact with medical providers. Global Centurion has proposed specialized training and a strengthening of the collaboration between healthcare providers and law enforcement to ensure that when these women and girls enter the system, they can be identified and hopefully removed from the bods of their captors. Though the startling statistics gleamed by Laura’s report makes the situation feel hopeless, Laura noted many women whom would argue otherwise. For example, Laura notes that many of the survivors who participated in her study discussed finding God in the midst of the horror they were experiencing, an element of he research which speaks to the resiliency that many survivors are able to muster.
  • 63.
    56 Jimmy Lee Executive Director,Restore NYC Restore NYC’s mission is to end sex trafficking in New York and restore the well-being and independence of survivors. Working to this end, they find victims through their outreach strategies and partnerships with law enforcement, the court system, and community-based organizations. For every survivor, the organization envisions the promise of a new life and an end to modern-day slavery. Their overall goal is to provide these women with the in-depth after-care that they require to succeed in their post-trafficking life. No one who comes to America should be forced to sell their body or be sexually exploited for profit. There are many myths that stifle substantial progress in the fight against human trafficking but perhaps none is more dangerous than the erroneous belief that it does not happen in the United States. That is why Restore NYC works with the community to raise awareness and to aide foreign nationals who are women from other countries that are brought into the U.S. They have found that many of these women are not in prostitution voluntarily yet complete care for these women is rarely available. Restore NYC tries to provide in-depth after care to break the cycle. One way Restore NYC provides in-depth after care is through unique transitional housing for 12 months while addressing all aspects of the victim’s restoration: physical, mental, emotional, economic, and legal. Partnering with the court system, they identify victims of sex trafficking by working with women who are arrested and/or arraigned for prostitutions. Their model is transitional, not emergency oriented. They take the time to empower women with skillsets, language abilities, literacy, and employment opportunities. Restore NYC also seeks to increase the capacity for training health care professionals who may encounter trafficking victims, deepening relationships with the community-based organizations that work in and with specific demographics, and raising awareness in targeted immigrant communities. They believe that these four strategies are scalable and replicable across any city in the United States. In conjunction with their after care plans they are first focused on finding the victims. Restore NYC would like to partner more with federal and local law enforcement in order to build a relationship of trust between their organization and the victims that fuel their passion to help. In addition to their 11-bed safe house, Restore NYC believes economic empowerment is fundamental to the work it does; training opportunities are vital to improving the lives of victims. As approximately 10 percent of their clients are not literate in their native tongue and 80 percent have no experience with English, job and language training are by far the most pressing issues the organization faces. Even though their safe house exists to aide each victim in their recovery, Jimmy acknowledges the challenges that come with running a safe house and that often times bringing someone directly in from a raid is not the best solution emotionally for these women. Therefore, Restore NYC pursues a model that is transitional, not emergency-oriented. Restore NYC is working to help victims of human trafficking to get back on their feet again by providing them with the tools necessary to feel safe as well as confident as they reintegrate back into society. Jimmy believes that whether it is the AIDS epidemic or sex trafficking or any other health crisis facing humanity, there is a huge benefit to the society when you protect vulnerable women, regardless of where they are in the world. The benefits can be seen economically, socially, and culturally.
  • 64.
    57 Rachel Lloyd Founder &Chief Executive Officer, Girls Educational & Mentoring Services Founded in 1998, the Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS) is the only organization in the state of New York specifically designed to serve girls and young women who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking. GEMS aims to empower young women (ages 12 to 24) who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking to exit the commercial sex industry and develop to their full potential. Rachel believes that simply rescuing survivors is not a long-term solution and can potentially result in their disempowerment. Instead, GEMS focuses on empowering victims by treating them with the same level of respect and dignity that all people deserve. All of their programs are staged-based in order to ensure the most effective development, because GEMS recognizes that different women and girls require different levels of support at the different stages of their recovery, and that maturing and learning occur by having the right people in the right positions. GEMS also maintains training programs for service providers and law enforcement all across the country, and emphasizes that assistance should include emergency housing and meeting people exactly where they are. The most difficult obstacle is convincing people that survivors were victims. Donations and police help are scarce when people believe the girls “chose that life.” GEMS provides support for their girls to attend college and provides employment training for others. The organization helps its survivors explore their strengths and talents and introduces them to variety of different career options. This strengths-based perspective encourages survivors to focus on what they do well rather than the experiences that they were forced to endure. A focus on educational and employment opportunities allows GEMS to help to empower and sustain its clients over time. By providing empathetic and consistent support as well as viable options and pathways for positive change, GEMS is able to stop trafficking at its roots and break the cycle of poverty . Cutting demand is important, but that is just one small piece of a much larger puzzle. There is also a need to have a conversation about the larger social issues, which lay at the root of human trafficking. For example, the legalization of prostitution has produced a lack of emotion within the discourse, which is problematic for the fight against it. If we lived in a world with equal education and a lack of poverty, then maybe, as Rachel argues, prostitution could be considered a moral issue. But, given the state of affairs in the world we live in right now, the prostitution industry produces a means by which others can prey on those who are most vulnerable. The world we live in produces an industry that preys on those who are most vulnerable. Therefore, Rachel notes, we should focus on decreasing vulnerability. Everything has unintended consequences, and the sex industry is inherently harmful in many ways.
  • 65.
    58 Danielle Lohan &Amanda Weikel National Partnerships; Deputy Communications Director, The Samaritan Women The Samaritan Women is a national Christian organization providing restorative care to survivors, and bringing about an end to domestic human trafficking through awareness, prevention, and advocacy. Operating transitional and restorative shelter programs for women recovering from human trafficking, their program emphasizes life-rebuilding, acquiring personal accomplishments, social re-entry, and spiritual reconciliation. Founded in 2007 by Jean Allort, The Samaritan Women provides a place for the long-term restoration of adult female survivors of human trafficking. Nearly half of their residents are self-injurers, many have been victims of child molestation, and most grew up in homes with addicted family members. The Samaritan Women offers no short-term rehabilitation. The initial period of caring for a survivor and then restoring them is a significant investment of time. The Samaritan Women uses a therapeutic model that seeks to address the multifaceted needs of survivorship from rehabilitation to reintegration into society. Their restorative care facilities begin with a 90-day decompression from trauma utilizing cognitive behavioral psychology and faith based counseling. Residents must provide a list of safe supportive people in their life before they enter the facility. To create a domestic environment, dinner is served family style and the women call each other sister. The Samaritan Women empowers these survivors mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually to move beyond the trauma of their lives. The organizations wants survivors to explore themselves as their natural self and not what their traffickers had dolled them up to be. To facilitate this process, they begin by looking at thought patterns. They believe that negative thought patterns are responsible for the negative behaviors in each of the women’s lives. In order to end them, The Samaritan Women provides residents with a systematic plan against all the negative thoughts ‘that are breaking them down’. Their belief is that by taking these steps she will establish her voice, which is instrumental to the healing process. The Samaritan Women believe that success can be seen in the surviving women who have a powerful, self- controlled voice that they are able to use to prevent re-victimization. They believe that through this new voice, survivors will be able to re-establish their personal agency. Unique to The Samaritan Women’s facilities are their internship and advocacy programs. After a three-month training period, residents are better able to have positive relationships and become receptive to safe risk taking as well as work as advocates and use their new voices to speak about their experiences by campaigning against human trafficking. Raising awareness to the plight of these women is crucial to the future of this and other organizations like it. At The Samaritan Women, survivors pray, they worship, and they err. They create a space for God in their lives, finally remembering and rebuilding themselves to how God wants them to be really be – free, independent and strong.
  • 66.
    59 Stephanie Lorenzo Founder, ProjectFutures Founded in 2009 after reading the autobiography of Somaly-Mam, PROJECT FUTURES is a not for profit organization whose objective is to stop global human trafficking and slavery by empowering individuals to take action in their own communities. PROJECT FUTURES aims to empower individuals to take action on the issue of human trafficking and modern slavery by raising awareness and funds in fun and easy ways in their own communities. Stephanie Lorenzo founded PROJECT FUTURES in 2009 to support the work of Somaly-Mam using innovative and creative fundraising. With a background in marketing and communications, Stephanie was able to organize a bike ride for victims of human trafficking which raised $80,000 from just two dozen people. After meeting and spending time with Somaly-Mam in Cambodia in 2009, Stephanie set up PROJECT FUTURES. Through her young professional advocacy fundraising, Stephanie was able to peak the interest of The Salvation Army. The Salvation Army has an anti-trafficking program that now partners with PROJECT FUTURES to ensure the use of new and innovative fundraising techniques. As Stephanie points out, many non-profits struggle to raise revenue, however, PROJECT FUTURES raised their first $1 million just last year through events and campaigns, corporate partnerships, and an online Do-It-Yourself Toolkit. With their corporate and not for profit partnerships growing significantly in the last year, PROJECT FUTURES also began work with the Cambodian Children’s Trust, a secular, non-profit Cambodian NGO working to enable children in Battambang to break free from the cycle of poverty and become educated, ethical and empowered leaders in their communities. These partnerships have enabled PROJECT FUTURES to reach young people all over the world. PROJECT FUTURES finds ways to speak to their demographics and to excite young people by using innovative approaches to fundraising campaigns. The DIY Toolkit allows you to personalize your fundraising experience. In addition, PROJECT FUTURES motivates their large volunteer network by being upfront and honest about what they need. As volunteer’s priorities will sometimes differ, PROJECT FUTURES sets standards for all volunteers to ensure they know who they can rely on. Stephanie’s core message is about harnessing the ‘power of purpose’ in our lives. Once you discover your ‘why’ you are able to empower yourself to take action, and manifest your gift to the world. By empowering individuals to take action to stop human trafficking in their own communities, PROJECT FUTURES is using innovation to bring an end to this terrible international crime.
  • 67.
    60 Diana Mao Founder, NomiNetwork Nomi Network launched their first pilot project in Cambodia in 2009, focusing on their mission to create economic opportunities for survivors and women at risk of human trafficking by equipping them with leadership, entrepreneurship, and production skills to become financially independent. Nomi’s approach addresses both sex and labor trafficking by preventing women and children in the most vulnerable communities to be exploited. Nomi Network is an organization committed to eradicating human trafficking and creating a better life for women and their children. Women and children are primarily trafficked from high poverty areas where there are no alternative options for employment or rehabilitation for rescued victims leading many victims to fall back into trafficking or become re-exploited. Nomi Network focuses on the “Path to Freedom” which uses empowerment as a base to focus on prevention, rescue, rehabilitation, and finally the reintegration of victims of trafficking. Their mission is to develop products and create a marketplace that generates economic opportunities for women who are survivors or at risk of human trafficking. To accomplish this goal they provide vocational training, increase the availability of high quality fair trade products, invest resources into programs and training, and they forge partnerships among public and private organizations. Nomi takes a three-pronged approach. Firstly they develop stylish and well-made products created by survivors and women at risk of human trafficking while building capacity for social enterprises and non-profits who employ survivors and women at risk. Second, they provide direct training in technical skills, leadership development and an introduction to entrepreneurship for survivors and women at risk. Lastly they raise awareness and market demand of the products among retailers and boutiques. Nomi measures the success of their programs based on three tiers: skill development/capacity building, production, and sales and job creation. Nomi Network struggles against an array of socio-cultural issues, the role of branding at the retail level, developing world health issues, and unsupportive communities. In some cases women can make more money in prostitution and are pushed back into the sex industry by their families in need of revenue Nomi Network presents a call to action to buy products that support survivors and women at risk of human trafficking and to not support the companies that continue to have exploitation in their supply chain.
  • 68.
    61 Dr. Shawn MacDonald Directorof Programs & Research, Verité Verité takes aim at serious problems: child labor, slavery, systemic discrimination against women, dangerous working conditions, and unpaid work. They develop and promulgate standards of performance and promote their adoption to change whole industries, and improve common business processes like procurement and hiring. Verité aims to ensure that globalization is made to work for poor and vulnerable people around the world. They ensure that powerful institutions, and particularly the private sector, take responsibility for solving human rights problems where goods are made and crops are grown. Established in the mid 1990’s, Verité is a response to supply chain compliance and corporate social responsibility. Utilizing their network of NGO’s in 60 countries, they work with companies and other stakeholders to promote fair labor worldwide from their low-level workers to top tier management. Verité’s work begins with their researchers. The primary focus of their work is consumer products as domestic worker trafficking is harder to assess. However, as a leader in combatting supply chain slavery, Verité’s research is in use every day to end debt-bonded labor globally. Verité’s investigators issue reports and assessments that combat forced labor around the globe. Their fieldwork initiatives collaborate with non- governmental organizations and companies to incentivize the end of debt-bonded labor. Through their work, Verité has found that there are various levels of labor brokers and forced employment. In Malaysia, their electronics industry case study report found that 94 percent of workers paid high fees to get the job and another 94 percent did not have access to their passports. In Peru, Verité found the widespread use of human trafficking and child labor in the gold mining industry. They have also conducted risk- assessment reports for the banana industry in the Philippines, the rubber industry of Liberia, and cocoa workers in West Africa. This shows that forced labor is not only in the global economy but that it is worldwide and rampant. For Verité, the most important worker right is a ‘no-fee policy’ and Shawn says the organization is working to create incentives that change these behaviors. This means stable and consistent purchasing from companies that comply with the no-fee policy and rewarding companies that change their behavior both in employment and recruiting processes. Verité also strongly advocates for the creation of a uniform matrix of standards on the usage of forced labor, because problems of inconsistent reporting standards as a major hurdle. In the United States, Verité is working on changing US policies to promote accountability in procurement. By working with the International Labor Recruiting Working Group and the Alliance to End Slavery, Verité is trying to ensure the best implementation of Obama’s Executive Order that requires contractors of the federal government to have a compliance plan in place to ensure zero tolerance to human trafficking. Additionally, they promote better international standards in multi-stakeholder institutions. For Verité, the biggest challenge is not getting people to write new company policy rather, they ask that companies to dig in, and change things on the ground.
  • 69.
    62 Ed Marcum Vice Presidentof Investments, Humanity United Humanity United believes that we are all united in the challenges and opportunities we face. To that end, they lead and invest in a wide-range of efforts, networks, organizations, and ideas that share their vision of the world. Their partners work with them to build peace, promote justice, end atrocities and advance human freedom. Human trafficking is one of the most pressing human rights challenges of our time. Yet, the issue has often been below the radar in the human rights community. The International Labor Organization estimates that 21 to 36 million people are currently living under the conditions of slavery while the estimated profits from trafficking networks stands at $150 billion per year. Economic conditions, debt, unemployment, ethnicity, caste, and gender increase the risk of being trafficked. Humanity United is working to combat these conditions via their work targeting slaveries hotspots around the globe. Humanity United’s first Chief Executive Officer wanted to work in India and South Asia, as the aggregate numbers of slaves there are the highest in the world but they found out immediately that their work could be quite divisive. While estimates state that 10 to 15 percent of people living in modern slavery are victims of sexual exploitation, some groups within South Asia felt prostitution should be legal and regulated. Humanity United is collaborating with local NGOs to increase awareness of the uncomfortable truth. Additionally, their partnership with the Freedom Fund enables them to address the chronic lack of funding of anti-trafficking initiatives around the world. Their goal is simple; to target hotspots around the globe where locals and donors can come together to share information with one another in hopes of ending modern slavery. This mission has also drawn Humanity United’s attention to Nepal. While the Nepalese government currently has very progressive anti-human trafficking laws on the books, they are often not enforced. Humanity United’s focus was to change this by focusing on creating a ‘slave free’ brick kiln market. The brick kilns of Nepal entail damaging physical labor with employees who get work by purchasing their way in. Exploited via debts and predatory interest rates, laborers force employees to work every day knowing they will never be able to pay off their dues. Humanity United is working with the brick kilns to transform their employment processes. In exchange for reforming work conditions and paying employees. As corporations today are realizing they have to change and address the issue of slavery in supply chains Humanity United is working with small local NGOs to address communal networks of support. Yet this work is not without its challenges. Humanity United is working on an early stage risk assessment for corporations, but many of the tools that exist are not on the scale for huge companies to use. Additionally, the fact that these NGOs can be so small, they are hard to identify and with little or no reputation to stand on, often a big risk. To alleviate the stresses attached with this process, Humanity United and its partners are working to create long term monitoring systems for supply chain slavery. With a long term goal of utilizing precision to differentiate between corporate responses Humanity United hopes that with pressure companies will respond more stringently to the slavery in their supply chains.
  • 70.
    63 Peter Mihaere Founder &CEO, Stand Against Slavery Founded in 2013, Stand Against Slavery’s mission is to save the more then 30 million men, women, and children in bondage. Many of them live in plain sight, among us, and because of us. We wear their clothes. We drink their coffee. We eat their food. Much of our lifestyle is built on their backs. This must change. Stand Against Slavery exists to lead a movement, to lead a generation that fights for a slave free world. Peter Mihaere first learned of human trafficking and modern slavery on the streets of Kolkata when he was hired to renovate a factory for FreeSet, a fair trade business offering employment to women trapped in the city’s sex trade. Shocked, inspired and touched, Peter would lead FreeSet and many other businesses to expand their anti-human trafficking operations into other areas of India. Returning to New Zealand, he was offered a six-month sabbatical to study the issue and effects of slavery in the modern day and age. He discovered that slavery and human trafficking is dominated by sophisticated criminal networks competing against unsophisticated NGO’s attempting to combat it. These NGO’s are often unaware of each other, operating within rigid silos of activists working on individual projects with little collaboration. Peter founded Stand Against Slavery in 2013, to work not on the frontline but as in order to connect and coordinate all interested parties in the fight against human trafficking and modern slavery. Stand Against Slavery works in two ways. First, by collaborating between organizations and governments while producing knowledge highlighting the issue. Secondly, by providing fundraising opportunities through their consulting funding model. By building relationships with governments and nonprofits Stand Against Slavery attempts to bring together organizations into a community network to be more cohesive and to create an interface between civil society and government. Stand Against Slavery’s research has focused on several issue areas: How do we engage civil society in the anti-human trafficking space? How do we prevent human trafficking in industry? Is there anyone doing this work with insufficient resources? For Peter, the business of ending slavery begins with a company’s bottom line. He says when people can actually look at something like slavery and fix their bottom line they then get excited about a solution. When Peter first started talking to companies at the executive level, they were interested morally but they did not factor this interest into their contracts. However, many chief operating officers recognize that this issue will impact their contracts, especially in Europe. By making slavery a bottom line issue, Peter notes that governments play an important role in terms of international trade. Peter believes this work will create an expectation that, particularly in the agriculture and horticulture sectors, there are best practices in terms of the way you treat people. If there is a clause in industry contracts that prevents exploitation, then civic and government pressure can influence others to conform. In addition, by placing slavery in the context of public health and education, social change can and will evolve over time. For Stand Against Slavery, this means discussing with industry officials the importance of clean supply chains. This work is extremely important, particularly because of New Zealand’s geographic location. Many migrants coming to the country are from Southeast Asia where slavery is endemic. Peter notes, New Zealand’s migrant population is 4.5 million, a portion of which is operating and exploiting labor. This is why Stand’s model is so important. By providing the research, collaboration, and consultation for funding, Stand Against Slavery is creating innovative models to combat the exploitation of peoples in their backyard and around the globe.
  • 71.
    64 Jessica Minhas Founder &Chief Executive Officer, I’ll Go First I’ll Go First is dedicated to empowering survivors of abuse, trauma and assault to find their voice, and their freedom. They make it their task to open the door for what is generally held in silence, shame and accusation. I’ll Go First began with the idea that sharing stories offers permission and invitation to heal. Those who have experienced the heartbreak of abuse, assault or trauma find it difficult to believe they can write a different ending to their beginning. I’ll Go First helps survivors get connected with healing resources in their area and live an abundant life with purpose and vision. The spirit of I’ll Go First celebrates resilience, overcoming abuse and trauma, and breaking free from shame. The idea for I’ll Go First was born out of Jessica’s numerous trips to Asia in her search to find her biological family. During one of her visits in Thailand, she was asked to mirror emotions to the girls causing her to begin wondering about the connection between shame, abuse, and healing effects. When she was asked to share her personal story in a brothel, she realized that she could only free others once she had freed herself. She began asking herself a lot of questions regarding her own story and the sense of paralysis she felt by her past. This is when she started to plan I’ll Go First to help women with psychological healing to get beyond their trauma. Jessica uses the ideology “what shames us, frames us,” focusing on inner strength, purpose, and mentorship. I’ll Go First is an invitation to ask questions and connect to individual stories. The biggest challenge is overcoming the shame component in sharing a story of sexual violence. It is extremely important not to ask people to be “professional survivors.” The past traumas still need healing and hope. Often in trauma there is a lack of remembrance of events and the timeline and we must be very careful not to re-victimize people. I’ll Go First has specific guidelines on how to talk to survivors. They must first share their stories publically in order for the organization to share it. The organization will not share a story if the survivor is not okay with it possibly going viral. I’ll Go First does not campaign the negative side of human trafficking, but focuses on hope and redemption. After every story, they always offer a call to action in order to not traumatize or overwhelm the audience.
  • 72.
    65 Kenneth B. Morris,Jr. Founder & President, Frederick Douglas Family Initiative The Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives (FDFI) was co-founded in June 2007 by Nettie Washington Douglass, Kenneth B. Morris, Jr. and Robert J. Benz. FDFI is an abolitionist organization that combines lessons from the legacies of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington: primarily abolition through education. FDFI brings the guidance of history to the fight against modern forms of slavery. As the direct descendants of Booker T. Washington and Fredrick Douglas, Kenneth and his family founded the Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative to use the pillars of their history to combat modern slavery. Kenneth is the great-great-great grandson of Fredrick Douglas, a man who was chosen from all of the slave children to learn reading and writing until his master forbade the practice. Not to be deterred, Douglas used his education to escape slavery when he was only twenty. He later became a leading abolitionist and an advisor to President Abraham Lincoln. Many believe he helped to agitate the President into signing the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The leaders of the Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative are also descended from Booker T. Washington, a man of equal merit. Booker T. Washington worked in salt and coalmines to save up money to go to school, which, after making the 500-mile walk to Hampton Institute in Virginia, he graduated from at 25 years old. Washington’s most prolific work was the creation of a school for freed slaves, The Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. The Tuskegee Institute taught freed men and women trades to build their skills in post- slavery America. In the tradition of his ancestors, Kenneth and the Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative work to combat slavery through education. In 2007, after Morris read a National Geographic article on modern slavery, he founded the Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative to end the silence around its current practice. He started by contacting schools named after Washington and Douglas to teach the history of slavery; and had reached forty-five schools in just thirty days. To date, over 100 schools have joined this project. The Initiative is placing students on service projects in order to raise awareness of slavery worldwide. The Foundation's vision for the future includes Globalize 13, a project to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Through this work, they are teaching people the importance of the Thirteenth Amendment and transitioning that into discussions about modern human trafficking. They aspire to introduce legislation against the labor trafficking practices of supply chains in multi-national corporations and aim to globalize the spirit of the Thirteenth Amendment. Finally, The Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative is working to build champions who address the needs of prevention. Kenneth wants to focus on both fighting modern slavery and preventing it from happening in the first place. The biggest problem The Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative faces is funding. Curriculums are free but the Initiative is in need of donations to ensure their visionary work continues. Kenneth believes that the echoes of slavery are hard to hear today, but if we listen close enough, we’ll hear those cries loud and clear. With Globalize 13, the creation of champions of prevention, and their aspirations for legislation, The Fredrick Douglas Family Initiative is using their familial history to prove that education can and will end slavery.
  • 73.
    66 Dr. Sarah-Jane Murray& Benjamin Nolot Story Consultant, Writer, Director & Producers, Nefarious Trilogy Nefarious: Merchant of Souls is a hard-hitting documentary that exposes the disturbing trends of modern day sex slavery. With footage shot in over nineteen different countries, Nefarious exposes the nightmare of sex slavery as experienced by hundreds of thousands daily, through the eyes of both the enslaved and their traffickers. Nefarious features expert analysis from international humanitarian leaders, and captures the gripping and triumphant testimonies of survivors in order to galvanize hope and vision. When considering strategies to abolish slavery, the first option that comes to mind is not often creative media. However, Benjamin and Sarah-Jane know that creative media is one of the most potent mediums to affect change. Art has an intangible emotional pull that has the power to change hearts, and therefore it is not surprising to know that multiple abolitionist movements were pioneered through creative media. For instance, abolitionist William Wilberforce used drawings and diagrams to illustrate the horrors of African slavery; this technique drew people into a tangible experience of the injustice, helping him abolish slavery in England. One can discover other examples when examining the impact of the book Uncle Tom's Cabin on the Civil War or the effect of abolitionists' use of portable cameras to convince King Leopold to free the enslaved Congolese people. All these stories point to the fact that media has had a pivotal role in creating abolitionist movements that reach the social construct of thought in culture. The current cultural norm is the acceptance of exploitation on the premise of monetary benefit. In exploring the realities of such exploitation, it is important to note the role of the man as a primary driving force of modern day slavery. There is a widespread demand for women's sexuality, and it is only being perpetuated by the social norms of cheap sex in the world. From Cambodia, where approximately 70 percent of men regularly purchase sex, to a North American sport team locker room, where strip clubs are normal conversation topics, sex commercialization is internationally rampant. In particular, prostitution and sex trafficking are intimately connected. Benjamin has found that legalizing prostitution simplifies the link between the industries and makes organized crime harder to fight. Many women in prostitution do not receive the money they earn from their work. For example, in Las Vegas, prostitution is wrapped up in the veneer of high-class society, but women are routinely pimped out by men they once believed loved them. No matter what profits a woman may generate, she will not actually possess any of it. It is important to recognize and act on the stories of exploited women and tell their experiences with integrity so that change may occur. It is Nefarious's objective to help play a part in reshaping the narrative of our culture through storytelling. World media tells a trusted story about the identity of men and how to treat women and their sexuality. Benjamin and Sarah-Jane want to reverse that trend and make the crime of sex exploitation visible in order to rewrite this cultural norm. Therefore, Benjamin created Nefarious: Merchant of Souls, a documentary produced to expose the injustice of slavery worldwide. Sarah-Jane believes stories have the power to transform the world because they are ideas in action. Through the connection to the heart, insanely great stories have the capacity to shift public sentiment and create change. Since they believe it is time to re-write the culture’s narrative, Benjamin and Sarah-Jane are now working on a film that continues from where Nefarious left off, asking: what is the perception on prostitution, and what is the role of men in society?
  • 74.
    67 Dr. Padmini Murthy AssociateProfessor & Global Health Director, New York Medical College New York Medical College is one of the oldest and largest health sciences colleges in the United States. Located in Long Island, New York, NYMC structures its curriculum with a humanistic, community-based medical approach that provides thousands of medical students in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area with research and clinical-focused training opportunities, many of which target trauma care as a primary way in treating exploited individuals of modern slavery. Approaching the global issue of modern slavery from all angles is crucial for the movement to succeed. That is what makes Dr. Padmini Murthy such a critical ally in the space. Her comprehensive medical approach to the well-being of human trafficking victims and survivors invites a promising perspective into the space. No matter type of exploitation survivors confront, they all suffer painful social, physical, and mental injuries that require proper trauma evaluation, care, and treatment. But physical ailments are the focus Padmini’s work. She has seen health-related issues which occur intentionally and accidentally, including burns from cigarettes and scalding metal rods, as well as broken bones; head traumas and traumatic brain injuries; knife wounds; strangling injuries; missing teeth; severe bleeding and bruising; and scarring. The effects from such traumas are both immediate and chronic, and are lasting reminders of the horrors endured while enslaved. Tragically, women are at an exponentially greater risk for more serious impairments – including but not limited to reproductive health issues, repeated genital traumas, forced abortions, untreated STDs and hepatitis, infertility caused by infection, and intra-uterine growth retardation – that can be emotionally and physically scarring, as well as extremely dangerous to both woman and fetus. When children are trafficked, they suffer physical and cognitive developmental delays and vitamin deficiencies, causing their bones to soften due to the lacking Vitamin D in their systems; their risk of contracting tetanus skyrockets without access to vaccines. Padmini and her colleagues promote a human rights focus and culturally sensitive approach when interacting with the women that seek post-trafficking treatment at New York Medical College. Slavery is like an octopus, she notes, the tentacles are so widespread. That is why she advises her medical residents to be aware of the signs which indicate a patient might be a victim of human trafficking. Multiple visits from the same woman for a variety of consistent and/or differentiating physical ailments should raise a red flag for a medical professional. If the patient is an immigrant or does not speak English, interpreters and online translators are vital resources, as the family members accompanying the injured individuals might be the abuser. Maintaining eye contact and personal empathy when questioning individuals is crucial to solidifying a relationship of trust between doctor and patient; if a woman at a clinic was abused or is in an abusive relationship, she will be highly unlikely and/or hesitant to discuss her challenges and reproductive health with a male doctor. Gender sensitivity is therefore critical. The efforts of the doctors at New York Medical College reaffirm the fact that the global community must focus on promoting and preserving women and maternal healthcare to better support and benefit the female population and society worldwide. Trauma informed care is essential to aiding victims of abuse and enslavement; teaching doctors across the world to recognize the signs of abuse creates a community of well- informed and prepared medical providers properly armed in the fight to tackle modern slavery.
  • 75.
    68 Brad Myles Chief ExecutiveOfficer, Polaris Project Polaris, named after the North Star that guided slaves to freedom in the U.S., disrupts the conditions that allow human trafficking to thrive in our society. From working with government leaders to protecting victims’ rights, to building partnerships with the world’s leading technology corporations, Polaris sparks long-term change that focuses communities on identifying, reporting and eliminating trafficking networks. Polaris was named after the North Star in order to link the history of abolition with the future goal of ending human bondage and to create a symbol of the community that must come together to resolve the enormous, evil problem of slavery. Brad explained that the organization began on the campus of Brown University when a few students realized that a girl had been trafficked right outside of their campus and no one was outraged. The concerned students came together and formed Polaris with the hope of filling specific niches in the anti- trafficking community. Four principles guided the founders of the organization. First, Polaris is global because slavery is an international issue. Second, the group fights all types of slavery, including sex and labor trafficking. Third, Polaris wants to see systemic and social change, desiring to become a catalyst through changing culture and to treat the root of the problem rather than simply address symptoms. Fourth, the organization measures their progress and looks for improvement in the problem of slavery through their labors. In addition to their four founding principles, the organization has concrete goals. Polaris collects and analyzes data, creates safety nets for survivors through pooling resources and providing services, intervenes and disrupts human trafficking networks, and trains subject matter experts who strategize. Brad discussed one such strategy through pointing out how trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry, and yet non-profit organizations fight the problem. Therefore, when non-profits partner with larger groups such as governmental and financial institutions, the fight against slavery operates at a larger scale due to the rise in funding and resources. Polaris achieves its goals through its well-developed programs. In Washington, D.C. and New Jersey, the organization operates victim services, where they provide safety nets to 700 survivors. Through their public advocacy program, Polaris works at the state and national levels to advocate for anti-trafficking laws. In addition, Polaris has operated a national hotline for seven years, the purpose of which is to provide an avenue for survivors to find help. The hotline, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has helped 18,000 survivors, 5,000 of which called last year alone. Polaris has also conducted research to map hotlines around the world, and have found that there are 120 hotlines in 60 countries, but another 130 countries do not have this resource. Brad discussed how Polaris is in the process of helping to create hotlines in all countries by providing training and advocacy programs. In addition, through their data analysis program, Polaris processes data from multiple sources, including hotline calls, and analyze the data so they can strategize on how to disrupt trafficking networks. A final program is targeted campaigns, where Polaris focuses on a specific type of trafficking. Most recently, they have a campaign against massage parlors where trafficking occurs. Brad specified that there are many legitimate massage therapists in the United States, as specified by certification boards. However, there are many illegitimate massage parlors, which are oriented as part of the commercial sex industry, and Polaris's campaign is aimed to target those illicit businesses. In the end, Brad said that Polaris's goal is to see marked improvement in ending slavery, and to bring communities together to do so. Ultimately, they would like to see the culture change from accepting or ignoring trafficking to recognizing it as an international issue and wholeheartedly fighting slavery. When society comes together to fight it, human trafficking will end for good.
  • 76.
    69 John Nehme President &Chief Executive Officer, Allies Against Slavery Allies Against Slavery works to develop community networks that build slave free cities. They initiate activism by engaging and mobilizing the community through advocacy. They believe in a holistic, long term approach to ending modern slavery. Coordinating the Slave-Free City Network, they support and empower local survivors of human trafficking and collaborate with partner organizations to disrupt the complex system of slavery. In 2007, after watching a film on human trafficking in South Asia, John felt the impetus to do something. Unable to travel overseas, he began to research the practice, only to discover that human trafficking and slavery occurs in the United States as well. Gathering concerneds citizens in Austin, Texas, John’s belief was that everyone had an ability to take action against slavery and could do it best by working together. He held the first meeting of Allies Against Slavery in 2010. The goal of Allies Against Slavery is to establish community networks that work to create slave free cities. With an all-volunteer staff at the beginning, their 2011 Free Austin Campaign exceeded expectations, reaching over 1,000 people in that first year. In order to better understand the needs of survivors, they began mapping different anti-slavery organizations and stakeholders to identify gaps. Through their collaborative efforts, they aspire to create a bridge between survivors and service organizations that can better serve their needs. However, he states that in order to end slavery, people must first realize this is more like a community development issue. Allies Against Slavery emphasizes the importance of addressing the root causes of slavery: poverty, social isolation, addiction, child abuse and the sex industry. As a result of their work, they are against the legalization of prostitution. Their networks of survivors agree with them. In spite of having case by case stories, research is not yet able to present an accurate picture of slavery in their city. John cites that there is not yet a standard human trafficking screening tool for social service organizations in Austin. To amend that gap, Allies Against Slavery is working with the University of Austin to establish a baseline of what human trafficking truly looks like in Austin. They believe that by establishing solid metrics they will be able to better understand both the scope of the problem and the successes of survivors. As a result, they will be able to say that slavery has been reduced in Austin by a certain percentage each year moving forward. Allies Against Slavery emphasizes the need for a continuum of services to be offered to survivors. Working towards that, Allies Against Slavery collaborates with partners to build cross sector networks that provide a more holistic and inclusive approach to ending human trafficking. Yet, their work is further complicated by the fact that there is an information gap. Many people do not realize how their local purchasing habits can drive international activity and slavery. As such, Allies Against Slavery has partnered with the Polaris Project and other international organizations to highlight the connection. By engaging with their partner organizations, they aim to increase awareness of this international abolitionist movement. But it has not been easy. His years in the movement have illuminated issues of sustainability he says are now facing abolitionism. Ideological differences appear in how to approach and administer the impact of this work. His response is to continue emphasizing cooperation Continuing to grow their organizational capacity, Allies Against Slavery will continue to work towards one day creating a not only a slave-free Austin, but a slave free world.
  • 77.
    70 Michele Newsome Director, ThePorch Light at The Florida Baptist Children’s Home Florida Baptist Children’s Home (FBCH) has been in existence for more than 100 years and operates a number of different ministries throughout the state of Florida. Working with the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), leaders from FBCH and DCF founded the Porch Light to meet the desperate need for safe homes for child victims of domestic sex trafficking. Property was purchased in an undisclosed location where victims could find shelter, unconditional love and a safe place to begin a new life. Florida has the third highest reported number of sex trafficking incidents in the country. Yet, there are only six safe houses with 28 beds in the entire state. To answer the call of victims in desperate need, The Porch Light program launched in 2014 as a joint effort between Florida Baptist Children’s Home and the state’s Department of Children and Families. The Porch Light is a safe house and program where vulnerable girls can find physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing. Porch Light efforts focus on prevention through education and awareness. In this capacity, they aim to educate communities about the problem of sex trafficking within the United States. Florida’s safe harbor law enables law enforcement to place sexually exploited children into safe homes in lieu of an arrest. Treating the children as victims rather than as prostitutes, this law enables The Porch Light and its partners to transform the mindset that says these children chose this life. It also guarantees a safe location for these young victims to heal. Victims are typically female between the ages of 14 to 17 who live in large urban areas. They begin by meeting the tangible needs of these children, from crisis to long-term housing, food, clothing, education, employment, and medical care. Porch Light staff then advocates on their behalves by addressing the intangible needs of their residents. The children are placed in a safe nonjudgmental environment where they learn about positive community building, healthy relationship boundaries, love, and how to recognize abuse and trauma. Residents receive both daily and weekly counseling while they reside together in spacious residential suites on 14 acres of land. The undisclosed location provides a safe place for the girls to reside under constant protection via their security systems. The biggest struggle the girls face is not the feeling of safety but the psychological and mental health traumas. Utilizing their faith-based approach, the Porch Light program offers a holistic methodology to recovery that focuses on all parts of the person (physical, emotional and spiritual). Their next phases include creating a child graduates program to help children step down from living in transitional homes with the creation of therapeutic foster care. Their hope, healing, and restoration program is inspired by John 8:12, “I am the light of the world, he that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” There is a better life out there for these girls. The Porch Light provides a meaningful way to educate people about sex trafficking and provide this better life.
  • 78.
    71 Lisa T.D. Nguyen ExecutiveDirector, The Senhoa Foundation The Senhoa Foundation was established in 2010 and works to fight modern day slavery through prevention, rehabilitation and advocacy programs. Through partnerships that have been cultivated over time, the Senhoa Foundation is able to fund projects that empower women and children who are disadvantaged, so that they might build a better future for themselves. More specifically, they believe in empowering survivors in their intellectual capabilities in hopes that these women and children will generate income and regain a sense of independence in order to make a greater impact. As Executive Director of the Senhoa Foundation, Lisa was initially motivated to join the fight after seeing images of children in brothels. As she continued educating herself and working in this field she was saddened by the overwhelming aspect to this issue. Her main questions was centered around how to turn victims into survivors. Since then she has been focused on removing the stigma that comes with the word “survivor” and moves forward to the hope that can be drawn out of a hopeless situation. Through this process she has learnt that it can often be a challenging cycle of trying to sell their cause for funding needs while trying to convince survivors that their past does not define them. There are three major programs that the Senhoa Foundation supports: the Lotus kids club, The Safe House, and the Senhoa jewelry program. The Lotus kids club focuses on the prevention aspect of their foundational goals. They provide access to educational tools in order to strengthen the child’s family structures and keep them away from vulnerable situations. The Safe House program focuses on job placement but even more so on social reintegration. The Safe House provides a place for women to process and heal from their experiences and gain confidence to build a better future for themselves. Lastly, the Senhoa jewelry program is one of the ways Lisa is trying to change the mentality from “victim” to “survivor” although she notes that they intended for the jewelry to sell itself before the cause. It provides fair wages, health and education in order for the artisan women to walk away with confidence because of what they have created. Instead of homegrown designs, Senhoa’s approach has been a high-end chic look that simply is the start to the greater conversation. Their jewelry has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Senhoa is trying a different approach to the issue of human trafficking as a whole and aim to focus on the future rather than the past. They believe though acknowledging the past is important, the future is bright for these women and they need to envision that. Senhoa targets the intellectual and educational aspect to these women’s future stories as they are the sole breadwinners for their families. Lisa realized that without opportunities to generate personal income, these women risk the chance of falling back into a vulnerable situation. The Senhoa foundation has made the transition from a foundation working with partner shelters in hopes of enrolling women in a training program to a social enterprise that focuses on bigger aspects like fair wage and an array of educational opportunities. This transition has consisted of events and online boutiques, among other projects, that have provided a critical revenue stream for the Foundation’s services, both of which they hope to expand in the future.
  • 79.
    72 Consolee Nishimwe Rwandan GenocideSurvivor, Author & Activist In the early 1990s, Rwanda was plagued by civil car which distinctly divided the country’s two primary ethic groups: the majority Hutu population and the minority Tutsi population. After the nation’s president was assassinated in a fatal plane crash, Hutu extremists took control over the country, launching attacks against the Tutsi population in April of 1994. Consolee Nishimwe was only fourteen years old when the widespread murder and systematic rape of the Hutu against the Tutsi began, destroying her family and her country. As a survivor, she utilizes her voice to promote awareness of her experiences, working to ensure that such unbelievable horrors never occur again. Sharing her story in her memoir, entitled “Tested to the Limit: A Genocide Survivor’s Story of Pain, Resilience and Hope”, is just one example of her activism efforts. Consolee was a happy, loved teenage girl – the eldest of six siblings, living with her parents who both worked as teachers – when the Civil War broke out. She had experienced the hatred expelled towards her ethnic group even before the mass-murders unfolded; her classmates bullied her at school, and her grandparents, parents, and other family had experienced some persecution. Like Consolee, they all were Tutsis. Regardless, Consolee’s parents worked tirelessly to ensure that she and her siblings felt secure and safe at home until the radio began blaring hateful messages, ordering that the “Tutsi must be killed.” Scrambling for safety, Consolee and her family sang Christian gospel songs and prayed for God’s help as they followed a massive crowd into the streets. Consolee, devastated and terrified, watched as people struggling to find shelter in the community’s stadium were slaughtered; she knew that the Tutsis had done nothing to deserve such deplorable oppression. Consolee’s mother led them to a friend’s house to hide, avoiding the children armed with machetes that swarmed the streets; after a period of time, Consolee and her family were forced to flee yet again, moving fearfully through the bushes at night and praying for salvation by day. Consolee’s aunt ran from their attackers, and was killed immediately, leaving the rest of the family in search of another place to hide. Following three months of hiding in the African bush, Consolee learned the true meaning of survival and strength. After her father was killed, she focused on comforting her mother, who carried Consolee’s three- year-old brother as she led the remaining family members through the scrublands. Their feet were swollen and they were subjected to harrowing tortures by their neighbors and friends. ‘Killers’, as Consolee labels them when recounting her story, waited outside houses and inside schools, searching for Tutsis to murder. Along their difficult journey, nevertheless, Consolee and her family were spared by a few individuals her mother had worked with and taught when she was a teacher. These small acts of humanity allowed for the family to continue searching for safety. However, after Consolee’s brother was killed, she and her mother began to lose their emotional and physical strength. Rape was used as a weapon; Consolee was kidnapped, then recurrently raped, tortured, and beaten until she wished to die. Yet her strength persevered, and Consolee’s mother nursed her back to health as the war finally ended. Most of their paternal familial members had been murdered, leaving only three cousins and one sister as their remaining family. While recovering from her physical trauma, Consolee discovered that she was HIV-positive. Prayer gave Consolee the tenacity to fight through and overcome the Rwandan Genocide. Now, she never loses hope. She shares her struggles because so many others cannot, and wants to continue to educate others through telling her story, making documentaries, and other influential means of aiding survivors.
  • 80.
    73 Yvonne O’Neal Member, EpiscopalDiocese of New York Task Force Against Human Trafficking The Task Force Against Human Trafficking is the Episcopal Diocese of New York is a coalition of members and leaders fighting to end human trafficking. Through widespread educational outreach efforts, the organization has been able to hugely impact multi-faith communities and engage hundreds of individuals to get involved in the modern slavery space, spotlighting the influence of religious groups in the anti-slavery movement. The transatlantic slave trade that brought Yvonne O’Neal’s ancestors to the Americas was the beginning of an evil system that continues to plague the world to this day. Dwelling on the cruelty of historical and current violence and slavery empowered Yvonne to employ her powerful connection to her faith when devoting her life to fighting human trafficking. Serving on the Advisory Council of the Anglican Communion Office at the United Nations and the NGO Committee to Stop Trafficking in Persons, Yvonne advocated to educate the community and the public on the issues of slavery and trafficking worldwide. As the current co-chair of the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development, she realizes that violence—including but not limited to violence against women, domestic violence, child marriage, acid attacks, and human trafficking—acts as an impediment to achieving global sustainable development goals. Holding these various advocacy positions have enabled Yvonne to lead and participate in important conversations focused on human trafficking and its far-reaching effects. Many of the Episcopal churches throughout America are working to help end trafficking in their communities due to the efforts of the Diocesan Task Force Against Human Trafficking. Passing the “Make an Organized Commitment to Combat Sex Trafficking” resolution at the 2014 Convention of the Diocese, Reverend Adrian Dannhauser, Yvonne, and other influential members of the Church implemented an efficient educational model for use in parishes across the nation. Distributing brochures prompted a higher community awareness of trafficking, so Yvonne pushed to create a tangible area of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to be designated for a United Nations GIFT Box display – a program used to raise awareness of trafficking and slavery in public spaces all over the world. Parish members spoke with over 450 people from 23 different countries, educating them on trafficking and how they can get involved, and gained over 300 signatures to the Runaway and Homeless Youth and Trafficking Act Petition during the time the GIFT box display was active. This simple but powerful act of advocacy proved the power within the religious community to make a difference in the space. The group later created an interfaith panel for the first day of the 60th Session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, and emphasized why houses of worship and communities of faith must not be afraid to talk about human trafficking. This, and the other practices that the Diocese of New York has implemented, has actualized a community thoroughly educated to know the signs of slavery. Even spreading simple suggestions to congregants, like suggesting they write the human trafficking hotline number on the walls of bathroom stalls, encourages individuals to get involved. All efforts are important to ending slavery: As Yyvonne notes, it is necessary to work towards building a beloved community of God where one day there will be no more captives, where all will be set free—both captor and victim.
  • 81.
    74 Emily Pasnak-Lapchick End TraffickingProgram Officer, U.S. Fund for UNICEF The U.S. Fund for UNICEF advances UNICEF's work, and other efforts in support of the world's child population through fundraising, advocacy and education in the United States. The End Trafficking Program seeks to raise awareness about child trafficking and help people to take action to protect children. They work towards the goal of seeing not a single child trafficked in our world. Emily Pasnak-Lapchick, inspired by her family's history of fighting for social justice as well as viewing child poverty in India first hand, grew particularly concerned about children forced into armed conflicts and farm labor rights in her formative teen and young adult years. Her work in the End Trafficking Program at UNICEF aims to raise awareness and find solutions to end trafficking, not only in the sex trade, but also in the often- overlooked side of labor trafficking. The End Trafficking program was launched in 2012, and has grown steadily over the past three years. In partnership with concerned individuals and groups, the End Trafficking project aims to stop all forms of exploitation. The program began with a project that surveyed Americans to gauge awareness about trafficking, and to date has engaged over 22,000 people via events, Google Hangouts, webinars, workshops, film screenings, and more. One pillar of the End Trafficking Program's work involves targeted advertisement campaigns through online and print publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine, as well as using advertisements in malls and at bus stops. All ads include their emergency hotline number and appear in places with high instances of trafficking. Another pillar has focused on advocating for U.S. state and federal legislative changes in conjunction with organizations like the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST) in order to align priorities and ensure the greatest possible impact. A final pillar is the End Trafficking Program focuses on college campuses, and engagement with college students and athletes in order to raise awareness about the issue on university campuses. In a follow-up study in 2014 (from the original study in 2012), the End Trafficking Program saw positive trends in regards to awareness, familiarity, and concern, as well as a 21 percent increase in the public’s ability to properly define trafficking and an eight percent increase in the public’s recognition of trafficking as a problem in the U.S. From this study, we has learned that more and more people are learning about trafficking, and those who do know are working to end it. In fact, the study found that three in 10 people reported doing something to fight trafficking: buying fair trade, signing petitions, donating, learning the signs, etc. However, the study also found some misconceptions. Most perceive victims of trafficking to be low income or impoverished women and girls, and the public almost always believes that slavery is simply about sexual exploitation. While this information is important, an aspect of trafficking that is often overlooked is labor trafficking as well as the fact that men and boys are enslaved almost as often as women and girls. Emily believes that as a nation, we have come to a tipping point, and now we need to harness our energy to find real solutions. However, we do not yet not have the right ones. But, solutions will come when everyone is working towards a unified goal. Emily believes that this generation holds exceptional power and enthusiasm, which greatly contributes to an increase in awareness, and that with everyone working together, exploitation through human trafficking can, and most certainly will, end.
  • 82.
    75 Morgan Perry Film DepartmentProducer, Exodus Cry Through faith-centric prevention, intervention, and holistic restoration, Exodus Cry is diligently determined to abolish sex slavery. The missionary organization produces documentary films to promote the eradication of human trafficking, change the social conditions that foster a sex slave industry, bring freedom and healing to victims, and inspire action to the masses. Filmmaker Morgan Perry began her journey into the human trafficking and sexual exploitation space ten years ago. After doing service work in Thailand at a restoration home for abused women and children, Morgan returned to the U.S. to study media in an effort to address human trafficking. Her goal was successful; in 2011 she produced her first feature-length documentary, entitled Sex+Money: A National Search For Human Worth, to explore the important issue of domestic minor sex trafficking. Now Morgan works with Benjamin Nolot, creator of the international sex trafficking film Nefarious: Merchant of Human Souls, at Exodus Cry to produce films educating the public on the critical issues relating to sex trafficking. Together, the duo is creating three new films focused on the demand aspects of human trafficking. They realized that without such a massive demand, there would not be an equally massive supply of trafficked and enslaved individuals. Therefore, Morgan and Exodus Cry’s goal is to explore what exactly perpetuates this ubiquitous underground economy. The first film in the series, dubbed Liberated, takes inventory of the impact of society’s hyper-sexualized media and analyzes contemporary ‘hook-up’ culture, among other sociocultural phenomena. In the second film, Buying Her, Morgan and her team address demand through interviews with fifteen sex buyers and question how and why these men initially began purchasing sex regularly, and what drove them to stop and seek recovery. This journalistic exploration further reinforces the strength of the third film, The Face of Porn, which dives into how the easy accessibility of pornography has impacted both sex education and sex trafficking. Extensively analyzing contemporary culture allows Morgan to assert that the sexualization the media propagates influences and grooms’ individuals – replete with stereotypical gender roles, messages of violence, and the unavoidable notion that “sex sells” – into believing that blatant mistreatment and objectification of women is normal and acceptable. Examples of such normalization are omnipresent in popular culture. The video game Grand Theft Auto encourages users to buy sex with prostitutes in order to boost their avatar’s health meter, and to kill the prostitute when finished if the user wants his virtual money back. The porn industry boasts that its two highest grossing genres are “Hardcore Violence” and “Barely Legal.” American Apparel and other famous brands feature advertisements with barely-clothed young women in uncomfortable, hyper-sexualized poses. And while these societal pillars’ messages promote tolerance of a sex slavery society, Morgan’s films and the efforts of Exodus Cry help combat and educate the public on what they internalize. Morgan Perry and the other dedicated individuals of Exodus Cry thrive on the support of the human trafficking community and the public as a whole to ensure their important messages are being heard. Sexual media has created a culture that is neither safe for women nor truly satisfying or healthy for men; spreading awareness and screening documentary films such as Liberated, Buying Her, and The Face of Porn allow for rape, sexual assault, and sex slavery to be recognized as criminal behavior instead of normalized facets of everyday existence.
  • 83.
    76 Gerardo Porteny President &Co-Founder, Young Minds For Gender Equality Young Minds For Gender Equality (YM4GE) aims to work together with young men all over the world to raise awareness about philanthropy and, most importantly, gender equality. Based in Mexico City and New York, YM4GE primarily focuses on five topics: education, economy, society, politics, and culture in order to address the empowerment of women. Gerardo Porteny is a student at New York University who is passionate about social justice through gender equality. A few years ago, Gerardo visited the United Nations, including the division of UN Women, and was impressed by the structure and effectiveness of the organization. He then went to a Global Summit on gender equality and was amazed that 1.1 billion women have been victims of violence, facing vast inequalities with little support. Gerardo decided to do something, so he asked the advice of his mentors, who told him to first research gender inequality before he acted. He therefore participated in every feminist workshop, symposium and conference he could find. Through his hands-on research, Gerardo found that he was often the only male in the room, and that these events, while worthwhile and meaningful, were speaking a message to an audience who already agreed. Gerardo realized then that men needed to become a part of the conversation for gender equality. He therefore co-founded Young Minds for Gender Equality, a global youth coalition operating in more than forty countries for the advancement of women's rights. He also works with the #HeForShe movement as the consultant of global youth engagement for UN Women. In essence, the fight for gender equality is not between women. Rather, it's the fight of all of humanity against discrimination. Since women are often the victims of gender inequality, the issue is often viewed as a female campaign in which men have no role. However, men hold a crucial role in the issue, and although men are part of the problem, they can be part of the solution through partnering with women. When this unity occurs, humanity will benefit because people will work together towards progress. Gerardo believes no one benefits when freedom is violated, and therefore gender inequality is not just a female problem: it's a human issue. YM4GE has three main objectives. The first is to change the attitudes regarding gender equity being passed down through culture. Fathers teach their sons how to treat women, and men follow the culture in which they live. Therefore, if fathers teach their sons to respectfully treat women as equals, gender inequality will be eroded from the inside out. The second goal is to drive economic female empowerment through teaching women about their opportunities and advocating corporations to change the way they function with gender inequality through the 10x10x10 strategy. Through checking supply chains, buying from female-owned businesses, and having more flexible timelines for women so they do not have to choose between a career and motherhood, businesses can be a part of the fight against inequality. The third objective of YM4GE is to engage governments and universities through advocacy for gender equality policy. YM4GE engages with ten different governments, including Rwanda, which is the only country with a majority of female leaders in their parliament. Their female-inundated governmental system has led Rwanda to have one of the most thriving economies in Africa. In addition to reaching governments, YM4GE is reaching universities, including NYU and Harvard, and working for gender equality among the nation's next leaders. Through his work with YM4GE and the #HeforShe movement, Gerardo has seen tangible change in the lives of individuals, as well as a change in policies for corporations and governments through the awareness of widespread gender inequality. Through advocating for equality, Gerardo believes he can help change the world for good.
  • 84.
    77 Andrea Powell Executive Director,FAIR Girls Founded by Andrea Powell and Caroline Tower Morris in 2003, FAIR Fund was created to empower girls in the U.S. and around the world who have been forgotten, exploited or otherwise are at-risk of not reaching their full potential. FAIR Girls currently operates programs in Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, Russia, and the United States. The FAIR Girls home office in Washington, D.C. offers compassionate care to prevent the exploitation of all girls, with a special emphasis on girls who have experienced homelessness, life inside the foster care system, sexual abuse, and trafficking. Twelve years ago, Andrea Powell met a Bosnian woman living in an undercover domestic violence shelter in the basement of her German apartment building. Over the course of the next six months, Andrea learned that the young woman was married to a sixty-year-old man who had used her as a sex slave. Over time, they devised a plan to run away to the United States and free the girl from her trafficker. Unfortunately, the woman disappeared. When Andrea told the local police what had happened, their response was, “things like this just happen to girls like that.” FAIR Girls was created to organize and pass anti-human trafficking advocacy legislation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Originally thought of as an organization that would keep most of their resources abroad, Powell learned that there was also a huge lack of understanding and resources around this issue in our nation’s capital. FAIR Girls found that while many in the United States thought of trafficking as simply a foreign problem, trafficking happens here at an alarming rate. The majority of human trafficking victims in the United States are US nationals, 85% of whom are children of color, 70% of those either are or were in the foster care system, and 90% report of having experienced sexual trauma before the trafficking situation. FAIR Girls operates a holistic treatment and prevention program providing safe houses to girls referred to them via law enforcement or a family member. They offer 24-hour counseling to girls in the first three months of treatment. On the prevention side, they also work in the public school system to educate girls and boys about human trafficking. They also collaborate with the Human Trafficking Unit of the DC Metro Police, the National Human Trafficking Hotline created by the Polaris Project, and Salesforce Database to create a profile of the girls they serve. Powell hopes to share this cloud based information with other organizations in the US and abroad to draw a better picture of who victims of trafficking are and how best to combat it. As the number one request from FAIR Girls clientele is safe housing, going forward, FAIR Girls wants to expand their safe housing program currently funded at 70%. They also seek to expand the metro card, bus fare card, counseling, and other support services they currently provide. FAIR Girls continues to advocate for legislation as well as resources in the DC area and nationwide. As there is a shortage of shelters across the country, FAIR Girls hopes to make the public aware that they are making a small-scale investment with a meaningful impact by aiming to expand their housing program. It costs only $12,000 per girl per year, which is far more cost effective than alternative jail or welfare programs. Through prevention education, compassionate care, and survivor inclusive advocacy, FAIR Girls creates opportunities for girls to become confident, happy, healthy young women.
  • 85.
    78 Alezandra Russell Founder &President, Urban Light Urban Light is a Thai organization that aims to restore and rebuild the lives of young men affected by modern slavery. Operating in Chiang Mai, Urban Light provides an incredible array of services and support, ranging from HIV testing to legal assistance to conducting community outreach efforts. The persistence and effectiveness of the organization is measureable: In the last year, Urban Light has provided aid to over 500 boys. Alezandra Russell began educating herself about modern slavery after someone she cared about was trafficked. When working in D.C. seven years ago, one of her female students was kidnapped, taken to a different state, locked in an apartment, and forced to service men. The police assumed that the girl was a reckless runaway, but Alezandra knew better, though she had never heard of trafficking before. Later, when visiting Thailand, Alezandra realized that the issue also affects young boys and males of all ages. Her impactful experiences seeing people as young as 11 years old selling themselves in the red light district ignited her passion to make a difference, thus propelling her goodwill into the modern slavery space as a recognizable force. There exists a major misconception around the world that males are not typically, if at all, victims of trafficking and modern slavery. Discussions tend to focus on women and young girls, largely due to the fact that social and cultural norms perpetuate the idea that men and boys are stronger and can fend for themselves. Nevertheless, these notions are invalid. In some countries like Sri Lanka abuse against boys is estimated to outweigh abuse against girls. The FBI estimates that boys are depicted in at least fifty percent of the pornography they intercept and see in the United States; yet across the world, in Thailand, child pornography is not illegal. Activists like Alezandra strive to illuminate how omnipresent and inclusive modern slavery truly is—no person, regardless of their gender, is eliminated as a potential victim of these crimes. The rule of law is weak in Thailand. Corruption plagues the nation and infects the legal system and police force like a fatal cancer. That is why the efforts of Urban Light are so important—if the government is contributing to the issue, who else will help these burgeoning boys? The organization deals with undocumented, stateless boys; ethnic minorities from very remote villages; refugees or orphans; and second- generation sex workers. Many of these boys are from neighboring countries like Cambodia and Vietnam, but the greatest influx of males are arriving from Burmese refugee camps. Because they are too young to work and do not have access to any support system of community, these adolescents sell themselves on the street or in bars, where they are given free heroin and other narcotics to keep them coming back. This force them to depend on sex to survive. Urban Light provides these boys with an opportunity to create a different future for themselves through education, English classes and other means of training. Urban Light also provides health services, like HIV and TB testing; harm reduction services, like access to clean needles, health kits, and drug rehabilitation; safe employment; and legal services, such as providing ID cards and/or passports for boys who came from refugee camps and helping boys who are wrongly deported. Urban Light ventures into Thailand’s streets and bars to connect with boys nightly to continually impact the lives of those they serve. Now reinforced with funding from the State Department, Alezandra and her team continue to spread their empowering efforts across Chiang Mai, and want to educate families in villages in order to teach what could happen if their children are sent away to cities, thus working to prevent more boys from being trafficked.
  • 86.
    79 Raleigh Sadler Founder &Executive, Let My People Go Let My People Go helps churches pinpoint which constituents in the church and community are most vulnerable to human trafficking. The faith-based organization provides churches with the proper resources and models to respond. A series of pastors inspired Raleigh Sadler to join the fight for social justice. After attending a conference focused on human trafficking, he immediately felt an intense physical and spiritual desire to get involved in the space. Several years spent researching modern slavery led him to realize how far West Virginia behind was in implementing statewide anti-human-trafficking legislation, so he approached the governor’s legal counsel in an effort to personally spearhead an imitative. Raleigh helped mobilize people to support the bill which passed and inspired him to do more. Moving to New York, where the need was even greater and the problem even more extensive, Raleigh met with a wide range of faith leaders and communities that wanted to help, but lacked the infrastructure to create lasting impact. Establishing Let My People Go allowed Raleigh to provide these communities with a close personal network to help church constitutions support the anti-trafficking movement. Undocumented immigrants and homeless youth most susceptible to human trafficking within the church community. Many churches do not know what to do when presented with these issues in their own communities. Let My People Go advocates for congregations and spiritual to leaders to continually promote themselves as welcoming, safe environments for those confronting slavery. By listening to people’s stories and getting to know them as individuals, invites a deeper awareness of communal engagement and strength into the parish. Challenging Christians to focus on the tenets of their faith also motivates them to fight trafficking. Raleigh reminds groups that if their faith is not deep, they will not be able to effectively help the multitudes of exploited persons that need assistance. Additionally, Let My People Go strives to introduce and connect churches with the law enforcement agencies and representatives to further cement their synergies. Emboldening innovation and collaboration between communities is a key point within Let My People Go’s module. Now, as the organization’s outreach and impact efforts continue to grow, churches across the tristate area have been reaching out to receive Let My People Go’s guidance. Simply preaching about social ills does not create change; by providing people with a direct, actionable model to make a difference, ministry work continues to advance the abolitionist movement, as it has in the past. A slave-free world, as Raleigh notes, cannot exist without divine intervention. With hopes to establish Let My People Go as a national community, he depends on a higher power to propel the organization’s mission forward. In five years’ time Let My People Go aims to have directors in every major region of the United States, as well as clusters of people in every state working with their local churches to develop innovative ministries. Fighting human trafficking is an inter-faith, intercontinental issue and freedom is inevitable when spiritual connections collide.
  • 87.
    80 Sophia Sanders Director ofPrograms & Operations, Stolen Youth The award winning book Sold, by Patricia McCormick, inspired Stolen Youth’s founders to travel to Nepal and India on a learning trip. Seeing firsthand the devastating effects of human trafficking, they left determined to make a difference. Their mission is to expand the community’s awareness and ability to appropriately intervene on behalf of young people coerced into the sex trade and to work together for sustainable and system-wide change in our community. Statistics show that more than 300,000 kids, at the average age of 13, are trafficked annually inside the United States. In recent years, the Internet has become one of the largest mediums for traffickers to lure victims and sell women and girls. In response to this societal travesty, the twelve board members of Stolen Youth decided to host a fundraiser in 2011 to secure more beds for trafficking survivors. They raised over $700,000 at their first event for local survivors. Their success served as a catalyst for continuing to combat this international travesty. Stolen Youth provides funding to support innovative collaboration between local organizations combatting human trafficking. Stolen Youth works with four Seattle based organizations to bring together the strength of multiple sectors to address each unique problem in human trafficking. While they do not provide direct services themselves, they bring local dollars to local issues to together to support the strengths of direct service, policy development and the public sector. Working closely with community organizations and advocates, Stolen Youth maintains relationships with anyone that is in direct contact with youth, from guidance counselors to teachers and local community organizations. Because of their efforts, they have received over 140 referrals in the last two years. Victims are met in person by advocates to connect them with an understanding and familiar voice. This allows them to treat each case individually and personalize the counseling, rehabilitation, and therapy services. Sophia explains that this is what make their program successful and hopeful about the prevention. Over the last three years, Stolen Youth has raised over $2.3 million for local initiatives. Fundraising for direct services takes priority with operating and salary costs taking a back seat. In this way, they are able to continue funding pilot projects that may not receive state or federal funding. In recent years, Stolen Youth has funded several innovative direct service initiatives including training for hotel workers that allows them to better identify potential trafficking victims, and a high school curriculum that works with boys and girls at the sophomore and junior levels to identify societal aspects of commercial sexual exploitation. Stolen Youth aims to lead on this issue with youth outreach. They aspire to create a youth board with youth ambassadors that allow them to plug in to the abolitionist movement. Over the next five to ten years, Stolen Youth wants to create specialized vocational housing to meet the demands of the survivor community. They also want to create residential facilities that do not treat these child survivors like criminals. Further, they hope to have survivors inform programming. Their years of experience have taught them that victims did not choose this life. They believe that by working together, we can offer them a way out of one of the largest human rights tragedies of our time. Whether collaborating with local businesses, hosting town hall meetings, or simply engaging in conversations with everyone they meet, they aim to educate the public regarding the dangers of human trafficking and modern slavery.
  • 88.
    81 Conchita Sarnoff Executive Director,The Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking The Alliance to Rescue Victims of Human Trafficking’s mission is to rescue sex trafficked girls in North America between the ages of six to 12. Providing a nurturing, loving, safe house for these children, they work to rehabilitate victims while raising awareness of child sex trafficking. Through their work, they aim to show that every sex trafficked child is adoptable and deserves to live in a loving, permanent home. The dark side of globalization has seen the simplification of child sex trafficking, something Conchita learned of on a trip to Mexico. This would inspire her to write the book Sex Slave in America, detailing the broad scope of sex trafficking in the region and efforts to abolish the practice. Through her years of research, she discovered that some of America’s largest cities are lacking the correct response mechanisms to this unique issue. Part of the problem Americans faces is a lack of awareness to the severity of the issue, particularly in regards to the lack of safe houses for rescue and rehabilitation. Through her efforts, The Alliance to Rescue Victims of Human Trafficking works to ‘re-home’ rehabilitated children with a loving family. This is an issue of particular importance to the program as some of the children may have been sold into sex trafficking by their parents or previous adoptive parents who no longer wanted them. This is in addition to The Alliance’s work to secure funding to open a new safe house for children in Washington D.C. Child sex trafficking and violence has recently come to the forefront of American consciousness thanks in part to the influx of children on the US-Mexico border. Attempts at escape are also risky as many of the coyotes (those who guide people across the border) charge a high price and work for the cartels. Many originate from Central America. They are running from gangs and drug cartels; some of the worst offenders in human trafficking. Kidnapped children are often sold online through classified companies. Although the US government is currently working with Yahoo, Facebook and Google to detect trafficking victims, a scan of pedophile networks shows that there are a number of sites that post and sell children with ease. All a pedophile needs to purchase the child is a credit card. Different from drugs or other tangible commodities, children can be sold and resold, many times within the same day. To exploit this practice, young boys and girls are being forcefully removed from their homes by gang members or corrupt local police officials to be sold at a profit for these illicit organizations. To combat the corrupt police officers on the payrolls the gangs and cartels, The Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking, is currently working to develop a plan and program to establish law and order in these countries. One of their top priorities is addressing the corruption in local law enforcement that is currently making human trafficking legal in the region. However, they realize that the trafficker is simply meeting a demand, he is not the pedophile. Further, some children are trafficked and killed for their organs as hospitals will pay a high price. It is not always for sex. Conchita stresses the need for a massive grass roots effort to raise awareness. She believes that everyone of us can do a great deal to help stop slavery simply by educating ourselves on the need to enhance international border security. She also emphasizes that there needs to be more done to force online service providers to comply with regulations.
  • 89.
    82 Joe Schmidt Founder, ENDCrowd ENDcrowdis a community of abolitionists fighting to end slavery through harnessing the power of “the crowd.” Their mission is to raise funds for innovative projects that combat slavery in a variety of ways. Aided by a team of human trafficking and e-commerce experts, ENDcrowd, a project of the Audacity Factory, is a place where people can unite to not only learn about modern day slavery, but also to engage in the fight against it. Joe began his career in the for-profit entrepreneurship world, before turning his attention to how he could practically impact the world for good. To that end, he created Audacity Factory, a think tank and incubator whose goal is to help under-served areas with humanitarian aid, specifically in the spheres of slavery, marriage, adoption, and other areas of social justice. Joe's life was radically changed one day when he spoke to a woman who told him a story about a girl who was trafficked and forced into slavery. Joe was astounded and was so impacted by the severe injustice, he decided to do something about it. Joe began by financially supporting a local anti-trafficking organization, and through his involvement at the grassroots level, he realized the severe lack of funding allocated to the fight: just $100 million is spent annually to fight a $150 billion dollar illegal enterprise. As Joe became more involved, he saw the problems the abolition movement faces: visual depiction of trafficking is frightening and makes it difficult to relate to the problem, the issue can be complex and hard to understand, and the solutions are often vast and desperate. In pondering these dilemmas, Joe wondered if crowd funding could help solve some of them. He thought that perhaps by bringing people together into a community through education and then giving them a way to act, he could provide a way for many people to come together to change the world through supporting the abolition movement. And so ENDcrowd was born. The concept of ENDcrowd is to enlighten and educate people who are unaware of the severity of human trafficking and then provide a direct way for them to get involved through micro-donations. ENDcrowd first created a website which features extensive educational videos and blogs to teach viewers about different areas of the anti-trafficking movement. ENDcrowd then launched two to three projects in each category on the website in order to break down the issue into smaller pieces, making it far more accessible to the average person. ENDcrowd is different from other crowd-sourcing sites or anti-human trafficking organizations because of their choice to highlight the different sub-issues and provide a direct, concrete way for the average person to get involved in fighting human trafficking and modern slavery. Through providing an opportunity to choose how to support the abolition movement, Joe has successfully combined the strategies he learned as an entrepreneur with the well-tested, yet relatively new model of crowd-funding in order to create an organization that is already changing lives. Thus far, ENDCrowd has successfully micro-funded $10,000 for an eight-passenger vehicle for an aftercare home for minors, as well job training for two employees working with at-risk youth in California in conjunction with the organization Not For Sale. In the future, ENDcrowd looks to activate more social channels and move towards more peer-influenced projects. Although they are just getting started, ENDcrowd will make a positive impact on the world through their strategy to bring the public together to help end slavery, one project at a time.
  • 90.
    83 Eric Shih Founder, Spendrise Spendriseis a new technology platform that mobilizes purchasing power in order to make changes in causes consumers are compassionate about. It is a powerful form of online campaigning built on the idea that paying consumers have a say in companies and in corporate social responsibility. Spendrise is a stage for consumers to stand on and actively participate and fight for transparency and labor rights within the global supply chain. Consumers can be a powerful voice in aiding organizations and other agencies in the struggle to end human trafficking and modern day slavery. Eric Shih first became involved in social justice with the Chinese Progressive Association. He worked to serve the Chinese immigrant communities that made up 25 percent of the population in the Bay Area. Eric’s time with them opened his eyes to the grueling labor violations that surrounded him in garment factories, restaurants and other establishments. Shih worked to raise the minimum wage, secure fair contracts and fight against exploitation. This experience made him wonder how consumers could also be agents of social change. This lead to the creation of Spendrise. First launched in April 2016, Spendrise targets the power of the consumer. Consumers make up 70 percent of the GDP, carrying a heavy impact and influence on the American economy. Eric realized that if he could somehow harness and consolidate that consumer power, it could become an unstoppable force in changing business practices and improving corporate social responsibility. He decided to combine two powerful ways this generation engages in its society: online petitions and online spending. By bringing these spheres together, it formed an unstoppable force that effectively targeted issues people cared about. Conditional pledging had consumers pledge to spend money if and only if companies instituted a change in their business practices. Whether for fair wages, cage-free eggs, or recyclable cups, Spendrise is taking advantage of the power of the dollar for good. If companies followed through and implemented these changes, the pledgers would receive gift cards to spend at these businesses. However, if companies do not make changes, the pledges do not go through and consumers are refunded. Eric has received far more embrace than opposition from businesses than expected. He realized that companies want to hear from their customers and improve their business model to increase profits. Establishments have come to recognize the importance of the consumer’s beliefs and how that ties into their spending. Businesses that do well are those with a strong CSR that helps to build a solid brand image. Eric has partnered with NGOs, policy makers and other organizations in order to be more aware of what the current issues are so that Spendrise can work to make a difference. One of these non-profits is Sustainable Fisheries Partnership. SFP is working to transform the fish industry’s business practices by having more supply chain transparency. From consumers, to NGOs, to governmental organizations, private enterprises and policy makers, Spendrise has this incredible capability to work across sectors and bring them together to work towards a common goal. Spendrise allows us as consumers share with companies what our beliefs are and what we are deeply passionate about. In order to address complex systemic problems like human-trafficking, it requires a multisector collaboration. With Spendrise’s platform, this cooperation is finally possible.
  • 91.
    84 E. Benjamin Skinner SeniorVice President, Tau Investment Management E. Benjamin Skinner is an award-winning author and journalist who has been studying the U.S. and global political economies, specializing in modern-day slavery. His book, A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face with Modern-Day Slavery, articles and investigations have appeared in such outlets as Time, Newsweek International, The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and on ABC's Nightline, where one of his book's chapters was adapted into an Emmy-award-winning episode, "How to Buy a Child in Ten Hours." He is currently a Senior Vice President at Tau Investment Management. TAU Investment Management, LLC, is an active growth-equity investment firm that transforms global supply chains. By upgrading and de-risking supply chains, TAU uses capitalist solutions to solve capitalism’s worst failure – the undervaluation of human and natural resources. By investing to enhance the operational performance of manufacturers, TAU delivers value to all stakeholders, including investors seeking both superior returns and social and environmental benefits. Slavery is not a metaphor for underpaid workers. Slavery is about people that are disposable in the eyes of their employers, kept by threat of violence, and paid only to subsistence. It is very common that victims or their families are threatened or attacked if they go to authorities. The majority of slaves are in India and there are more slaves in South Asia than in any part of the globe, the best estimate being between 15 to 20 million. Approximately 800,000 to 2,000,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year. In the US alone there are about 14,000 to 17,000 people trafficked every year – a total of one new slave every half hour. Ben believes that in order to end slavery, we must attack fundamental cycles of dependence targeting businesses especially. Ben believes that individual stories capture the attention of the world better than statistics. Corporations can make changes effectively and in a manner that affects the lives of those in their supply chains to a greater extent than most governments can. TAU Investment Management is accelerating the inevitable by helping corporations that are ready to modernize, be more efficient and be more profitable. TAU has about 1,000 companies in their pipeline, where they are helping solve issues such as lack of trust between officials and customers, and shaping up businesses including through the reduction of energy, the increase of worker dignity and retention and the expansion of production, to name a few goals The key to change is using leveraging points with key decision makers. There is a hunger for a new investment model that accelerates supply chain transparency and provides products and services that are free of slave labor. In the past efforts were towards government policies to end slavery and that set the framework, but now the work needs to be with corporations to produce quick and efficient change. This is how Tau plans on ending supply chain slavery, and freeing workers around the world, once and for all.
  • 92.
    85 Curtis Sliwa Founder &Chief Executive Officer, The Guardian Angels The Guardian Angels, started in 1979, uses volunteers, including inner-city youth, as safety patrols to help protect communities around the world. By making young people part of the solution rather than casting them as part of the problem, The Guardian Angels empowers youth to take pride in their communities and contribute to the safety of their neighborhoods, clean up their communities, and safeguard their streets. As a result, there are now more than 130 Guardian Angels safety patrol chapters throughout the world in 18 different countries, with new chapters started in new cities and countries every year. In the 1980s Curtis Sliwa formed the Guardian Angels as crime and violence exploded in the Bronx section of New York City. The city was doing very little to stop trafficking and to rescue the underage girls who were being recruited by the thousands. Pimps would take their money and keep them imprisoned. The Guardian Angels – unarmed, volunteer patrols – began to walk the streets of New York in order to deter crime. Now the Guardian Angels have spread to cities across the United States and around the world. Most of the trafficked victims that the Angels encounter are underage Asian or Korean women, and some from Central America and Eastern Europe. Many of the girls came to New York via the Port Authority, and were trying to escape dysfunctional situations at home. Traffickers kept them in hotels or motels in New Jersey and then brought them to New York to work in the sex industry. Unfortunately, the law rarely prosecutes or punishes these establishments. The election of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani means less and less street activity; however, there has been a movement behind doors and into massage parlors, many of which are in high-rise tenements that have been illegally subdivided. Owners often threaten women — many of whom cannot speak English — with deportation, harm of their families, and more. Guardian Angels walk into these “flash” massage parlors and confront the owners. The Guardian Angels partnered with a Lutheran priest who agreed to give the girls shelter and connect them with social services. Rescued girls are then able to seek permanent housing, employment, and more through the Lutheran church and other groups that come to their aide. Curtis has seen human trafficking unfold across America. The worst city for unsolved cases of missing women is Cleveland, Ohio. Ariel Castro was a well-known member of the community, serving as school bus driver. In the span of ten years, he was able to pick up three different women who suffered unspeakable torture. The women would be locked up in his home, but when he was at present he would allow them to roam around the house, and even open the door to tempt them. Eventually, he could leave the door wide open and none of the women would run, traumatized by their abuse. He would host guests and parties in his backyard and the women would not cry for help. From day one, the Guardian Angels searched for these missing girls. Upon their release, after one of the girls escaped with the baby she had been forced to have from being raped by Castro, the Angels discovered that the women had heard the group calling out for them as they patrolled the streets. One of the young women, Michelle Knight, as be honored at the Guardian Angels’ annual dinner and has become a valiant spokesperson for other women suffering in similar situations. Recently, Curtis held the International Convention of Guardian Angels in Florida, where sex trafficking is a huge problem. There, they decided to continue forming new partnerships and rescuing people with local groups and state authorities.
  • 93.
    86 Nina Smith Founding ExecutiveDirector, GoodWeave GoodWeave International is an international non-profit organization working to end child labor in rug and carpet manufacturing. They believe their market-based approach to ending child labor can be replicated across other sectors. A leading abolitionist group, they provide educational opportunities and social services to children of carpet weavers. The GoodWeave label is the best assurance that no child was used in the making of any rug or carpet. Founded in 2001, GoodWeave began with a single principal standard: no child or forced labor should be allowed in the rug and carpet manufacturing. They utilize a market-based approach to incentivize the end of child labor; to disrupt widely accepted trends; free children; and liberate bonded laborers. At present, 85 percent of rugs are made in Asia. Many of the countries in the region have a history of using bonded and child labor. In addition, the industry is characterized by fragmented production. As fragmented supply chains are often associated with bonded and child labor, carpet and rug manufacturing are of particular importance to modern abolitionists. They begin their work by monitoring the production process that largely takes place abroad. In Afghanistan, the majority of the estimated 2 to 4 million laborers working in the carpet industry are women and children. In Nepal bonded and child labor is on the rise has increased in recent years as the Nepalese attempt to meet the demand for their number one export: carpets. And instances of child and bonded labor in India remain high. Working against that trend, they are currently partnered with 140 importers and retailers around the globe. In addition, they recently went through a multi-year process to update standards and better define exactly what their label means. By agreeing to work with GoodWeave, manufacturers ensure that every door is open for inspection. This is because abuse cannot be properly identified without wholesale access. Brands who license with them agree to meet their standards and pay licensing fees. These fees are then used to support GoodWeave’s social and rehabilitation programs. GoodWeave further arranges education for children under the age of 14. Children of carpet weavers must go to school or the parents cannot work for them. As a result, families are motivated to educate their children and not employ them. In addition, GoodWeave funds and operates day care programs for children of carpet weavers, getting them into education early while enabling their mothers to concentrate on their work. In Afghanistan, as many of the women work at home the organization instituted its first home schooling program for Afghani children. If for those over 14 years of age there are vocational training opportunities. Since 1995, GoodWeave have rescued 4,000 children and educated over 13,000. However, they say their largest impact has been in their monitoring initiatives. Rather than an annual audit, GoodWeave partners are subjected to random inspections. In spite of their tremendous success and diverse partnerships, many large corporations are still hesitant to get involved with a program like this. Many others still refuse to talk about bonded and child labor in public. As such, Nina Smith emphasizes the need for increased public awareness. Through blogging, social media or supporting partnerships initiatives, GoodWeave aims to demonstrate how buying power could end child slavery in the carpet industry. At present GoodWeave says that 168 million children remain laboring in supply chains. It is up to us to ensure that all of the carpets we purchase are slavery free. Make sure they have a GoodWeave label. After all, your buying power has the power to end child labor in the carpet industry once and for all.
  • 94.
    87 Carol Smolenski Executive Director,ECPAT USA Ending Child Slavery At the Source (ECPAT) USA started out as an Asian-based organization, committed to ending travelers coming to the continent to sexually exploit children. By 1996, the organization realized that they needed to start conversations not only about sex tourism, but also about all forms of child sex-trafficking. ECPAT now conducts a broad band of work in 80 countries, working diligently to fight against commercial sexual exploitation through advocating for protective laws and policies and promoting corporate social responsibility. No figure exists to enumerate how many children are sexually exploited; the statistics widely used are old and obsolete, and in many ways unsupported by credible statistical methodology. ECPAT uses the number 100,000; the National Hotline for Missing and Exploited Children documented 500,000 reports of exploitation in 2013. This disparity illuminates the importance of ECPAT’s work towards protecting both prepubescent children and teenagers in their quest to abolish slavery at its source. After surviving unmentionable violence and trauma, children are often prosecuted and detained as criminals because of the ways in which they are treated under state law. Under federal law, however, anyone who is ‘induced to perform’ a commercial sex act is a victim of human trafficking. When this legislation passed in 2000, it was the first of its kind to provide federal-level assistance to insist that children should not be bought or sold and that they deserve the right to protection. ECPAT-USA works diligently to advocate on the state level to ensure that children are not prosecuted for crimes committed against them. After The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act passed in 2015, the ECPAT staff published an editorial in the Washington Post, encouraging prosecutors to view trafficking through this legislative lens. ECPAT continually publishes reports on how poorly some states handle child trafficking cases. They strive to support state Safe Harbor Laws and are now focusing on educating youth by providing students in NYC schools with tools to know what leads to exploitation and what rights they have to combat it. Parallel to their focus on children, ECPAT worked with policy makers, child protective services, teachers, and travel industries to create the Code of Conduct, focused on sex tourism in Sweden in 1998. Initially, it worked on passing legislation so that sex offenders who were abusing children outside of state borders could be prosecuted when they returned back to the United States; later, it spread to aiding in Private Sector work by outlining six steps to help prevent sexual exploitation in the industry. In 2004, ECPAT introduced the Code of Conduct at UNICEF in the U.S., and the Carlson Corporation became the first to sign on. Currently, they have 44 companies, associations, and non-governmental organizations on board with its regulations, as well as high profile companies like Hilton, Wyndham, and Delta. ECPAT originally encouraged Carlson to implement the Code in poorer countries overseas, but it did not take long to discover that commercial sexual exploitation was overtaking the U.S. ECPAT recently partnered with the American Hotel and Lodging Association Educational Institution to create an e-learning module in efforts to improve the Code; four major companies have licensed it and are offering it to staff at all of their properties, enabling employees to appropriately handle suspicious activity and strenuous situations at any time. Because their determination never ceases, ECPAT USA persistently succeeds in making effective changes to combat commercial sexual exploitation on the global sphere, and are currently seeking partnerships at universities to further grow their outreach efforts.
  • 95.
    88 Vincent Stanley Director ofPhilosophy, Patagonia Patagonia is a recreation retailer that provides environmentally friendly outdoor apparel and gear. They began as a small climbing gear business, and their roots still lie in alpinism. Their mission is to build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. In 1965, Chouinard Equipment emerged as a small, innovative company that made quality alpinism gear. The company grew and began to sell active sportswear in 1970, a completely new concept at the time, and the clothing division was named Patagonia to evoke one's next far-flung adventure. Patagonia took off, and to this day, they retain the disciplined commitment to quality products first begun by Chouinard. Vincent Stanley has worked with Patagonia for over forty years, and he is a witness to the company's incredible growth and a shaper of its unique culture. In the 1980's, Patagonia moved all of their product sourcing to factories overseas. Until 1990, the executives never visited the factories, assuming that good quality cannot come out of bad factories. However, when they decided to make a visit, one of the factories would not allow them to come. They began to look into the issue and found numerous human rights violations within the system. One of the worst ways slavery is perpetrated in the garment industry is when factories with good conditions subcontract work to factories with bad conditions. This method lengthens the supply chain and causes much of the exploitation found in the clothing industry. In response to their new understanding as well as to President Clinton's "No Sweat" Initiative launched in 1993, Patagonia decided to take a stand and verify their supply chains. According to Vincent, in the late 1990's and early 2000's, Patagonia decided to open up their supply chain in order to decrease cost. Their move ended in disaster with a decline in quality and a loss of customer rapport. But Patagonia learned from their mistake. Many businesses believe one can only deliver on two out of three when it comes to quality, delivery, and price. Patagonia used to believe that idea, but realized after 10 years that it was necessary to focus on all three, and to have social responsibility as the crux that guides all three things. Therefore, they created a social responsibility division to ensure just business practices. Within the last decade, Patagonia has grown to focus on two main objectives in their social responsibility division. The first is to provide a living wage to the workers in their factories, a goal that had not been met in over 200 years in the garment industry. Since a living wage is defined as the amount necessary to support a family of four, the living wage is a vital standard to meet. Since it is not in the economic interest of the company or the consumer, Vincent emphasized how a living wage must be consumer-driven. However, since much of the public is unaware of the injustice that occurs in the garment industry, it is the onus of those who care to educate those who do not know about just consumer practices. The second goal Patagonia's social responsibility team has is to verify their supply chains through not only inspecting their first tier factories, but also their second and third tier subcontractor factories. This second objective was even harder to meet, as it requires extensive research, but Patagonia believes the hard work is worth it. It was shocking to Vincent when he learned that in their Taiwanese factory was essentially a hotbed of human trafficking, where immigrants contract work and pay thousands of dollars to a broker in order to find a job. Patagonia now works with Verite, an organization that works to fix the broken contractor system in Taiwan. Through their dedication to social responsibility, Patagonia has become a leader in the clothing industry: not only for their quality products, but also for their commitment to justice.
  • 96.
    89 Ehb Teng Founder, DiginidoLabs, The Wren Initiative & ATHack! Diginido Labs is a web application and mobile design/development studio that focuses on projects fostering social good. The Wren Initiative is a freelance group that disrupts the economics and flow of trafficking through technology and underground grassroots campaigns and by providing assistance to non-profits. ATHack! functions as a foundation for facilitating discussions and launching social impact projects between activists and technologists through social good hackathons, while working to collect reliable and credible data on human trafficking. What does the world look like without human trafficking? What are the prejudices that would remain? How must we redefine our approach of criminalization? How do we address “male culture”? And how do we help people fulfill their needs and self-actualize? Technology entrepreneur, artist, and musician Ehb Teng addresses these important questions, and many others, through his comprehensive activism efforts. The poignant images from his childhood spent watching his mother suffer abuse informed the direction of his life, pushing him to work towards ensuring that others don’t experience emotional, mental, and physical entrapment or violence. Ehb has since dedicated himself to focusing on the philosophical issue of freedom and what it means to be truly free. As an entrepreneur, he is a builder and a problem solver; as an artist, he understands the intangibles that link people at a human condition level. It is through these different roles that Ehb is able to recognize that human trafficking is one of the biggest problems regarding freedom in the world, and he constantly strives to make a benevolent difference. He sits on the boards of directors of Motivating Inspiring Supporting & Serving Sexually Exploited Youth (MISSSEY) and Hack for Big Choices, the latter organization of which internationally engages change makers to provide such talented entrepreneurs with tools to empower themselves in solving critical community issues. In the past three years, he has started three different organizations aimed at utilizing technology to target human trafficking. Through his work pioneering Diginido Labs, The Wren Initiative, and ATHack!, Ehb beleives that because gathering data on clandestine trafficking is incredibly difficult, solutions need to be sourced from a 360 degree perspective that brings all stakeholders to the table. Citing the currently available statistics is impermissible. There are many other problems afflicting the space: most data is self-reported by survivors skewing results; organizations falsely represent or do not understand how to properly acquire and apply data; date; many countries do not report data correctly or at all while others have poor methodological practices. Corporations, however, are starting to see responsible sourcing as something they need to address, and Ehb remains positive that the conversation regarding human trafficking will continually improve as the space incorporates proper statistics into its efforts. A slave free world, free from poverty and war and materialism, is possible to create. Ehb is at the forefront of the fight towards pushing society away from the male culture that perpetuates such human rights violations. Many boys grow up in highly competitive and violent environments, exposed to porn and a lack of education of gender equity and equality. Through his outreach efforts, Ehb wants to solve the data problem, create a “shelter academy” for trafficking survivors to self-actualize, and mandate first responders and medical professionals to help with data collection. After all, anything is possible when brilliant minds and technology collide.
  • 97.
    90 Allison Trowbridge Partner, JustBusiness Founded in 2006, Just Business began as a project of the non-profit Not For Sale, as a response to human trafficking and labor exploitation, and has continued to invest in and incubate profitable and forward- thinking ventures dedicated to positive impact in the world. Allison began her career working for world-renowned anti-trafficking organization, Not For Sale, which was founded to bring cohesiveness to the modern abolitionist movement. Utilizing a holistic, all-encompassing approach, Not For Sale, bridges knowledge to action to encourage people to take notice of trafficking and the thirty million individuals enslaved around the world today. Allison believes that in order to address modern slavery holistically, engagement from the business community is necessary. Although non-profits play a crucial role in the abolitionist movement, direct services to victims are critical but those alone cannot end human trafficking in the long term. Aiming to prevent slavery from happening in the first place, Not For Sale launched a series of initiatives to raise awareness of human trafficking and affect real change. One of their first initiatives was the Montara Circle. Bringing together fifty global leaders, from major business leaders to sports stars and political voices, the Circle began by thinking of innovative ways to address this global challenge. Focusing on human trafficking and modern slavery in the South American Amazon region, these leaders broke up into several issue groups. Each addressed different aspects of combatting modern slavery and human trafficking. It was during this conference that the group - ‘Just Business’- came together as an incubator for social initiatives. Following the Montara Circle, Just Business realized that the for-profit community can effect great social change by incentivizing the work of abolitionists. Shortly after the conference, Just Business launched REBBL, a fair trade tea company that would source from the region and put their profits back into the abolitionist movement. Now carried in Whole Foods and other big supermarket chains in the United States, this tea will soon be available globally. Just Business also began investing in Tau Management. Defining themselves as capitalist solutions for capitalism’s failures, Tau Management seeks to increase manufacturers’ profitability and scale while improving the lives of workers and the environment. Tau Management believes that by creating the factories of the future, they can decrease costs by increasing efficiency and productivity. This work will thus provide an economic argument to the end of human trafficking that serves to strengthen the moral one. Organizations like Just Business and Tau Management continue to motivate other businesses to follow in their footsteps. In recent years, many others have followed suit. Organizations like: Bliss Complete Organics an ethically- sourced tea company, Raven + Lily, a clothing and accessory company, and the Nomi Network, an organization that creates economic opportunities for survivors of human trafficking. By empowering potential victims and survivors of human trafficking through sustainable employment, these types of for profit ventures can help themselves whilst incentivizing the global economy to end their plight. There have been four abolitionist movements in history, England in the 1800’s, the US in the mid-1800’s, Belgium in the 1900’s, and the one occurring at this moment in history. Freedom only comes with the total end of all forms of slavery from every corner of the earth. For the staff at Not For Sale, Just Business and their collaborating organizations, there is much more work to be done in that aim.
  • 98.
    91 Ray Umashankar Director, ASSETIndia Foundation ASSET (Achieving Sustainable Social Equality through Technology) India Foundation aims to provide children of women in the sex-trade, and those rescued from sex trafficking, in India with basic information technology skills and secure employment opportunities. By harnessing the technical aptitude of this neglected and underserved population, ASSET hopes to fulfill the needs of a global market through using knowledge empowerment as a method of preventing children from entering the sex industry. When his twenty-three year old daughter returned from India and said she wanted to help human trafficking victims, Ray Umashankar realized there was an unmet need in his home country that he could help fill. After researching the issue further, Ray found that most organizations working with trafficking victims taught them basic, low-income skills such as selling bags and groceries, skills insufficient to support a family and get them out of the sex industry. In view of the low level of care offered to India's trafficking victims, Ray and his family got involved, and decided one of the most profitable skills to teach people is in the realm of information technology. ASSET's first center was started in 2007 in Chennai, India. After training girls from ages 16 to 18, ASSET would place the girls within companies in India. For example, a coffee chain hired many of ASSET's trainees for inventory and cash register management. ASSET collaborates with a variety companies to ensure they can utilize as wide a breadth of resources as possible to these girls. For instance, Infosys, a major software developer, has provided 100 used computers to ASSET for its center in Forbesgunj on the India-Nepal border where sex work is the only option for more than 150 girls in the 16 to 18 year old age group. ASSET also works to provide loans to former sex workers to allow them to prosper. For example, in the southern state of Karnataka, interest free loans totaling $100,000 have been provided by ASSET to 500 former sex workers to start income generating businesses so that their daughters and granddaughters will stay in school and not enter the sex trade. Through working with different companies, ASSET has helped many women find work that will allow them to live in freedom. In addition to their work with information technology, ASSET also works with other charitable organizations to address a wide range of aid for trafficking victims. In partnership with Nobel Laureate Kaila Satyarthi's organization, ASSET has been involved in the rescue, rehabilitation and education of more than 200 girls trafficked from tea estates in Assam. In addition, they are starting programs that will ensure that girls will stay in school and not fall victims to sex trafficking in 400 villages with the capacity to impact nearly 300,000 girls in the next three years. ASSET has also embarked on a major fundraising effort for building an emergency shelter for its partner Prajwala in Hyderabad by contributing $25,000. Prajwala to date has rescued more than 12,000 girls from sex trafficking and due to political and other pressures is being pushed out of its current location. Not only do women need programs to recover from being trafficked, but there are also more personal needs, which must be met as well. In rural areas of India, resources are scarce and people must learn to live without basic necessities, such as sanitary napkins. ASSET is investigating the manufacture and distribution of low cost sanitary napkins in rural India so that girls will stay in school and avoid those illnesses caused by using dirty rags and newspaper. Through their multiple outreach efforts, ASSET is creating enormous change in India. Their success is fueled by their passion for bringing the broken and ostracized to a place of healing, and they will continue to have great success due to their various endeavors to support victims of human trafficking.
  • 99.
    92 Jeremy Vallerand President, Rescue:Freedom Rescue: Freedom International exists to rescue victims of human trafficking, to provide holistic aftercare services, and to prevent the growing travesty of exploitation. Rescue Freedom supports a growing network of service providers in six countries who are familiar with and sensitive to the culture and community within which victims live. By mobilizing resources, knowledge, and funding, Rescue Freedom works together with their partners to restore lives broken by sexual slavery through programs such as night shelters, safe houses, medical clinics, and vocational training. Jeremy traveled to India seven years ago with no real conception of reality of sex slavery in India. After visiting the Red Light District of Mumbai, one of the largest red light districts in the world with an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 women and children in enslaved, Jeremy recalls that he was broken and unable understand how that level of injustice could possibly exist in the world. Yet, despite the squalor, he also had the opportunity to see homes where survivors were rehabilitated. He returned to Seattle with a mission: if this were my family, what would I do for them? The collaboration between Rescue Freedom and the Climb for Captives program was born. Climb for Captives was an effort by Jeremy and his team to climb Mount Rainier and raise $14,000 in two-weeks for survivors of trafficking. Then, in 2012, Jeremy founded Rescue: Freedom, whose mission is to empower and restore the lives of sex trafficking victims and survivors. Focused mainly on hyper-local efforts, Rescue: Freedom believes that rehabilitation is best when embedded within the communities they serve. This enables the organization to build relationships while creating the environment of trust needed to bring and keep girls out of the flesh trade. While many people think that all that we need is to provide freedom to make it work; but Jeremy says this is rarely the case. They have to rely on the community for help. Creating the Faith Alliance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST), Rescue: Freedom has connected with service providers that focus on bringing international best practices, as well as services to aftercare facilities on the local level. While some aspects of the anti-trafficking community lends itself to centralization (such as operating a human trafficking hotline or changing a governmental policy), others efforts, such as aftercare services are much better served with a decentralized approach. By working in local communities to send children to school or college s well as to give adults vocational training, Rescue: Freedom is meeting both the needs of victims and their communities. However, Jeremy cites one specific area of disagreement between the anti-trafficking and free speech communities that he believes needs addressing: pornography. Jeremy believes that pornography has been couched in the ‘freedom of speech’ language for too long, and that the public does not have the will for a substantial discussion regarding it. For Jeremy, perhaps there is nothing more important than raising awareness and discussing the integral role pornography plays in human sex trafficking to end sexual exploitation in general. For the Rescue: Freedom team, empowering survivors is their ultimate goal. They want to highlight efforts that empower survivors including purchasing survivor-made products or donating to an aftercare provider near you. The next stages for the organization in the anti-trafficking movement include a consolidation of resources. By providing holistic aftercare services on the hyper-local level and empowering survivors via international support, Rescue: Freedom is working to prevent and end the growing travesty of exploitation.
  • 100.
    93 Andrew Wallis Chief ExecutiveOfficer, Unseen Unseen works for towards the eradication of slavery wherever it is found by providing survivors with safety, hope and choice. They support and develop frontline projects that actively seek to help vulnerable people from becoming enslaved both in the United Kingdom as a destination country and in source countries. They also work to raise awareness of human trafficking and deliver training courses to inform and equip people to spot the signs of trafficking and subsequently know how to address it. Andrew became involved in the fight against trafficking eight years ago when he met with a police officer to see how they could provide support for victims. The officer was frustrated because trafficking had not been made a priority in the force, and the only policy he could execute in order to save victims, was to arrest. The officer indicated that safe survivor housing was necessary to provide support for these individuals, and he agreed to become a trustee of Andrew’s organization and connect him to anti-trafficking forces across the Kingdom. The charity began as not just a safety net for survivors, but also as an advocate to prevent slavery from happening. On the micro level they work directly with survivors giving them access to services and long-term vocational training and employment to help them grow their resiliency and self-esteem. On the macro level, Unseen helps train law enforcement in the identification of victims, fosters partnerships across the abolition space, and helps with the reporting of trafficking cases to authorities. Unseen is now focusing on partnerships with business community to help them tackle trafficking. Slavery affects businesses and with the growing demand from consumerism for corporate transparency, Unseen seeks to bring awareness and end to supply side slavery in their supply chain. As the world moves socially conscious consumerism, it is to their benefit and is value-added for businesses that take on this responsibility now. The biggest obstacle Unseen has faced thus far is the unwillingness of organizations to collaborate. There is an overwhelming amount of competition for funds and the production of useful information. But Unseen believes its commitment to work with the government and encourage businesses to talk with the government will eventually reap reward and foster the power to make real and lasting change. The end goal of Unseen as an organization is to put itself out of business - meaning to put end trafficking and live in a world without slavery, once and for all.
  • 101.
    94 Jody Weiss Founder, TheSports Pledge The goal of The Sports Pledge is to engage the commissioners of sports leagues, the sports teams within these leagues, the athletes that benefit from playing, the sponsors who fund these sporting events, and the fans who attend or watch the game(s) to sign The Sports Pledge as a statement of solidarity in endorsing sportsmanlike behavior and in protecting women, children and vulnerable men. Along with this Pledge is an invitation to state an action that Pledgers will perform within 365 days to help ensure that women, children and vulnerable men are protected and are not used as objects of exploitation, violence, or servitude anywhere in the world. Jody Weiss began her fundraising work on the 1996 Olympics. Soon after she realized that she did not want to spend her life raising money for causes that did not mean anything to her. So, In the early 2000s Jody founded PeaceKeeper Cause-Metics, a cosmetic company focused on fundraising for human trafficking issues. However, as the message to end trafficking must also reach men and boys, Jody decided to meet them in the space they most love, sports. Jody launched the platform Sports Pledge For Freedom to combat systemic violence in the sports industry. Jody notes that sports have a long history of violence, in some cases hundreds of years, and outbreaks of violence peak on game days. Violence also comes in the form of sports investment. For example, in Qatar, there is one death every two days in order to construct the World Cup Stadiums. The Sports pledge was founded to combat all types of violence by enlisting athletes to commit to protecting vulnerable individuals worldwide. The Sports Pledge works by targeting professional, college, amateur and high school athletes in varying sports. Athletes can then use the site, SportsPledge.org, to invite sports leaders to sign the pledge and commit to protecting vulnerable women, children and men. The overall goal is to have athletes re-embrace the true ideals of ‘sportsmanship.’ All funds donated to the platform will go to awareness programs or to creating assorted tools that help athletes and fans better deal with frustration after games. In the next three years, The Sports Pledge wants to work towards the creation of legislation related to the violence committed by, or in the name of, athletes. Jody would also like to create ‘The Sports Pledge Commission on Violence in Sports,’ a roundtable with athletes and managers that addresses root causes. In addition, The Sports Pledge seeks the addition of language to player contracts that ensures a zero tolerance on violence. The Sports Pledge also hopes to recruit corporate and alcohol sponsors to change the language of sportsmanship. In general, The Sports Pledge hopes to create a new ‘cool’ idea of protecting the most vulnerable amongst us. While Jody admits the conversation on this issue is very different in the West then it is in the developing world, The Sports Pledge hopes to introduce tailor-made and culturally-appropriate language for pledges in Africa or Asia that will appeal to their norms and values. The Sports Pledge invites us to state an action and end the cycle of violence in athletics. It states, we are capable male and female athletes who choose to put the ideals of true sportsmanship and fair play ahead of worn out gender norms that do not allow either gender to thrive and excel.
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    95 Shandra Woworuntu Sex TraffickingSurvivor & Advocate Shandra Woworuntu is a survivor of human trafficking. She strives to educate women and children as a strategy to prevent servitude, violence, abuse and trafficking. Slavery can happen to anyone, just as anyone can potentially become a trafficker. This is not an issue only for people in poverty. Shandra uses her power as a survivor to build a network of survivors, creating an environment where everyone can feel open to speak about their experiences without feeling judged. When Shandra managed to finally escape her traffickers, nobody believed her story and she was forced to live on the streets until she finally was able to convince a U.S. Navy soldier to call the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on her behalf. That same day, the FBI went to the brothel where she escaped and they saved the other women and girls. Many people do not believe that trafficking happens in the U.S., in our backyard, in our own neighbor’s homes. Trafficking is not just a few stories or a myth, it is a reality and there must be a movement to work with one another to bring it to an end. After a victim escapes and becomes a survivor of human trafficking, it is very important to consider economic support. Often, survivors end up in shelters and get a very small stipend (Shandra received just $25 per month for her years of pain and suffering). Once these survivors leave the shelters, their lack of education can make it very difficult for them to survive or find a job. Sometimes immigration status can cause them to be deported. Shandra emphasizes the importance of helping survivors learn how to earn a living and live a fulfilling happy life. It is very important to connect survivors with someone who can help with their immigration status, transitional housing, education and training, medical services, life survival information (for example, how to open a bank account or successfully interview for employment). In order for survivor services to improve we need to push for more funding to be able to empower them to grow and move past the shelter lifestyle in order to be able to choose where they want to live. Transitional housing is key to reintegrate survivors into the community, but not enough housing is available, and beds are one of the primary problems in survivor services that could be easily addressed through increased funding from the government, civil society and private donors. Education, for example, on identifying the signs of trafficking or the raising awareness about the existence of help hotlines is necessary in order to bring an end to trafficking. Survivors cannot be blamed for their situation and victimized a second time for what they experienced once they are taken into custody by authorities or freed from their traffickers. Organizations also need to shift their focus on what really matters and collaborate rather than fight each other for funding. Shandra hopes that by choosing to share her story with the world, more people will be made aware and take action against modern slavery and trafficking.
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    96 Lynn Zovighian Managing Director,The Zovighian Partnership The Zovighian Partnership imagines a Middle East that chooses entrepreneurship as the mechanism for solving problems. A family-owned social enterprise, they are working hand in hand with next-generation leaders to help facilitate this change in the region. They are building their Middle East peace by piece, in partnership with society. Collaborating with the Saudi Arabia based philanthropic organization, Ibtissam, they are fighting to eliminate modern-day slavery in our Middle East. Lynn Zovighian founded The Zovighian Partnership in 2014 as a social innovation incubator to build up and manage professional philanthropic opportunities in The Middle East. Leading the initiative along with her father, she dedicates most of her time to running The Partnership’s impact portfolio, called the Peace Collection, which focuses on furthering peace and empowering youth and women in the Middle East. Lynn is also Chief Executive Officer of Ibtissam, or Smile, a philanthropic organization in Saudi Arabia that aims to eliminate modern-day slavery in the region. One of their first projects was to conduct an audit of human trafficking in Saudi Arabia. Working in cooperation with the Royal Family, and after months of strategic analysis and investigation, they realized that they had to dismantle long-held notions about the slavery while working within the regional framework. In this volatile region, life is often subject to market fluctuations and regional crises. As such, there is a transactional characteristic to business in both the traditional and underground economies. That notion can be particularly damaging in the industries that do not have natural accountability or ethics in place. Further human trafficking occurs outside of traditional societal norms and thus remains largely hidden. For that reason, much of Middle Eastern society does not understand that slavery is a marketplace and an industry. Realizing this, The Zovighian Partnership and Ibtissam work throughout the region to build intellectual capacity and disrupt the social behaviors that incentivize slavery. Her recent efforts have included supporting refugee and vulnerable host communities in Lebanon, and working closely with the Yazidi community in Iraq. Child marriage remains a tempting proposition for many poor families throughout the region. In Lebanon, a nation struggling due in part to an influx of Syrian refugees, some see dowries as a secondary source of income. The Zovighian Partnership and Ibtissam have collaborated with the Clinton Global Initiative and the Pilosio Foundation for Building for Peace, to build a temporary school for girls in Lebanon. They realize that it is not enough just to educate girls, but it is also essential to empower these girls to be breadwinners in their families. To do so, they aim to disrupt the dowry system that incentivizes child marriage in the region. They also hope the school will also serve to diversify the economy of the surrounding areas, as there will be a need to hire staff for the institution. But, as long as the war in Syria continues, it will continue to spur many of the social and medical traumas behind human trafficking and modern slavery of today’s Middle East. Lynn’s Hakeem Initiative targets this issue. The Hakeem Initiative gives children in warzones access to premium emergency medical care for life threatening diseases and injuries. Supporting capacity building of local hotspots and documenting meaningful developments in their medical database, the Hakeem Initiative offers medical consultation, emergency surgeries, and long-term treatments to the children most affected by conflict. The Zovighian Partnership and Ibtissam are fighting to eliminate modern-day slavery in the larger Middle East by examining the Islamic State’s (ISIS) use of sex-slavery and human trafficking, child brides sold at the borders of Lebanon and Jordan, the marketplaces demanded by the oil and gas industries in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and the medical necessities for victims of such longstanding conflicts.
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    For more informationon the Nexus Working Group on Human Trafficking & Modern Slavery visit TinyURL.com/NexusHTMS or follow us on Twitter & Instagram @NexusHTMS To sign up for our newsletter, visit TinyURL.com/HTMSSignUp To learn more about how you can get involved with our efforts, email Melissa Jane Kronfeld at MelissaK@NexusYouthSummit.org © The Nexus Youth Summit, 2016