Collective Liberty

There are over 40 million people trafficked for sex and labor across the world each year. In the U.S. hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children are trafficked every day from some of the most vulnerable populations including Native women, LGBTQ youth, and black and brown women.

After two years of research the most consistent obstacle cited to successfully serving survivors was isolation from potential partners, which derives from geography, staff changes, and lack of resources.

The solution is the Forging Freedom Portal. We have spent the past 18 months piloting a beta version that is now ready to launch and scale for all US service providers committed to culturally competent, trauma-informed support of survivors. The encrypted portal will allow providers to safely share best practices, contact information, and help survivors identify where and how they wish to receive services and revolutionize how we provide long-term care for survivors.

There are over 40 million people trafficked for sex and labor across the world each year. In 2017 in Texas there were 79,000 youth trafficked for sex. In the U.S. there were fewer than 800 federal prosecutions IN TOTAL that were initiated in 2017. If all 800 were in Texas that means less than 1% ever saw justice.

Why are there so few people held to account for profiting from the bodies of other human beings? One main reason is a lack of resources. There is currently no tool providing curated human-trafficking specific case data, no assistance for direct service providers to better identify and support victims, and if there is survivor support, it is typically not bespoke or tailored to the unique needs of disparate survivors.

Compounding this problem are the obstacles to working with other key partners. 

Collective Liberty staff know from firsthand experience working as direct service providers that it is almost impossible to know the very small number of organizations working in each state that are trauma-informed and culturally competent, and then even harder to know what services groups offer. This can leave victims feeling trapped and uncared for, and sometimes when organized criminal networks are involved it can put the victim and/or their family in danger.

The Forging Freedom Portal (or FFPortal) can provide a safe, encrypted platform for vetted service providers to share best practices, help safely connect survivors to culturally- and trauma-informed services, and connect with each other.

Human traffickers are a broad, interconnected network that harness technology, victim vulnerabilities and the ability to rely on, and learn from, fellow traffickers and connected systems. In order to break the networked and collaborative impact of traffickers we must have a comparably powerful network of organizations that can offer support, healing, and an alternative to the regular psychological manipulation and lies that traffickers use to control victims. Launching the FFPortal for Service Providers is the first step towards creating that type of impactful collaboration.

The national anti-trafficking focus on domestic minors - especially around sexual exploitation - is often prioritized at the expense of other vulnerable and underserved groups like adult victims, male victims, people who identify as members of LGBT communities, Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), labor trafficking victims, and undocumented foreign nationals. While we support better domestic-minor focused operations and services, our primary focus is on serving and empowering these other groups as well.

Currently, there is no organization connecting local NGOs on the ground to learn about their experiences in the field, and to adapt national best practices to meet the needs of these discrete survivor populations.  From providing data-driven intelligence support to law enforcement working to arrest traffickers, to training social service agencies in cultural-nuance and language access to support foreign national survivors, to connecting social service agencies and law enforcement to one another to ensure survivors are supported and experience minimal trauma in the criminal justice process - we are a central node of the nation’s human trafficking collaboration. 

Our staff and board have over 50 years of experience directly supporting survivors of human trafficking, extracting them from trafficking situations, arresting and prosecuting their traffickers, evaluating and reporting their suspicious financial activity, and combating trafficking networks across international borders with strong data-driven intelligence analysis. Our background navigating the very systems that need to integrate and collaborate in order to holistically support survivors of human trafficking while stopping their traffickers is our superpower. Most importantly - our work is for and guided by survivors, at the center of every step we take. We work directly with survivors of human trafficking throughout every layer of our anti-trafficking activity and ensure that the solutions we promote are representative of the best interests of survivors. 

Human traffickers are a broad, interconnected network that harnesses technology, victim vulnerabilities, and the ability to rely on, and learn from, fellow traffickers and connected systems. Since 2018 we have trained 8,000+ stakeholders, in collaboration with our network helped to arrest over 1,500 buyers and 1,000 traffickers, ensured 189 victims were identified and connected to trauma-informed services, and helped pass 61 laws at the state and local level to close critical loopholes. Despite COVID-19 disrupting resources and daily life we have seen a steady increase in positive impact and demand for our work.

In order to break the networked and collaborative impact of traffickers we must have a comparably powerful network of organizations that can offer support and healing. The first step in healing for a survivor is restoring their choice in how and where they receive services. We collaborate with 75 providers in over a dozen states, allowing us to provide these options for survivors. In one instance this network allowed us to connect a survivor in Mexico to the support they wanted to receive in California.

With a growing directory of over 2,000 providers we know that we can build out strong, nuanced networks that have this level of connectivity and cooperation available to ALL survivors, and our combination of survivor consultants and focus on smart, grassroots-empowered advocacy can achieve that.

To truly break the cycle of human trafficking, survivors need to receive comprehensive services with providers that are culturally competent, trauma-informed, and focused on the future (e.g. economic empowerment). Survivors are primarily from non-white communities and have diverse, intersectional backgrounds. To provide organizations with access to knowledge, create best practices, and a network of trusted partners requires relatively simple technology and has the ability to create incalculable healing and the breaking of cycles. Our project is the answer to the belief enshrined in the 13th amendment that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States.”

Collective Liberty is poised to move from pilot to growth stage. We have piloted our digital organizing tool in Texas and New England with feedback from initial users. We are now ready to scale this product throughout the South, Southwest, Mid-Atlantic, and California to create a strong network of providers throughout the country.

In November 2020 we launched the Human Trafficking Fusion Center, connecting anti-trafficking professionals from across the nation to the tools they need to stop traffickers. This includes cutting edge intelligence analysis, curated data, and networks of like-minded colleagues.

HTFusion transforms the current dynamic of uncoordinated reactive methods by combining and analyzing new and previously disparate datasets using subject matter expertise and AI technology to proactively identify previously unknown networks of human trafficking. In 2020 our focus was to disrupt networks’ ability to traffic humans and launder the proceeds, and to give enforcement agencies the tools and technology necessary to fight back.

As we move into 2021 we are replicating this model with robust, online resources that can reach a wide audience of survivors and service providers. This allows us to continue to empower groups and individuals that are frequently under-resourced and underserved and to elevate the marginalized voices of survivors with emerging best practices and survivor-informed tools. 

We bring local networks of survivors, law enforcement, and service providers together from across the nation to foster collaboration. There is currently no national effort to coordinate and empower this sort of collective, hyperlocal-but-national effort to prevent and end trafficking. 

We have 4 full-time staff members, a rotating group of about a half dozen pro bono volunteers and interns, and paid consulting faculty comprised of survivor leaders and community of practice experts.

Collective Liberty’s team is a deep bench of multi-disciplinary, anti-trafficking specific field experts. Our background is in navigating the very systems that need to integrate and collaborate in order to holistically support survivors of human trafficking while stopping their traffickers is a unique strength, including former LE and prosecutors, former direct service providers, and survivors. Our work is led by CEO Rochelle Keyhan, a former prosecutor in Philadelphia for six years, strategic leader on system change, and international stop slavery hero (Thomson Reuters Foundation 2018). Together the Collective Liberty team has a combined 50 years of experience in anti-trafficking and social impact work and lived experience as part of the various communities we work with. 

We work closely with sex and labor trafficking survivors across all areas of our work, from trainings, to outreach, law enforcement engagement, and survivor engagement. This ensures not only accuracy in our work, but also minimized trauma through the inclusion of survivor voices and experiences to guide our work while balancing stated survivor boundaries and autonomy. Survivor leaders are involved in our vetting process, approval of protocols and scripts, and have co-created our corporate survivor engagement policy for hiring, recruiting, and collaborating with survivors. Our survivor leader consultants are paid the federal maximum wage to advise our work and we ensure hiring is open and accessible to survivors for positions unrelated to their past, accounting for their lived experience as part of the professional experience measures of all position descriptions

Collective Liberty regularly assesses any operational or systemic barriers that may inhibit critical lived experiences from being present among staff and its board. This can include things like removing unnecessary requirements for advanced degrees or requiring work that is often underpaid (e.g. many non-profits in the service sector are below market rate). Instead we work to recruit those with design-thinking, lived experience, and the technical skills necessary for various roles (e.g. communications, training/facilitation, grassroots advocacy). We also dedicate resources, especially time and connections, to developing staff. Whether this means helping staff apply for, and receive, prestigious fellowships, attend regular workshops and readings, or even setting up informational interviews with staff and partners. We seek not only to be an amazing workplace but to be a launching pad for those who seek a better world for everyone in the United States.

Our team is also diverse and representative. Of our 14 dedicated board and staff, 43% are people of color and first generation immigrants, 72% are women (including our CEO and founding board chair), 43% identify as LGBT. We work closely with survivors, law enforcement, indigenous community members, and social service agencies to ensure that all of our solutions continue to be relevant and representative of the communities we are serving. And our staff are formerly OF those communities, bringing direct and relevant experience to every solution we implement. 

Of course, access to funding streams and potential investors is a critical reason for applying. But also access to the community of brilliant thinkers across issue areas is equally compelling to us. Some of our greatest successes have been in collaboration with people working on issues adjacent to human trafficking. Our passion for silo-busting extends to our own work as well. Collaborating with others who are working to move society toward their ideal vision of support for social structures and our fellow humans makes us all stronger. This is true because innovation and social progress is inspiring across issues, and also because human trafficking intersects with most social issues. Climate change, conflict, homelessness, and economic instability are all drivers of vulnerability that human traffickers prey upon. Racism, prejudice, and bias all impact our empathy towards, and support for, victims. The list of intersections is endless. For that reason - direct and open collaboration, sharing of best practices, and scaling of ideas across issue areas and sectors is vital for progress across all of our movements. And progress in all social movements is vital to ending human trafficking. Social progress is essential to our mission, and openness is essential to that progress.

We are very excited about the potential for mentorship and coaching, media exposure, and access to network of impact-minded leaders across industries and sectors who will be able to elevate and expand our work.

The biggest hurdle for non-profits is becoming known. Individual and sustained giving patterns indicate that people are more likely to give to established and known entities. We know that we are a groundbreaking organization that will permanently transform, and ultimately eradicate, the ability of trafficking to thrive in this country. In order to do this we need sustained capital and we need to grow our organization with strong, diverse team members and board members that can bring technical skills, as well as different experiences and viewpoints that are a vital part of our innovative and nuanced approaches to system change.

Additionally, since boards are not compensated for non-profits, it can be difficult to identify a consistent pipeline for a diverse, fresh board of directors who are dedicated to filling the roles and responsibilities of board membership. We are lucky to have a dedicated and passionate board, but for the long term health and maintenance of our governing board, a healthy pipeline of future members is vital.

Partnerships will be part of three key areas - security, data and tech, and partnership networks.

For security we would be interested in partnering with MIT, or with their recommendation, to test the encryption of our portal in order to ensure the information shared among providers is safe from ill intentioned actors.

For the partnership networks we are interested in partnering with those that can help spread our best practices and connect smaller, less well known providers AND are interested in innovative practices and, more or less, disrupting the field. This will include partners like the National Alliance for Safe Housing (NASH) which provides training and technical assistance to housing providers around the country. The majority of their network does not focus on trafficking but ensuring that all housing providers can spot and support trafficking survivors will be critical for future work.

Data and technology partners are also vital as the for profit technology space continues to innovate and increase tools for process efficiency -- tools in which governments do not typically invest. Collaborating for example with Thomson Reuters for access to public records information to streamline research and enhance our internal data would be a boon. Collaboration with Amazon or others well-versed in web-development and coding would improve our security features and increase capacity for user interfaces and usability of our services. Data Scientists could significantly enhance the accessibility of the data we have in structured and unstructured formats, as well as support retrieval of additional data.

As stated in our solution - There are over 40 million people trafficked for sex and labor across the world each year. In the U.S. hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children are trafficked every day, with over-representation from marginalized populations including Native women, LGBTQ youth, and black and brown women.

With such varied backgrounds of survivors, our social service response needs to be as varied and responsive to the unique needs of each survivor population. Far too often victims are treated as one homogenous blob with the traumatizing label “victim”. We have seen middle-age women from Guatemala told to find housing with teenage girls from the United States, subjected to things like curfew or mandatory “lights out” times. We have seen survivors struggle with language barriers, food barriers, financial, and transportation barriers which all add up to regular re-traumatization. And the direct service providers who provide support are often too busy struggling to simply complete day-to-day tasks to be that voice. 

This is where Collective Liberty steps in. After two years of field research we have learned that, sometimes the best answers lie in the simplest solutions. We do not necessarily need fancy apps or complicated technology to ensure fair and equitable treatment of survivors that are comprised of the most vulnerable people in our society. We just need to work together, listen to survivors, and share resources to meet them where they are at and support survivors in getting to where they want to be.