Freedom Business Alliance

Freedom Business Alliance is at a pivotal point. In 2019 we saw our member businesses, on mission to provide life-giving work to survivors of human trafficking, were fighting for their own survival. Instead of hiring the best and brightest, they hire the traumatized and uneducated, those in need of employment to prevent the tragic cycle of re-trafficking experienced by 80% of survivors. This just might be one of the most challenging forms of social business to undertake. Yet to solve the global crisis of human trafficking, these businesses need a pathway to overcome these challenges to growth and scale. In October 2019 FBA hired me as their first Executive Director to lead the charge. We have identified AWARENESS as a top strategic priority. I believe The Elevate Prize can take our awareness efforts and amplify them, ultimately inspiring millions to take part in the challenging but rewarding work of creating opportunity for the most vulnerable. During the abolition movement of the 18th century, compassionate businessmen used cutting-edge communications tactics of their day to change the hearts and minds of people to make slavery illegal. Today we seek to change people’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviors to drive traffickers out of business.

My vision is for 10 million to learn of the work of Freedom Business and for 100,000 to become engaged. From those, 1000 will launch new businesses that provide life-giving work to survivors of human trafficking and those at risk. I see more than 100,000 lives transformed as a result, with a model of compassionate business sending a ripple into the marketplace that brings an end to selling people for profit. My goal is to remove the barriers to growth facing pioneering Freedom Business leaders in the field. Chief among those barriers is a lack of public awareness and understanding about the existence of human trafficking and the role of job creation in its eradication. Hired as Executive Director in October 2019, I spent my first year in leadership helping our small organization and its member businesses navigate the pandemic. I’ve now developed strategies and programs that will put their work on the map and expand the territory of freedom around the world. My next frontier is making Freedom Business famous. I am currently writing a book on the topic, and look forward to traveling around the world calling people to join us in this transformational work.

Freedom Business Alliance is solving the global crisis of human trafficking, specifically the tragic cycle of re-trafficking experienced by survivors. Today there are more than 40 million people trapped in human trafficking. As awareness of this crisis rises, so do efforts at rescue and restoration. Yet 80% of those rescued fall victim to re-trafficking if no dignified, supportive employment opportunity is provided. The challenges that make survivors vulnerable to the ploys of traffickers, including lack of education and the resulting financial desperation, are made worse by the trauma experienced at the hands of traffickers. Survivors need jobs intentionally designed within trauma-informed, healing-centered workplaces. Freedom Business Alliance is a network of businesses offering these kinds of life-giving jobs to survivors and those at high risk of being trafficking. We have over 100 member businesses operating in over 28 countries around the world. All have been started with the primary intention of sustaining the hard-won freedom of the most vulnerable among us. FBA fulfills three vital roles in the industry: 1) Connecting all stakeholders, 2) Coordinating collective impact, and 3) Facilitating the removal of barriers to growth and scale no single Freedom Business can remove on its own.

We are taking a new and disruptive approach to solving the global crisis of human trafficking. Most have thought modern slavery could be solved by securing survivors’ physical freedom. Therefore it has long been thought that rescue was the solution. Those working in the anti-trafficking field then identified that survivors often suffer from debilitating post-traumatic stress and other psychosocial challenges that prevent successful reintegration into society. Therefore restoration efforts were developed. But even with these post-rescue interventions, we see alarming rates of re-trafficking when no supportive employment opportunities exist. Freedom Business practitioners identified the insight that human trafficking at its root is an economic problem that requires an economic solution. Human trafficking is after all a vast and often well-coordinated multinational industry, earning billions in profit from the exploitation and sale of people. Forced labor in the private economy generates$150 billion in illegal profits per year. Of that US $99 billion comes from commercial sexual exploitation. This issue simply cannot be solved through charity alone. To disrupt trafficking we must disrupt the economic roots of the issue: extreme poverty and lack of access to life-giving work.

Ghanaian diplomat and former Secretary-General of the UN Kofi Annan introduced the issue of human trafficking to the UN General Assembly in 2000 by stating, “I believe the trafficking of persons, particularly women and children, for forced and exploitative labor, especially for sexual exploitation, is one of the most egregious violations of human rights which the United Nations now confronts.” Over twenty years later this egregious violation not only still exists, but has increased. People are being sold as property, their bodies ravaged night after night for profit. This must stop. Economic freedom and opportunity have now been identified as a vital, preventative solution. Freedom Business Alliance provides the strategy and support that creates a global, coordinated strike at the heart of this egregious practice. We are effective because we are a listening, learning, and responsive organization, creating solutions informed by our member businesses laboring on the frontlines of freedom. While we started as an organization on mission to connect stakeholders through global convening, through those connections we were called to do more. Each of our programs are formed at every step through input from our Members in order to maximize participation and effectiveness at a global scale