Free the Slaves

Front-line anti-slavery programs fts and its partner organizations use a community-based model to help communities resist forced and bonded labor and sex trafficking of adults and children in india, nepal, haiti, ghana, and senegal. We provide the structure and training for collective action by Slaves and former Slaves to demand freedom, payment of wages, and protection from violence. We organize leaders to educate their communities about slavery, to take action to rescue their family members and neighbors who are in slavery, and to work to develop new systems that address key vulnerabilities within the community. These vulnerabilities may include ensuring the availability of education for children, vocational projects for communities, or access to affordable health care and legal representation. We engage local, regional and national officials to press for enforcement and strengthening of antislavery laws. We support lawyers who press for justice for victims. We support operation of shelters for survivors of trafficking and slavery. We educate and prepare people who are migrating abroad for work on ways to avoid the tricks of traffickers, and we educate children to prevent their enslavement later in life.

Community liberation initiative - fts works to catalyze a civil society movement against slavery by facilitating the sharing of best practices and lessons learned related to community-based anti-slavery approaches, and working with organizations that already work at a community level in slavery hot spots, and focusing on slavery-proofing entire communities rather than rescuing individuals,creating sustained community resistance and resilience it trains and coaches field staff, using the fts cl toolkit, measuring the impact of this work through its monitoring and evaluation processes.

Communications and advocacy fts increases awareness of slavery and our methods to eradicate it, and fosters public engagement in policy advocacy, through mass media, online outreach, video production, speaking engagements, conferences, public events, college chapters and faith community outreach. Fts trains front-line partner organizations and others to strengthen communications and media relations skills to improve outreach to slavery victims, vulnerable populations and religious, traditional and civic leaders.

Monitoring, learning & evaluation fts rigorously assesses the impact, effectiveness, relevance, efficacy and sustainability of our community- based approach to ending slavery using well-defined indicators, we track accomplishments of our grassroots partners in work planning, quarterly reporting, training and capacity building to improve accountability and learning mle contributes to the development of strong proposals and accurate reporting to funders, and supports continual learning and increased knowledge for the organization and the anti-slavery movement