We’ve just completed our 2013 year-end review, and the results are both impressive and inspiring. In partnership with local organizations around the globe, we helped free more people from slavery last year than ever before. Here are the numbers from our frontline work in six trafficking hot spot countries:
- 3,127 people freed from slavery
- 18,465 villagers educated on how to protect their families from traffickers
- 1,157 village and neighborhood groups supported to protect their communities from slavery
- 1,518 government officials trained on how to more effectively stop slavery
- 105 traffickers and slaveholders now facing legal action
Beneath these statistics are the stories of lives that you helped change through your support of Free the Slaves: a mother reunited with her trafficked daughter in Nepal, young girls returning to normalcy in a sex slavery survivor shelter in India, young boys in Ghana rescued off rickety fishing boats, and the transformation of a village in Haiti, where one resident said, “We were in obscurity, now we are in the light.”
Free the Slaves was also very active in 2013 advocating for government and business policies that help defeat slavery. One remarkable achievement: reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection and Recovery Act, which governs the U.S. response to human trafficking. Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee Senator Patrick Leahy commended Free the Slaves Programs Director Karen Stauss for her personal contribution to the reauthorization.
As a supporter of Free the Slaves, these are your accomplishments, too. With your help, we will make an even bigger difference in 2014.
