United to End Human Trafficking

To create a truly effective movement, the Center is improving research, influencing policy, increasing philanthropy, filling gaps, engaging corporate stakeholders, promoting diversity and survivor inclusion, and advancing public awareness. We are innovating where needed, uplifting good work already being done, and utilizing the United Way network to scale the anti-trafficking movement.

Impact Areas

• Collective Impact - Community Response

  Human trafficking is a complex issue that requires a multi-faceted and coordinated approach. No single organization, corporation, or government can solve this systemic injustice alone, but united we can end human trafficking. Through our Community Impact Program, the Center is building a comprehensive community response.

  • Leveraging the power of the global United Way network, we are developing a comprehensive approach to combatting human trafficking at the community level. Through pilot programs in four US cities- Atlanta, GA, Louisville, KY, Las Vegas, NV and Brownsville, TX- United Ways are utilizing the best practices of the anti-trafficking movement to localize community-based programs.
  
  
  • Working with our United Ways on the African continent,we have completed a landscape analysis in four African countries and plan soon to launch our unique collective impact approach on the continent in the coming year.
  
  
  • Partnering with survivor leaders, UPS, and local United Ways, we are demonstrating how public education catalyzes change through virtual workshops and an online library of resources.
  
  
  • Collaborating with other anti-trafficking organizations,we are raising awareness of human trafficking and engaging new audiences in the movement.
• Catalyzing Action - Movement Building

  Over the course of the last 20 years, anti-trafficking organizations have accomplished remarkable progress, but there is still more to be done. Through our policy and advocacy work in partnership with others in the field, we are building a stronger anti-trafficking movement.

  • Conducting groundbreaking research, we are working with the United Nations International Labor Organization to determine the actual costs of eradicating forced labor at scale. To assist political actors committed to stepping up levels of engagement in the fight against forced labor in a targeted, evidence-driven way, our research will determine how resources need to be scaled, domestically and internationally, to make the biggest impact on eradication.
  
  
  • Supporting coalitions at the local, national, and international level, we are bringing together diverse stakeholders to strengthen public policy and unite action. These include statewide coalitions in the US, Business Leadership Forums, the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST), the Survivor Alliance World Congress, and the international Freedom from Slavery Forum.
• Diversity, Equity, and Survivor Leadership

  Human trafficking can happen to anyone, but it most often happens to people of color and members of groups who suffer systemic discrimination and marginalization because of their sex, gender, ethnicity, tribe, caste, religion, sexual orientation, and more. Lack of access to essentials such as education, health care, and financial stability are root causes that limit opportunity, exacerbate systemic injustices, and create vulnerabilities to trafficking. Engagement and leadership by those with lived experience of the issue is essential to preventing and combatting human trafficking. Through partnerships with survivor and community leaders, we are building on the expertise of the most impacted populations.

  • Collaborating with Polaris, we are conducting the first-ever U.S. National Survivor Study to better understand demographics of trafficking survivors in the United States, document human trafficking’s effects from a survivor perspective and to aggregate survivor advice on how to combat traffickers.
  
  
  • Partnering with Survivor Alliance, we are elevating survivor leadership, creating opportunities for survivor participation at anti-trafficking conferences, developing a fellowship program to integrate survivors throughout the anti-trafficking sector, and sponsoring the first-ever Survivor Alliance World Congress.
  
  
  • Aligning the anti-trafficking field with the diversity, equity, and inclusion field, we are ensuring that the communities most at risk of trafficking are at the forefront of shaping strategies intended to protect them.

Our Partners

Identifying, stopping and preventing human trafficking is not a one solution fits all problem. Hundreds of organizations- across the United States- and around the world are doing heroic work to combat trafficking. But only UNITED can we end it.