FREEST’s Journey from Mission to Action
This guest article was written by Veronica McDaniel. Veronica is the founder and CEO of FREEST, which prevents human trafficking through education by empowering students to take action.
Veronica McDaniel, FREEST Founder and CEO for CNN International Freedom Day
It Doesn’t Happen Here
Last Fall, Anna Ellington, my Board Chair, and I presented at the East Asia Regional Council of Schools Leadership Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, to a room filled with dynamic school administrative leaders. Our goal was to galvanize an international school community movement to prevent human trafficking by increasing awareness and encouraging action.
Instead of organizing a movement, we found ourselves focused on educating. Throughout the event, I repeatedly heard statements like, “We don’t have human trafficking in our country,” “It doesn’t happen here,” and “It isn’t an issue at our international schools.” The ultimate question was, “Is this something we should be worried about in our international school community?”
I found myself spelling out the definition of human trafficking and going over people's misconceptions about the issue. And then I found myself doing it again. And again. And again. In almost every conversation, the educator didn’t fully realize what human trafficking was, much less how to explain and engage with students on such a critical but tricky subject. Together, we learned that there was a lack of knowledge around basic concepts, which inherently hinders awareness and activation in our schools.
As founder and Executive Director of FREEST, a non-profit organization confronting human trafficking by activating students and educators worldwide, I knew the urgency of combatting human trafficking, but I struggled with how to gather and use data to communicate that urgency to educators worldwide or how to explain the tools we can all use to stop this crime from happening to our most vulnerable population-kids.
In our first year as an organization, we gained a lot of clarity and confidence in finding the right strategy to bridge our vision to our key stakeholders and ultimately to action. Our collaboration with Sowen was instrumental in helping us understand and articulate who we are, who we are for, who is around us, and how to connect meaningfully to our relevant markets of stakeholders and audiences. Most importantly, we learned to use data and research to identify the gaps and develop strategies to fill the void between our vision and the realities we saw. During that conference in Bangkok, we saw firsthand what we hypothesized and explored as missing in the market during our Discovery sessions.
I want to share my journey so that other non-profit organizations, especially in the anti-human trafficking space, can benefit from our approach and maybe even implement some of our best practices.
Start with the Basic Definitions
You need a standard definition and a common language to connect your key stakeholders to your mission. For us at the Bangkok conference, it meant starting with: What is human trafficking? Modern slavery, trafficking in persons, and human trafficking- these are all umbrella terms. The U.S. Department of Justice describes human trafficking as a crime involving compelling or coercing a person to provide labor or services or to engage in commercial sex acts. The coercion can be subtle or overt, physical or psychological. Exploitation of a minor for commercial sex is human trafficking, regardless of whether any form of force, fraud, or coercion was used.
14 years old is the average age a child is first victimized by CSEC (Street Grace, 2024) The US Department of Justice defines Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) as a range of crimes and activities involving the sexual abuse or exploitation of a child for the financial benefit of any person or in exchange for anything of value (including monetary and non-monetary benefits) given or received by any person.
Place Data at the Core of Your Activities
The anti-human trafficking field is a relatively new one; thus, statistics describing the problem are often difficult to agree upon in this space, but regardless of what numbers we are looking at, they are egregious. Disturbed and then inspired by these numbers, FREEST was formed. We knew we needed to spring into action, connect students globally, raise awareness about human trafficking, and help educators access tools to combat the issue from within schools. Still, we did not have a focused enough plan. That’s where Sowen used these numbers to give us the throughline we needed to create and measure our impact.
12 to 14 years old: This is the average age of someone involved in human trafficking.
Forced Marriage: 12 million girls are married before they reach the age of 18 every year. According to UNICEF 1 in every 5 girls is married or in a union before reaching the age of 18. In low-income economies, that number doubles.
Forced Child Labor: 3.3 million children are in situations of forced labor on any given day according to the 2021 Global Estimates of Modern Slavery Report by Walk Free, the International Labor Organization (ILO), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Due to data constraints, these numbers may be low. A total of 1.7 million children are in commercial sexual exploitation, constituting over half of all children in forced labor. 1.3 million are in forced labor exploitation, and the remaining 0.32 million in forced labor are in state-imposed forced labor.
$150,000,000,000: That’s 150 Billion. With a B. Which is the size of the forced labor and sex trafficking industry per year, around the globe.
42%: This is the percentage of trafficking victims who were forced into trafficking by a member of their own family.
39%: This is the percentage of trafficking victims who were recruited by an intimate partner or through a forced marriage arrangement.
It Goes Even Deeper
Sextortion and sexploitation are on the rise. This is also a form of human trafficking due to the nature of force, fraud, or coercion in obtaining some type of labor or sex act. The grooming process includes targeting the victim, gaining their trust, meeting the victim’s needs, isolating them from family and friends, exploiting them, and then maintaining control through manipulation and threats.
There is an increase in threats online to kids who have either been lured online by someone posing as a peer when in fact, it is an adult on the other end.
It’s Closer Than You Think
Through games such as Fortnight and Roblox and apps such as Discord, used by 150 million people, children are increasingly vulnerable to traffickers looking for any weakness to prey on and lure in a child. Social media and websites are used to recruit people through fake job ads, something we need to prepare our kids for before they look for summer jobs and work outside of school. The latest form of labor trafficking is occurring through “Pig Butchering,” which, as outlined in Wired Magazine, Scammers cold-contact people via SMS texting or other social media, dating, and communication platforms. Often, they’ll text, “Hi, it was fun meeting up last week.” If the recipient responds by saying, “You’ve got the wrong number,” the scammer responds with a friendly comment and starts up a conversation, then introduces the idea that they have been making a lot of money in cryptocurrency investing and suggests the target consider getting involved while they can and so on.
Find Your True North
At FREEST our mission is to confront human trafficking by activating students and educators worldwide. We not only educate and spread awareness about what human trafficking looks like today, but we also empower educators to use the tools to talk about these issues and inspire students to share this information with their peers. Hence, they know how to spot the signs, driving effective, easy, and viral activation toward prevention. We equip educators with the tools to recognize changes and red flags in our students and our kids need to feel empowered to speak up to their peers if they notice something going on. The numbers highlighted above are enough to show any school that there is a problem worth addressing.
By creating year-round programming at schools through embedding information into the curriculum, bringing in curriculum such as 3Strands Global Foundation’s PROTECT, creating student-led groups, and taking part in activities such as CNN’s #MyFreedomDay, for example, we can share the signs of what grooming looks like and openly share what we are learning about misconceptions, current trends, and tactics used by exploiters. Students need to take action and vocalize. Increasing awareness and student agency is where our priorities must be as we navigate this digital era and strive to make an impact in protecting our children.
Measure Your Impact
How do we measure success? Sowen challenged us to critically evaluate how we would measure impact - keeping that at the core of everything they do and guiding us to use data to measure success.
We devised a three-tiered approach because our challenge was, “How do you measure prevention if you can’t prove something did not happen because of your work?” Using data and research to support our claim that people need tools to fight human trafficking within a school, we developed really SMART goals to achieve our goals. Through analysis and deep dive through workshops led by Sowen at FREEST we identified what made us unique and honed our mission, vision, and value proposition. The result is our Solution:
A replicable framework that can be used by international schools around the globe that raises awareness and drives the activation of a network.
At the core of this framework will be the Whole School approach which will provide every student group with age-appropriate tools and resources that enable them to act on their newly acquired knowledge about Human Trafficking.
The Whole School approach will use a variety of delivery channels: in-person, online, social media, and with partners.
Now that You Know, Get Involved.
Spread awareness. Share what you learn about human trafficking.
Find out what your local schools are doing to address this issue. Help increase their awareness and inspire educators and students to take action against human trafficking.
Change behavior by getting involved in local awareness movements and volunteerism and learning more about ethical consumerism and how to report.
Take action. You can write letters to lawmakers and companies that are not adhering to ethical practices or simply being inactive; get involved in awareness campaigns such as CNN Freedom Project’s #MyFreedomDay, Dressember, Department of Homeland Security’s Blue Campaign; sign petitions with organizations like Freedom United, advocate with Street Grace, and reach out to us directly for ideas and guidance of how to embed this work into schools worldwide. Share what you learned here today with your community. Report what you see!
To report suspected trafficking, The Homeland Security Investigations Tip Line runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day at 1-866-347-2423, and the National Human Trafficking Hotline 1-888-373-7888.
Societal change can happen. A communal response is needed, and if we are going to curb this human rights issue, we need our young people to get informed, be involved, talk to their peers, and utilize their voices within their school communities.
How will you take action while using your strengths to be part of this change?