Introducing: Survivors Connect

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Survivors Connect

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Nov 28, 2011, 12:29:08 PM11/28/11

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Dear LSF,

I have been given the great privilege of introducing my non-profit, Survivors Connect to LSF this month! Below is a summary of our work, and I have also attached a PDF version to this message. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on our work!

Before you read the summary below, I thought I'd first briefly mention where we are in our organizational development. We are a 2 year old, 501c3 fiscally-sponsored organization in California. Our sponsorship will be ending shortly and we are considering either finding a new fiscal sponsor, or joining forces with a like-minded organization. We operate much like a pseudo-consultancy, where our NGO partners identify us (rather than the other way around) for training and program development opportunities. Where funding is available (often we co-apply), we start training programs. Other than that, we are an all-volunteer led organization trying to bring the world of ICT to the anti-trafficking movement!

Organizational Statement

Survivors Connect is an organization dedicated to advancing grassroots anti-trafficking service networks in under-served and vulnerable communities using innovative and appropriate information and communication technology (ICT) tools. We leverage these tools in various ways for data-mapping, crowdsourcing, SMS-reporting and monitoring programs and helplines. Our mission is to empower survivors and their respective stakeholders by advocating for community voices and networking them to create more effective responses to modern-day slavery and human trafficking using the power of ICT technology.

How we do it?

Develop Products: We follow ICT4D trends and showcase latest technologies that can significantly enhance and add value to existing anti-trafficking movements. We develop training kits and alerts for anti-trafficking organizations so they know what tools exist. We are eventually moving towards creating high quality products, programs and software that are tailor made for our partners.
Increase Capacity: Assist local groups by increasing their capacity to address protection, prosecution and prevention efforts. This includes all of our technology training kits and usage modules, child identification programs, traffick watch groups and more. We partner with existing NGOs who wish to receive personalized training on tech tools, and teach best practices.
Raise awareness: About the techniques and tools, thereby increase the demand for similar services through partnerships and best-practices advocacy.

Some of our current projects include:

The Survivors Quilt: The mission of The Survivor’s Quilt is to raise awareness about modern-day slavery and to honor the survival of slaves globally. The Survivor’s Quilt provides survivors with a creative medium of expression, healing and a space to directly participate in their own global awareness movement. Artwork has been digitized and turned into a global archive, featured in various museums such as the Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles as well as the Museum of London, UK.
Freedom Datamap – Freedom DataMap is a collaborative mapping project to gather information about human trafficking and efforts to achieve freedom from slavery globally. It is a space to share critical information about trafficking and anti-trafficking activity globally, promote transparency in our efforts, learn best practices, and understand current challenges and needs in our global effort. Uses Ushahidi as its core CMS, and the Survivors Connect team has added on various additional functions such as multiple point plotting and password protection.
Abolition Classroom – Abolition Classroom is an e-learning/digital classroom for anyone to learn about human trafficking and modern-day slavery, giving people opportunities to learn perspectives and best practices from advocates all around the world.
Access to Justice Africa Legal Database – A visual map and database rating all African countries based on legal instruments to combat various forms of human trafficking and labor exploitation. (In partnership with Free Generation International)
iSpot Fair Trade – A platform for crowdsourcing information about where fair trade goods are sold in the US & Canada. (In Partnership with Fair Trade Resource Network)
Ayiti SMS Sekou “Help” – A SMS based helpline, reporting and monitoring system for victims of violence and exploitation. (In Partnership with KOFAVIV & FNJD)
SMS: Traffick Watch - This program consists of committees of people who identify and discretely report crime, empower people to work with police to deter crime, reduce fear and aid them with evidence collection, investigation and networking with nearby groups. (In partnership with EPAWA, Internews, Ghana)
SMS: Advice Line & Monitor - This program allows organizations to maintain database of constituent mobile numbers and vulnerable population identification tags. Organizations can send blast messages about safe migration, human trafficking prevention, as well as recent cases of exploitation in the community (In Partnership with RaFH, Vietnam, Justice for my Sister, Guatemala).
160 Fair Labor – is a South African social enterprise, working to connect informal sector workers with access to job opportunities and labor rights information via web & mobile phones. Supported by Oxford Emerge Social Venture Lab Fellowship.

All of our projects are replicable and scalable on a local or horizontal level. Most anti-human trafficking programs try to tackle the problem on a large, national level, which in some cases can be difficult or futile. Instead, Survivors Connect will work to crate several scattered SMS networks, or advice and monitors serving a few thousand people, rather than a centrally managed platform serving hundreds of thousands. We work to expand on a horizontal level because grassroots organizations all services and support and very different ways. A horizontal approach will embrace the energies and expertise of grassroots organizations and allow them to gather data that makes sense to their operation, which they have full ownership over. These entities also tend to be trusted more than national services. Additionally, large-scale technology programs tend to alienate grassroots voices as decision makers and have large funding requirements decision.

We use an iterative and open-source approach to the expansion and replication of Survivors Connect’s models. We raise awareness to groups and allow organizations to decide if they want to try the tools. Models are driven, improved, and expanded by users. We also are flexible in our tools, as indicated in all of our various modules. We are committed to consistently and thoroughly evaluating our projects based on our local and technical partners. We gather ethnographic data and will soon publish case studies with the aim of improving their effectiveness and profiling best practices in anti TIP work. We believe our approach meets the needs of the anti-slavery movement NOW by LOCALIZING efforts and movements to address slavery where it is most present. We must work to address lack of awareness and directly attack the impunity that enables traffickers to flourish, in order to end slavery in our lifetime.

Contact: Aashika Damodar; adam...@survivorsconnect.org, www.survivorsconnect.org