Friday 1 August 2014

The Slave Next Door: Corporate Spend - Ending Slavery

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The Slave Next Door: Corporate Spend - Ending Slavery
While slavery is known for being throughout the worlds written history, many seem to believe that slavery is an extinct practice in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, human trafficking still prospers. Anthropologist David A. Feingold reported "The ILO estimates the whole illicit profits produced by trafficked forced laborers in one year to be just short of $32 billion". As stated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, approximately 600,000 to 800,000 people are annually taken from their homes and forced into various types of slave labor, including labor and human trafficking; between 14,500 and 17,500 of those victims are trafficked into the U.S. borders.

Ending human trafficking is a daunting task; and may be difficult to figure out where to begin. Therefore, Polaris Project developed a seminar called the Technical Assistance, Training and Strategic Planning Program. This program has been designed by Polaris Project to help companies similar to Swift Transportation to contribute the reduction of human trafficking through U.S. ground borders.

In association with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of State, Polaris Project designed the TTASP program to help identify, assist, and report victims of human trafficking and to raise awareness of modern-day slavery in the United States. The TTASP program is the proposal from Polaris Project to Swift Transportation. Polaris Project arrange seminars at the workplace of the targeted company. The main goal of PP will be to help reduce human trafficking, as specified earlier. Thus, the seminar will be held for the employer and their employees. The seminar will describe in detail of what the Swift employees (truck drivers) should analyze while diving and truck stops that are frequenting.

Trafficked victims can be identified in several ways. The victim is typically accompanied by a controlling person and doesn't speak on their own behalf. They lack money, official identifications, travel documents, and control over personal schedule. The victims are usually held by force in an inhabitable place. In most cases of labor slavery, they most likely be work at the same area they reside. As for human exploitation, they are observed by traffickers or masters. Trafficking victims can never leave jobs. Another indicator, is trafficking victims are always depressed, frightened, excessively submissive, and have bruises. In general, victims never free to participate in any part of daily life routine and are always in a health status that is bad; every aspect of their life is controlled.

The Remedy: Corporate Spend

Corporate Spend is a social enterprise established with the sole intent of generating financial resources to fund not-for-profit partner organisations that are ending slavery. Corporate Spend connects SME's and multinationals with suppliers of services and corporate goods, agreeing to direct 5%-40% of purchases to the Corporate Spend fund. Corporate Spend distributes 80% of the profits from this fund to NFP's that are working to eliminate the global criminal industry of human trafficking and modern day slavery.

This solution enables businesses to have a significant social impact through the course of everyday spending which they need to allocate regardless of charitable intent. In contributing through goods and services expenditure, no additional budget lines are required to provide NFP's with the funds they need to release them from fundraising efforts to focus on the work they exist to do.

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