How Can I Support Trafficking Survivors Through Shopping?

From Our Founder

What I Saw That Made Me Act

For a decade I lived in China, and I saw what the vulnerability to trafficking looks like long before I had a name for it. I saw orphanages full of little girls, a reflection of what I now call the devaluation of the girl child. I also saw extreme poverty, families so desperate that they sent children off to adults in the big city because they could not afford to raise them. I met children who had been given to what we would call bosses or traffickers. Those two forces, cultural devaluation and poverty, are the conditions that make exploitation possible.

The turning point came from an undercover video shot in Cambodia, in which a reporter asked for the youngest girls he could find. I realized the problem was much larger than the children I had met in China, and I wanted to be part of the solution.

The Misconception: Buying Is Not the Same as Helping

So many brands talk about fighting a cause while they are really selling you a product with a give-back attached. Buy this item for $50, and a percentage goes to a cause. The problem is that almost no one talks about the supply chain. Who made the product, and under what conditions?

I learned this the hard way with a scarf. A friend of mine died of breast cancer, and her mother brought a catalog to the office where I worked. Every purchase, it promised, supported breast cancer research. I wanted a cure, and I wanted to support it, so I bought the scarf and paid more than I normally would. Later, I noticed the fine print: 0.05% of proceeds went to research. That was painful enough. But I also started thinking about the factories where clothing like that is made. The Rana Plaza collapse had just happened when I noticed the fine print, and it showed the world what can happen when workers are trapped in unsafe buildings for poverty wages. I did not know where my scarf was made, and I was disappointed that the company never said who made it. That silence means the scarf could have been made in exactly those conditions.

A brand that advertises a small give-back while hiding its supply chain can end up part of the problem. Poverty wages and unsafe work create the vulnerability that traffickers exploit.

What Trafficking Actually Does to People

Trafficking means someone controls or manipulates a person so that another person profits from their work or participation. It includes labor trafficking, sex trafficking, and organ trafficking. More recently, many organizations have included forced marriage under the same umbrella, because those women are cheated, coerced, and manipulated into working for someone else's benefit.

A sweatshop is not trafficking in the same way, but it shares the same core failure. Workers are paid poverty wages, forced into brutal hours, and denied the benefits a good job provides. That is the ground on which exploitation grows.

Why I Created the Term "Dignified Employment"

When I started Made for Freedom, people kept telling me that the goal was a living wage. I pushed back. A living wage is only an amount of money, and traffickers often make very good money. I would not call that dignified. I needed a term that described what a job should provide: a living wage, a safe place to work, and the dignity and pride that come from doing good work. Those three things together became dignified employment. As far as I know, no one was using the phrase before I started Made for Freedom, and now other organizations are adopting it.

A Real Story of Dignified Employment

One of the women who works at a center I visited in India had been sold into marriage by a poor family. Her husband and mother-in-law treated her like a servant. One day, her mother-in-law took money from men in the community and let them have her for an afternoon, without her knowledge. Afterward, she was ashamed and afraid of how her family and husband would respond. Her uncle offered her a fresh start in another city, and instead he sold her to a brothel.

She was trapped there for years until she heard about a nearby center where she could learn to read, write, and sew. She left the brothel and found work. As she healed and grew comfortable with her freedom, she began reaching out to other women in the brothels and red-light districts nearby. She has been employed by that center for years and has become one of its advocates. Eventually, she inherited land from her family and built a workshop there to provide dignified employment for more survivors.

That is the whole arc of what dignified employment makes possible: from being sold, to learning a skill, to leading others out.

How Your Purchase Can Make a Difference

Every product Made for Freedom sells has a story behind it, and that is why the way you support us matters. There are three ways to come alongside this work:

• Employ: Buy products made by survivors and people coming out of marginalized situations. Every purchase provides work.
• Educate: Fund a scholarship through Made for Freedom Foundation so survivors can move forward in life.
• Advocate: Watch our training, The 5 Key Components of Exploitation, so you can speak up and act more effectively. When you wear or use these products, you become an advocate too.

If you're not sure where to start, take the Dignity Survey. It helps you find the most practical way to get involved, whether that is buying, funding education, or learning and advocating.

Shopping for yourself or for others can be a way to support survivors, but only when the work behind the product is transparent and dignified. Ask who made it. Look for the story. Then choose the way you want to be part of the solution.