Changing The World Starts At The Roots: How Grassroots Organizations Can Help

Blog after blog, article after article, you can find the facts of how sex trafficking and slavery is still in our communities today. You can find endless stories and many calls to action. However, how attainable are these goals? If so much is a cultural shift, how is it that people our age are supposed to aid these girls who seem thousands of miles away? In the book, a local Indian man states that "prostitution is inevitable. There has always been prostitution in every country" (24). While the book focused on particularly sex trafficking, much of the information I came across was about sex trafficking and an issue that was barely mentioned, which was people trafficked for slavery purposes. Without stopping both, we have no hope in stopping either and both of those begin at the grassroots level.

As we have discussed many times in class, the world must not rely primarily on the west for pressure to improve their own situations. However, it has been proven many times throughout the world that global attention and global pressure can make a change. This is the philosophy behind Free 2 Work . Anyone can go on their website or download their app and instantly be able to look up if their favorite companies are less than ethical. The organization has been featured on Forbes as a top company who has used social media in order to gain a huge position of power and has been cited to create such a large impact that even the mega corporation, Amazon, changed their treatment of workers in China.

One of the best things about Free 2 Work is that they are not only accessible, but work in conjunction with many other organizations that are aimed to stop human trafficking. Not For Sale is a partner organization that works to raise awareness of human trafficking and turn things around for the girls and boys involved. They provide ways for students, companies, and entire communities to change the view of human trafficking and create healthy alternatives. You can raise awareness, raise money and even report incidences using Slavery Map, a website that brings the issue to home by allowing you to view incidences that happen in your, and surrounding, communities. While Half the Sky boasts that you can help women "worldwide", organizations like Free 2 Work and Not For Sale work to help within the community, bringing the issue to you. There is hope and it starts with you.