The Current
Advocacy News + Updates
TOP STORY
This spring, advocates across the nation rallied together to speak up for the 40 million people trapped in slavery (Global Slavery Index, 2018). As a movement, thousands of you leveraged the power of digital tools to raise your voices to your members of Congress through tweets, emails and online petitions. Together, we urged Congress to ensure that the State Department’s Program to End Modern Slavery and the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Office are fully funded in the 2020 appropriations bill. Here is a breakdown of the momentum you’ve built:
Earlier this fall, we invited you to write letters of support to our client, Joseph, an innocent man who has been incarcerated and has awaited trial in Nairobi, Kenya, since December 2010.
When Marta Sears' young daughter came to her with a big dream of raising funds for the poor, she writes, I started panicking. I didn't want to squelch my daughter's compassionate heart and willingness to dream big, but I didnt want to drain our savings account either. And I couldnt see a lemonade stand bringing in $2,000. As I shared the dilemma with my husband, we remembered something that IJM president Gary Haugen said when he was telling the story of the feeding of the five thousand.
Earlier this month, the Government Relations team had the wonderful experience of traveling to Chennai, India, to work with the Government Relations team in our office there. It was an extraordinarily gratifying and wonderful experience for our whole team -- for most of the US-based team, this was their first opportunity to see IJM's work in the field directly! The Chennai team is doing some incredible work to help create structural transformation in the public justice system by working with local government leaders to address forced labor slavery.