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:
On April 11, the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office) announced that the governments of the U.S. and the Philippines had signed a Child Protection Compact: a multi-year plan to increase prevention, protection and prosecution of perpetrators of cybersex trafficking of children. The TIP Office will provide $3.5 million over two to four years, and the government of the Philippines committed $800,000.
One of my first major projects at IJM was contributing to the team tasked with supporting our founder and CEO, Gary Haugen, as he prepared to take the TED stage and tell the world why we must stop everyday violence if we want to make a difference in the work of development. Two years and one-and-a-half million views later, another call to action in compassion has sounded from that red, global platform in the form of a live-streamed video address from Pope Francis.
In a culture where there are so many different initiatives, causes and hot topics for people to be passionate about, it is hard for movements to ever break through the surrounding ‘noise’ to be heard in a way that can produce change. The only causes that will be successfully be heard and remembered are the ones that have the power to unify the voices of their constituents.