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The Freedom Collaborative and Freedom Registry Story

The vision of this project is to see the global anti-trafficking movement increase its capacity to collaborate, develop inter-country and cross-border referral mechanisms and learn from one another on evidence-based practices and emerging issues.

Evidenced-based practice was drawn from many years of implementing a grassroots level coalition in Cambodia working together to end trafficking and slavery.

Chab Dai’s Freedom Registry project began in 2009. While contextualizing the organization’s ethos and vision in the development of Chab Dai USA, we carried out research among the anti-trafficking movement on the gaps that existed.

The result was a need for a registry with vetted organisations  that could be used as a mapping tool and searchable referral mechanism.

This was initially piloted in 2011 among  U.S. stakeholders, and subsequently launched to the public in March 2012.

Global Expansion

In December 2013,  the full platform, including the Freedom Registry, was launched internationally and integrated with the additional tools of Freedom Library, Freedom News and Freedom Dialogues as the all-encompassing Freedom Collaborative.

As of today, this is how the community of anti-trafficking and anti-slavery movement are using the platform:

Community:

1,007 Registered Individual Users from

135 Countries  who have registered

926 Organisations from diverse program focus within the 4 P's

Protection: 574

Prevention:399

Partnership:137

Prosecution: 42

Spending 2,775 total hours on the platform

Library:

2,087 User-added studies, reports, journal articles, laws, articles, books and videos. from

245 Countries and territories, in

29 Languages

Expanding into the Future

After years of working with our partners, building grassroots organisations and developing Freedom Collaborative, we still see so much potential for growth that will see the platform expand from its current form into an interactive, macro-level tool that helps us address human trafficking and slavery from a multi-sectoral perspective – working not only in victim referral mechanisms but also developing tools to suppress the environment that allows and enables slavery to flourish in this world.

Watch this space…

Does Collaboration Help?: Asking the Hard Questions

At Chab Dai we have been facilitating collaboration and coordination for years, but is that truly enough? Are we really making a difference?

John Kania and Mark Kramer wrote an article discussing collective impact, a difference made through broad cross-sector coordination, which is exactly what Chab Dai aims for. In this paper they cover three case studies: an education initiative, a conservation project and an effort to reduce childhood obesity, all of these are seen as astounding collaborative successes. They found five commonalities between the efforts, all of which are interesting and pretty simple:

1. Common Agenda

The Millennium Development
Goals, do we need these for
human trafficking? 

2. Shared Measurement System
3. Mutually Reinforcing Activities
4. Continuous Communication
5. A Backbone Support Organization

Now let's assess if Chab Dai, as a coalition, has these characteristics.

1. Common Agenda: Yes! In the most general sense, we are committed to addressing issues of abuse, exploitation and trafficking by working together and providing opportunities for learning.

2. Shared Measurement System: We've developed Chab Dai Charter and Freedom Registry, both of which measure organizational capacity across organizations – Charter through a shared assessment tool and Freedom Registry through documentation of national good practices.

What about shared impact measurement? These are a start, but globally I'd advocate for some type of Millennium Development Goals system for trafficking to get everyone on the same page for at least the first 3 of these 5 aspects. An ambitious goal, but certainly possible.

3. Mutually Reinforcing Activities: Absolutely; coordination and referrals are our specialty.

4. Continuous Communication: In Cambodian culture, collectivism thrives in a formal and informal sense. We achieve this not only through forums, member meetings and emails, but it's the very core of our coalition and Freedom Collaborative project.

5. Backbone Support Organization: We've actually been expanding more and more from coordination support into capacity-building support for our local Khmer member organizations. Freedom Collaborative aims to be a backbone tool for the global movement.

Kevin Bales says only .0043 percent of the global population is affected by human trafficking. That's .0043 percent too much, but it does make the problem seem surmountable. This is something we can eradicate. If, then, we are indeed using a model that is proven to work, why are we still addressing trafficking? Can we move on to another issue?

Well let's look back at those case studies. The education initiative was able to show success in 34 of 53 indicators, which is great but still only a 64% percent success rate. An education initiative, perhaps shouldn't see a D grade as success.  

The conservation project was able to protect and restore 1,000 acres and 27 species are now thriving. However, this took 15 years and included perhaps one of the most powerful partners around, the U.S. Navy's 1,000 acres is also a tiny fraction of the millions of acres of land under threat around the world.

The childhood obesity reduction effort was able, over it's first year, to reduce "approximately one pound of weight gain over 8 months for an 8-year-old child." The effort itself said this result "may seem small."

Now, the conclusion to draw from this is not that collaboration isn't effective or that these case studies are not as successful as they're made out to be. The case studies, and please check them out for yourself, are absolutely impressive and are certainly much more effective than the sum of each stakeholder working independently.

The lesson here is that the work of collaboration addressing any issue is incredibly difficult, and the Chab Dai Coalition is actually doing quite well and more importantly collaboration can make a difference if it's done right. For us, collaboration is difficult in general, which is further compounded by the complexity of trafficking, which is then compounded even further by a Cambodian context with present corruption and lack of resources.

Going up against this, Chab Dai is not just doing well, we are doing really well. Chab Dai, as a previous blog post has mentioned, is a model for countries that are much more developed and are less corrupt than the Kingdom of Wonder, including, from our experience, countries like the U.S. and Canada. If you want further evidence, please check the December 2012 evaluation of our coalition. 

We have seen tremendous growth in our collaborative efforts with other organizations and have witnessed changed lives; empowered women, men and children; educated responses; sustainable opportunities and freedom for thousands. And it has taken the collaboration of NGOs, professionals, practitioners, students, volunteers, the Khmer community and international efforts to get us here. We hope to see more people engage in collective impact in this effort to fight human trafficking. 

The Learning Approach

By Luke Weatherson

My job did not exist 10 years ago and if it did when I applied for university, I was certainly unaware of it. In the most general sense, graduating with a degree in Social Work provided me with the skills to do a few things very well in the context in which they were needed. Equally as important, attaining a degree taught me the concept of a learning approach, which entails the mindset to always learn and gives you a perspective on how to learn and understand new concepts, operations and people. 

Currently, as the Freedom Registry’s Expansion Coordinator, I support the expansion of our interactive stakeholder database, our learning community and anti-human trafficking commons.  I am in situations I could not have anticipated back in my university days and the learning approach has accompanied me this entire journey, enabling me to articulate, digest and deeply understand my situations and experiences.

My experience in the anti-trafficking sector actually began on less of a learning curve within the theoretical construct of a learning approach but eventually I implemented the learning approach by questioning each new thing on the premise of how it functions without prior knowledge or skill set to handle and assess the situation. 

The quick international growth of Freedom Registry reinforced this learning approach, as we often have to jump between national contexts daily which requires a learning approach. For example, it is necessary to understand the nature of trafficking in Singapore or the role of a Nepali network in fightight against trafficking within their own cultural context and requires an open interpretation and essentially "beginner" eyes, to find the relations in between the static and (dis)connections.

Through our work at Chab Dai, we also see that we are on a learning curve as well, where the most important skill we use is this learning approach.  We see it in our organizational development, through adapting to new circumstances and being proactive to the changes we can anticipate. I’m confident that our members see themselves in a similar light as well.

The learning approach is simple, it’s an attitude that I do not have all the answers and I want to know as much as I can.  At the heart is problem solving, because when we discover the consequences or outcomes from our procedures and orientations, and through reflection on our past, we can construct our own understanding. Learning then becomes an active process that demands change within the learner.   This is then achieved through the activities that we engage in, the outcomes that are produced and finally, a reflection that brings a deep learning curve within ourselves. Applying it is even simpler and you are probably already using. It’s just a matter of focusing and being open to the myriad of possibilities that arise in a situation and taking action. 

TechCamp Comes to Phnom Penh: Bringing the issue of Human Trafficking to the Tech World

By Luke Weatherson

I was very excited to present at Tech Camp Phnom Penh as it was the first time Freedom Registry Cambodia was to be presented to a broad range of stakeholders. I was hoping to meet with a few key stakeholders to further discuss the project, garner some feedback and maybe a little buzz.

#TechCampGlobal are global events that organize stakeholders to develop innovative strategies and create tools using technology. These particular TechCamp’s focus is to be a platform to harness technology to fight the battle against human trafficking.  I couldn’t ask for a more perfect venue introduce Freedom Registry to stakeholders.

Tech Camp format was to connect influential NGOs with digital experts in areas such as mapping, mobile, voice, data collection, and social media awareness to create real time solutions. As Freedom Registry is applied technology the question was how would it be received, would stakeholders see it as a solution to the issues they’re facing, would technology experts see it as effective?  Remember again in attendance was world class technologist from all over the world and anti-trafficking experts with years of experience, including two TIP Report Heroes.

I first presented Freedom Registry  in 5 minute speed geeking sessions and then in 30 minute breakout discussion. Camp attendees listened intently and asked engaging questions and you could see they like the idea. I was approached for the remainder of the camp by participants wanting to learn more about Freedom Registry. Questions like “when is it coming to Cambodia?’ or Will it be available in the Philippines?” were common.  3 of the presentations of the real time solutions generated by participants mentioned Freedom Registry as tool they would use.  I was astounded by how the trafficking community embraced the idea and how eager they were for it’s launch.

Check out our previous blog on Freedom Registry's New Tools.