Dear Modern-day Abolitionist,

I believe it’s important for you to have a clear picture of how Not For Sale, as a social enterprise, works to create new futures. I have just completed a six-month overview of our accomplishments as an agency over the first half of 2011.

These achievements represent only the highlights of our activities. I think you’ll agree that our staff has scaled great heights to reach this level of capacity after only 4.5 years since our founding.

So far in 2011…..

Not For Sale Academy – Equipped over 825 passionate individuals for smart activism internationally

• Trained 235 individuals in Seoul, Korea at our mobile Academy.
• Trained 115 individuals in Sydney, Australia at our mobile Academy
• Trained 366 individuals at mobile Academies in Florida, Washington state, and Colorado
• Trained 129 individuals for week-long Academy courses in San Francisco

NFS Enterprises – Launched Our First Company

• We brought in eight independent angel investors to fund our first Montara Circle-generated enterprise, Headwaters Natural Products, and recruited a five-member executive team, led by CEO Larry Wu, a former product development senior director at Starbucks.
• We are working to form a second enterprise that focuses on sourcing commodities and ethical factory production. We are working closely with G-iii and the Gap to explore new product development and enhanced options for their respective supply chains.
• In June the NFS Freedom Store made a corporate sale of 7000 “freedom scarves” produced by former slaves in India.

South Africa – National Leadership

• Not For Sale South Africa received a significant honor this past quarter when our agency was incorporated into the national “rapid response protocol for human trafficking.” Not For Sale is thereby the first and only NGO that is sanctioned to work with law enforcement in the country of South Africa to assist in the identification and protection of human trafficking victims.
• In early July 2011, the NFS South Africa team uncovered two brothels that were highly suspect trafficking young girls to Capetown from China. The NFS team passed the information to law enforcement who took immediate action. When raiding both houses, they discovered that the brothels were run by two Chinese women who had been previously arrested on trafficking charges in February, 2011. They were back in business and exploiting more girls. The Not For Sale team sat through seven hours of interviews with four girls, trying to determine the situation. One of girls opened up, and we were able to place her a safe house. The circumstances of the other three girls, unfortunately, remained cloudy and they were deported back to China.

Thailand – Finished New Dorm

• During the past quarter, NFS Thailand has supported 122 formerly exploited children at our children’s village. Of those beneficiaries, 95 of those children were the victims of forced sexual work – and the breakdown of those exploited according to gender: 75% female and 25% male. Perhaps the most shocking data point: 66% of those children who found refuge at our village are 15 years or under. Not For Sale completed in May the construction of a dorm for 108 children. In addition, the $1.9 million of medical supplies that NFS delivered in 2009 continues to support over 348 stateless people – mostly children – in Northern Thailand.

Romania – Intervention in over 40 Cases

• So far in 2011, NFS Romania team has supported over 43 individuals who have been trafficked to Romania from such distant origins as Afghanistan, Cameroon, Brazil, and Tunisia. Most of these individuals were destined for forced labor in Western Europe. One recent case from a native Romanian: Maria, 16 years old, lived in an orphanage for most of her early years after being abandoned by her birth mother. As a young teenager, she was sold into prostitution – deceived by a friend – and the traffickers attempted to send her to Western Europe. As she was being “broken in” with Romanian clients, Maria confided in one “john” that she was a minor and was being held against her will. The john helped her escape and she is now receiving shelter and support from NFS Romania – shelter, going to school, job training classes – as she prepares to testify against her trafficker.

Peru – Going Upstream to the Amazon

• In the first six months of 2011, NFS Peru provided support to 171 individuals who were victims of sexual and labor exploitation. At Veronica’s House, 26 individuals, including 12 toddlers and infants, receive housing and counseling services. At the Surf Tribe home, 15 youth between the ages of eight and nineteen receive shelter and school placement. NFS Peru initiated several enterprise projects in the Amazon – along the Madre del Dios tributary – and made a compact with seven indigenous tribes who inhabit a 55-square mile region. The individuals in this region are highly vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation, and NFS Peru aims to partner with the local peoples to reach more economic and political stability.

Cambodia – Providing Jobs for Victims

• In 2011 NFS Cambodia provided training and job placements to 8 women who were survivors of exploitation. We hired a new country director for Cambodia, Boreth Sun, a veteran of international NGO development projects. He will be evaluating how NFS can enhance and expand its operation in Cambodia in the near future.

 

The Netherlands – Breaking the Trade in Europe

• In July 2011 we launched a new international project in Amsterdam, hiring Dutch citizen Toos Heemskerk-Schep, a 20-year veteran of social service in Amsterdam’s red light district, to be our first Netherlands director. We also transferred Saskia Wishart, who had done an extraordinary job launching our NFS South Africa office, to be the coordinator of our pan-European operations. The next Montara Circle will take place in Amsterdam on September 22-23, and the focus will be on creating new enterprise options for young girls trapped in the Netherlands commercial sex industry.

International – Building a Strong Grassroots Constituency

• In 2011 we have run specific programs for the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faith communities.
• In Feb 2011, Freedom Sunday, our Christian faith initiative, engaged nearly 2500 churches from 50 countries…and NFS founders led a 182-nation broadcast event: Dave Batstone from Korea, Mark Wexler from Uganda, and Kique Bazan from Peru.
• We now have 28 regional state directors across the USA and Canada.
• In the first half of 2011, our North American regional directors held 465 events, personally touching nearly 40,000 individuals.

• Those events included:
• 7,527 Students
• 29 members of the media
• 16,052 members of the faith community
• 1,454 Advocacy and policy professionals
• 13,968 members of the general population

Piloting a New Advocacy Model – Zero Tolerance Community

• NFS sponsored its first Zero Tolerance Community event in San Mateo County, California. The following social players participated: The police of chief and seven sheriffs for the county, the district attorney for the county, Congressional representative for the region Jackie Speier, the Department of Justice law enforcement representative for Northern California, and key leaders of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church (the largest church in the region).

 

Japan, Korea, Australia – New International Advocacy Operations

• In the summer of 2011 we opened up new offices with a country director in Japan, Korea and Australia, respectively. These country operations will work closely with NFS headquarters to implement our programs in the Asia Pacific region. We will host our first Asia Pacific Forum in Chiang Mai on November 2-3, 2011, bringing together anti-slavery leaders from government, business, universities and NGOs from throughout Asia and Australia.

 

Free2Work – Innovative Technology for Supply Chain Transparency

Nearly 20,000 individuals have downloaded the Free2Work app for shopping in 2011

We have worked to complete version 2.0 of the app, with bar scanning capability (Sept 1 launch)

We are engaged with two major companies – one a global electronics leader and another a global apparel leader – to re-evaluate and improve their supply chains

The US State Department has made a provisional offer to continue funding our Free2Work research for 2012.

Communications – Global Reach

• We now message nearly 250,000 each week across our social media platforms, including 44,000 in our Underground e-newsletter. That represents nearly a 33% subscriber increase since January 2011
• We have been featured three times on CNN International in 2011, with several more CNN stories to come
• Al Jazeera will feature us heavily in their eight-part documentary on human trafficking broadcasting in the Fall of 2011.
• I’m looking forward to the rest of 2011.

 

All my best,

Dave