Support Survivors of Human Trafficking, Order Gifts!

Visit the Emacipation Networks' Made by Survivors Store by Clicking Here!

Today, right now, you can help end slavery directly by ordering holiday gifts from The Emancipation Network (TEN)! There are many gorgeous handicrafts to choose from in our online catalog: jewelry, clothing, wraps and scarves, stationary and journals, purses and bags and backpacks. Of of them made by hand, with loving care, by women and girls in our partner shelters around the world.

The TEN store is just a click away! Right here!

The Emancipation Network (TEN) helps end slavery by buying and selling handicraft products made by survivors of trafficking and girls at high risk for being trafficked. We are fighting slavery by providing economic alternatives.

Our profits go back into the purchase of more products or to fund rescue and trafficking prevention programs around the world. We are growing a sustainable business which provides ongoing opportunity and empowerment – not handouts – to survivors and high risk women.

Our ultimate goal is also to create a network of people who believe that slavery cannot be tolerated in our world. We need your voices too.

You can read here about some exciting progress TEN has helped initiate recently: Freedom Is Coming.

And here is an overview of how TEN is helping, every day, to end trafficking in human beings:

TEN helps fight human trafficking in 3 ways:

1) Providing Help to Survivors

When survivors escape or are rescued from slavery, they need a lot of support in order to reintegrate into society. Many families will not accept them back, and in some cases it is not safe for girls to live at home (if their families sold them in the first place). So for many girls, a shelter is the safest place for them to stay immediately after returning from their place of bondage.
Also, they can get services at a shelter, such as health care, HIV/AIDS treatment if needed, education, job training, and legal aid. These services would probably not be available if they lived at home. But no one wants to spend their whole life in a shelter. After a few years, most young women are ready to live independently, and want to find work. Finding work is difficult for anyone in depressed economies; it is more difficult for a trafficking survivor because of prejudice and limited education/literacy.

Handicraft programs offer these survivors a job, either long-term or short-term, that can give them the means to support themselves and live a meaningful, independent life. For those still living at the shelter, handicrafts programs provide therapeutical benefits, job training, literacy, social interaction, and a stipend for part-time work.

2) Preventing Trafficking of High-Risk Girls

TEN provides an economic alternative to prostitution for girls at high risk for being trafficked. We work with programs providing education and income-generating programs for girls who might otherwise be sold or tricked into prostitution. In one case, we provided funding for one of our partners to expand their handicrafts program to include mothers and the rest of the community.

Often a wage as little as a hundred dollars a year is enough to keep families from selling their daughters. Sadly, in some parts of the world, girls are not intrinsically valued. But when women become artisans, wage-earners, and business-owners, their status is greatly enhanced in the community. For example, one of our partner programs in Cambodia, AFESIP found that survivors where initially ostracized when they set up a workshop. But after several months of operation, they were accepted as contributing members of society.

What defines high risk? In some villages, there are almost no teen girls anywhere to be seen – all have been sold, or have gone voluntarily into prostitution for lack of other alternatives. In some cases, selling a daughter can make the difference between barely scraping by and complete destitution. In the worst cases, people have sold relatives or neighbors out of greed, to buy a new roof or TV set. The more girls are sold in a given area, the more this practice becomes socially accepted, and in the worst cases, girls are even bred for prostitution, or groomed from early childhood for this purpose. The death of a parent or the trafficking of another sibling puts a girl at particularly high risk for being trafficked herself. Low caste, refugee status, and poverty are also risk factors.

3) Supporting the Anti-Trafficking work of our Overseas Partners

Our handicraft purchases provide much-needed revenue to the anti-trafficking agencies where survivors and high risk girls live and work. The income generated through these programs goes to pay the artisans, and also helps pay for long-term care, education, medical and psychological services, legal aid, public awareness programs, trafficking prevention, and more.