Three amazing women will be honored this year as recipients of the Fourth Annual Free the Slaves Freedom Awards. Two are former slaves who have dedicated their lives to helping others to freedom. One is a former governmental official who has shown the world how to combat slavery at a national level.
 Frederick Douglass Award Winner Timea Nagy was a TV producer in Hungary, looking to raise quick funds for a show. She answered an ad to work temporarily in Canada. But when she arrived, she learned she had been tricked. After many months as a sex slave, she escaped and founded Walk With Me, a group that rescues sex trafficking victims, provides immediate support to survivors, and trains Canadian cops to recognize and respond to sex slavery. |
 William Wilberforce Award Winner Ruth Vilela was Brazil’s secretary of labor inspection, and created the world’s most innovative anti-slavery SWAT squad. The unit raids farms and sweatshops, freeing thousands of slaves each year. She also created the Dirty List, which quarantines companies where slavery is found. And she created the National Pact, prompting major companies to pledge that they will root-out slavery in their product supply chains. |
 Frederick Douglass Award Winner Josefa Condori Quispe left her small village in Peru at age 9 to work as a maid in Lima. After spending most of her childhood and adolescence as a house slave, she managed to get an education and escape the life of domestic servitude. She founded the group Yanapanakusun to fight the root causes of slavery in Peru. She runs a residential shelter for young slavery survivors, providing medical treatment, education, psychological support and legal aid. |
All three winners will receive assistance from Free the Slaves to support their work. They will visit the U.S. to inspire others in the anti-slavery movement. We’ll tell you more about these amazing women, and have more details about the Fourth Annual Freedom Award events later this year.
Kate Rosin, who assists Free the Slaves at our Washington, D.C. headquarters and frequently contributes to this blog, recently wrote a beautiful article for SGI Quarterly, about 2010 Freedom Award winner Tina Frundt. Here’s an excerpt:
Tina Frundt was 13 when she first met her trafficker. On her way to a neighborhood store in Chicago one day, a young man–maybe 15 years her senior–struck up a conversation. In the weeks and months that followed, this seemingly affable character, known on the street as “Tiger,” won her affections, listening sympathetically as she recounted her teenage woes, driving her to school and showering her with gifts. “Little did I know,” she reflects today, “he was planting the seeds of manipulation. It did not matter what my parents said to me, they did not understand me, and he was the only one that ‰got me.’” On her 14th birthday, Tiger, who had in fact been monitoring Tina’s behavior closely for a month prior to approaching her, successfully lured her to Ohio.
Read the rest of this article at the SGI website here!
James Kofi Annan on the red carpet at the 2008 Freedom Awards
2008 Frederick Douglass Freedom Award winner James Kofi Annan’s continued humanitarian work has garnered yet another prestigious award! It was announced last month that James is the 2011 recipient of a Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice award. The award is given to people under the age of 40 who “demonstrate leadership in their fields and who show creativity, commitment, and extraordinary accomplishment in effective positive social change.”
James was sold into slavery at the age of 6 and forced into dangerous work on fishing boats in Ghana for seven years. He finally escaped, taught himself to read, got a college education, and found a small school to help child slavery survivors. In 2003, he founded Challenging Heights, a Ghanaian NGO dedicated to rescuing, rehabilitating and educating child survivors of slavery. The Freedom Awards helped James expand his anti-slavery work—to date, he has helped more than 75 children to freedom with a new rescue boat and rehabilitation center.
The Grinnell prize awards him $100,000, which will no doubt help Challenging Heights bring even more children out of slavery.
Last year, James spoke at TEDXGrandValley, an independently organized TED event. If you haven’t already, check out his speech below:
Find out more about James and Challenging Heights here. Or go to the Challenging Heights website here.
Editor’s note: This post is written by musician and activist Jason Mraz. In 2010, Jason traveled to Ghana with Free the Slaves to visit our frontline partner organizations. He also performed at the most recent Freedom Awards. Watch the awards in their entirety here. Stay up to date with the latest Jason Mraz news here.
Jason Mraz on Lake Volta, Ghana, during his 2010 visit to Free the Slaves' frontline partner organizations.
This last year of my life has been incredible; the kind of life that envelops you all of a sudden and echoes “be careful what you wish for.” Having come off of a two year world tour I wanted to remain in the flow of public service so at the dawn of 2010 I decided to flex my activist muscles and see what else was possible in the world. One of the first places I went was Free The Slaves.
The Freedom Awards of 2009 was the initial invitation. The heroes acknowledged that evening made saving lives and improving the quality of life on earth look fun and possible. I was enrolled. A half a year later I’d find myself on a rescue boat in central Ghana patrolling Lake Volta and its surrounding villages, in search of children who were being held captive and forced to work without the opportunity to be what they were: children.
Outside of a day-care center in my hometown of Virginia, I had never worked with kids. I had also never been on a waterway that was operated largely by children. Only a short flight away from coastal USA, I couldn’t believe the harsh, dangerous conditions. I was given a first hand look at a very real problem that exists all over the world; one that is largely caused by poverty, a difference between the haves and the have-nots. I was also given the opportunity to play with children who had just been rescued and were back in school and on the playground. The difference in the eyes and spirit to those kids compared to those who were working on the lake was one of total transformation. I became a walking jungle gym to their rambunctious energies. We sang songs. We kicked and passed the ball. We ate together. We laughed and danced together. And that’s all anyone deserves to have. No matter what age, we all deserve the right to be a child, free to laugh at our victories and mistakes.
A year later I’m still active and learning to use my voice in a way that demonstrates fighting for freedom as a fun and exciting way to spend your time. The tireless workers and the kids at the Challenging Heights shelter in Ghana are my fuel and for them I’ve written a few songs that people around the world are already singing. One being, Rescue, a song that reminds us everybody deserves to be heard, and for those who don’t think they are, we’re on our way to help. It’s by acknowledging heroes that others will be inspired to be heroes as well. That’s what got me going and it’s what I look forward to doing more of.
Veero was a bonded labor slave in Pakistan. Now, she dedicates her life to helping others to freedom.
Free the Slaves’ U.K. partner Anti-Slavery International estimates there are over 1.8 million people living in slavery in Pakistan. Canadian NGO SOS Children’s Villages recently sited an Asian Human Rights Commission report highlighting the enslavement of Pakistani children: “a possible 20,000″ disabled children forced to work as beggars; children trafficked to the United Arab Emirates.
Free the Slaves has seen slavery in Pakistan first-hand, when we honored Veero, a survivor of bonded labor, with the Frederick Douglass Freedom Award in 2009.
Last month, a breakthrough of sorts happened in Pakistan, when the country’s Minister for the Interior, Rehman Malik “admitted” to the National Assembly that the government remains “unable to fully control the menace of human trafficking” within its borders.
Since 2009, thousands of people have been arrested in Pakistan for human trafficking. But an estimated 40,000 people pass through the Torkham border, leading into Afghanistan, without “logging in and out.”
In neighboring India, it is estimated that millions of people live in slavery. Bonded labor is rampant in many parts of the sub-continent. Recently, CNN covered the groundbreaking anti-slavery work of Free the Slaves and our frontline partners in India. (FTS’ Free a Village Build a Movement campaign creates sustainable, generational change by eradicating the root causes of slavery—and helping survivors become economically self-sufficient, and vigilant against traffickers.)
In response to CNN’s coverage of FTS’ anti-slavery work, India’s Labor Minister Prabhat Chaturvedi gave an interview saying that there was no slavery in India. He refused to use the term “slavery” to describe the phenomena of millions of men, women and children laboring—sometimes for generations—to pay off debts.
Watch: Debate Swirls Around the “S” World
Despite Chaturvedi’s denial, debt bondage is recognized as a form of slavery by the United Nations. As with all kinds of slavery, it comes with violence—the threat of it, and the actualization of it. The aforementioned Veero, a survivor of bonded labor, told Free the Slaves:
“We were treated like animals. Anyone who refused [to work] was beaten up. The slaveholders hired men armed with guns and axes, and they guarded us the entire day.”
Veero’s courage to walk away from her enslavement was sparked when the slaveholder wanted to use her daughter for sex. She escaped, and walked in the dead of night to the nearest town. The police would not help her at first. So she staged a three-day sit-in. Eventually, the police relented, and helped free her entire family.
Watch: Pakistan: From Slave to Abolitionist: One Woman’s Story
It’s important for those in the anti-slavery movement to let the world know that slavery can be eradicated. Alerting the public that slavery still exists is not enough. We must show the way to a world where all are free.
This is why Free the Slaves celebrates courageous heroes who fight slavery every day. Each year artists, actors, business and political leaders, musicians, abolitionists and anyone who loves freedom, gather for the Free the Slaves Freedom Awards ceremony.
The awards are open to slavery survivors who are now helping others, and to individuals whose leadership has made a lasting impact on the global effort to eradicate human trafficking, forced labor and all forms of modern-day slavery.
The Freedom Awards celebrate heroes of the anti-slavery movement from around the world by shining a spotlight on successful, sustainable anti-slavery work. Winners receive cash prizes to continue and expand their work. Previous winners have come from Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, and the U.S.
NEW VIDEO: See how inspiring the awards ceremony can be! Highlights from 2008-10.
Awardees will be flown to Los Angeles for an inspirational ceremony that honors the vision and courage of slavery survivors, community-based organizations, individual leaders and extraordinary volunteers—all bringing slaves to freedom.
Nominate your hero. (Or nominate yourself—that’s okay, too.) For more information and to apply for the awards visit: www.freetheslaves.net/FreedomAwardsNominations.
Still from the documentary "Slaves of the Lake" chronicling the rehabilitation of two former child slaves in Ghana.
2008 Freedom Award winner James Kofi Annan is a survivor of childhood slavery. He was enslaved in Ghana’s fishing industry, forced to work in hazardous conditions on Lake Volta, beaten and subdued, given little to no compensation.
See video of James Kofi Annan rescuing a child from slavery in Ghana.
Annan was able to escape. He went to school and embarked on a successful business career. But he was compelled to go back to Lake Volta to face the trauma of his past. He now dedicates his life to rescuing other child slaves. By doing so, he says, he is “correcting the injustice” that was done to him. Annan started Challenging Heights to rehabilitate rescued child slaves by offering counseling, support, and education. For Annan, access to education was the key to his emancipation. He wants to pass this on to the children he rescues. By going to school, these children have a chance to “recover from trauma and regain hope for the future.”
Keep up to date with Challenging Heights: follow their blog here!
The video above is a short documentary, “Slaves of the Lake,” produced by British cable network Community Channel. It follows two former fishing slaves rescued by Challenging Heights, and chronicles the boys struggles as they try to re-integrate into lives of freedom. Often, the real challenges of emancipation happen after an enslaved person is rescued. The road to recovery can be a long and treacherous one. True and lasting freedom comes from holistic, community-based solutions—as the documentary above illustrates.
Go here to learn more about Free the Slaves‘ guiding principals.
Your donations help us continue our work. Go here to learn how you can help Free the Slaves eradicate slavery in our lifetime!
The beautiful Shamere McKenzie, an American survivor of modern-day slavery, presenting the 2010 Fredrick Douglass Freedom Award to mentor and fellow slavery survivor Tina Frundt.
Last weekend, Halogen TV premiered the 2010 Freedom Awards. We live tweeted and watched the broadcast along with the rest of you—it was just as inspiring and exciting to relive as it was to experience first hand. (I got to see what I looked like on camera, as I accepted my Zimmerman Fellowship—that part was not so fun. But I was once again moved to tears watching2010 award winners JEEVIKA, Roger Plant, Tina Frundt and 2008 winner James Kofi Annan stand on stage and speak about freedom.)
If you missed it, you can now watch the show at your leisure, because here it is, below, in its entirety! Scroll down for the footage from the Freedom Rocks, the anti-slavery movement’s best after party featuring Jason Mraz, the Makepeace Brothers, Luc and the Lovingtons, and Ghanaian reggae superstar, and current NAACP Image Award nominee Rocky Dawuni.
Here’s the trailer for the Freedom Awards, which premiered last night on Halogen TV. If you missed it, don’t fret! It’s airing again tonight at 8pm ET.
We’re live tweeting for the world premier of the 2010 Freedom Awards on Halogen TV, Saturday, January 29, 8pm ET.
Take part in Halogen’s online raffle for a chance to win an Abolitionist Prize Pack—featuring goodies from Free the Slaves and other anti-slavery organizations!
The Freedom Awards is being aired as part of a block of programming dedicated to the anti-slavery movement. Slavery Sucks: A Call to Freedom begins at 6pm ET, and will include the documentary Call+Response, and Halogen’s own original series on sex trafficking, ‘Tainted Love.’ To find out broadcast availability in your area, go to Halogen TV’s Channel Finder. Or, watch it online at HalogenTV.com.
And check back here to take part in our live tweeting session! Join the conversation—and help end slavery.
