Freedom Collaborative

We have spent the last few years designing and building a platform to connect the various stakeholders in the counter-trafficking movement. We started with the firm belief that justice ought to be a democratic endeavor, and that no single organization is able to address the complexity of trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor on their own. It requires a collaborative, cross-disciplinary approach.

In 2012 we released the Freedom Registry—a dynamic directory of registered organizations, agencies and institutions who update and manage their own profiles themselves.

Now, in 2014, we've just released a powerful new system called Freedom Collaborative. It encompasses the Registry and adds a few more tools to the picture.

A Social Resource Library

Building on the most innovative social technologies, we’ve crafted a beautiful, merit-based resource center to help power collaborative problem solving.

By simply logging in with a Facebook or Twitter account, all users are able to add their favorite counter-trafficking resources to the Library. Resource types include the latest research reports, local laws, scholarly journals, documentaries, multi-file toolkits, books, smart phone applications, etc. The open-access system is an ever-growing body of knowledge and is searchable by type, subject and location. Results show up in the order the community has rated them. For example: a search of “victim rehabilitation” displays all of the resources listed under that tag in the order of quality dictated by the community-at-large.

Individual Profiles & Tools

Advocates and experts in fighting human trafficking are able to create profiles, interact with the organizations and utilize the other tools.

We’ve built in the capacity for individuals to show which organization they work for (if they do). Organizations must confirm these indicated affiliations before they show up on an individual’s profile.

All users are able to create a general Advocate account type. Advocate accounts have full access to all of the tools and are able to register organizations and post resources to the Library. Potential volunteers can use Advocate accounts to find organizations in need of their services.

We've also created a Connectors account type for individuals interested in becoming listed points-of-connection for the movement. These are persons willing to meet and educate newcomers on human trafficking, and also help newcomers get plugged in to local volunteering positions.

Last but not least we've created a Specialists account type. Much of this issue’s essential know-how exists only in the heads of leading, on-the-ground, human trafficking experts. We’ve designed our system to give this ‘Specialist’ tier—be them practitioners, academics, policymakers, law enforcement, etc—a bit more weight in the user-voting of materials.

We'd love for you to head on over to the brand new platform to learn more and create an account!

Expanding the System

As we've alluded to in the past, we've been in the process of replicating the Freedom Registry in other regions of the the world. The process involves, first, identifying local-national organizations to sit on a Steering Committee representing multiple local provinces, states and a variety of disciplines and ideologies. This Steering Committee then collaborates through a stringent process of determining edits they'd like to see made to the Freedom Registry for their region — in order to tailor it to their local needs.

Our Freedom Registry team reviews the edits through several rounds of iteration. While all regional Freedom Registries will be slightly different from each other  — including language and good practice adjustments — the majority of all data will remain comparable. This convergence of information on the international level in turn facilitates organic growth of transnational referral networks!

The above image displays the countries we are currently involved with in replicatig the Freedom Registry.

Connecting the Layers

We've now created the framework for an international, dynamic, public registry of vetted organizations. But we see quite a bit more possibility left on the table.

There are many experts working on human trafficking across a vast range of fields and the natural question is "What are the best practices emerging?" and “What’s working and what’s not?” Until now there hasn't been an efficient mechanism for drawing this knowledge out of our cause leaders. We're hoping to change that.

We’re almost finished with a resource system that uses the power of proven social technologies to push the best answers to those questions to the top. For each subject, answers and comments are automatically & instantly shuffling in and out of the top positions in real time via a merit-based algorithm. All library users are able to rate both the library resources and each individual comment made on the resources.

This dynamic system enables the best solutions and insights to democratically rise to the forefront, and — for the first time ever — allows the counter trafficking movement to evolve and inform itself just as fast, if not faster, than the traffickers. This Library, along with many other tools will be released this coming December. To learn about this collection, please visit http://freedomcollaborative.org