At the Freedom Fund, we know that the most effective interventions to end modern slavery centre the knowledge and expertise of people with lived experience. We are passionate about investing in the leadership of survivors and bringing their perspectives to the forefront of the anti-slavery movement. And we believe that the Freedom Fund has a critical role to play in shifting power and resources to survivor leaders.

Given this conviction, we were delighted to announce yesterday a new commitment to survivor leadership at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York – the same annual event at which the Freedom Fund was launched in 2013. We’ll be massively expanding our Survivor Leadership Fund, the first of its kind in the anti-slavery movement, to $10 million by 2030. The Fund will provide at least 300 survivor-led organisations worldwide with trust-based, unrestricted grants, allowing them to thrive and expand their community-based interventions as they choose.

When presenting our commitment yesterday, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton said: “Survivors uniquely support fellow survivors. And they shed light on the underlying systems of exploitation…Through this commitment, the Freedom Fund is sending a bold message about the urgency of ending modern slavery and about the importance of trust-based philanthropy…And [to] make clear that survivor-led organisations are worthy of our investment and our trust.”

We are very pleased to see this initiative receiving high profile endorsement. But with 50 million people now in modern slavery, we recognise it will take more than pledges and unrestricted grants to effectively shift power to survivor leaders. However, our hope is that this commitment, along with our Freedom Rising leadership program and our commitment to employing more survivors, encourages others to make similar investments. Together we can and must take bold steps to ensure that survivor leaders from around the world are at the forefront of the movement and shaping where we go from here.

We invite you to join us in putting trust into action – investing in survivor leaders so they can drive the change required to bring modern slavery to an end. Please reach out to me if you would like to join our committed partners – Walk Free and Stardust Fund – who have each pledged $1 million to our Survivor Leadership Fund, or to find out more about our efforts to invest in survivor leadership.

Read our full press release here.

Watch Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton announce at the Clinton Global Initiative our commitment to expand the Survivor Leadership Fund.