Partner: ASK India

Project Title: Building a Safe Labor Migration Ecosystem in Source Communities in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar

Award Amount: $2,086,519

Project Location: Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India

Project Description: The goal of this initiative is to build a safe and secure labour migration ecosystem for aspiring, in-service, and returnee migrants. The Association for Stimulating Know-How (ASK) is working towards empowering migrants and their families as well as offering migrant services through the Migrant Resource Center, in order to reduce source-side causes of vulnerability. In addition, ASK is also working with Mitrata Inclusive Financial Services, to deliver financial health services and enhance financial literacy among migrants.

Partner: HAART Kenya

Project Title: No Longer a Victim: Empowering Survivors of Labor Trafficking in Kenya

Award Amount: $420,847

Project Location: Kenya

Project Description: To reduce vulnerabilities to trafficking and re-trafficking, HAART is providing rehabilitation and reintegration services to human trafficking survivors; engaging the private-sector to provide training and employment for survivors and vulnerable youth; and building the capacity of CSOs to prevent and support cases of labor trafficking.

Partner: Blas F. Ople Policy Center and Training Institute.

Project Title: Anti-Slavery Project for Overseas Filipino Domestic Workers

Award Amount: $971,793

Project Location: The Philippines

Project Description: The Blas F. Ople Policy Center and its partners provided key support, recovery, and reintegration support for overseas Filipino workers and survivors of trafficking and assisted key government actors creating more responsive and effective prosecution and complaints mechanisms.

Project Title: Safe and Sound: Ha Giang

Award Amount: $842,114

Project Location: Ha Giang Province, Vietnam

Project Description: Blue Dragon led the testing of a comprehensive model for anti-trafficking that can be successfully replicated in new geographies. Working closely with government partners, Blue Dragon supported the provincial government agencies to implement the National Referral Mechanism in Ha Giang province, making critical recovery services available to survivors. Also under this project, they developed community early warning systems to quickly identify human trafficking cases, trained a cohort of local social workers to assist trafficking survivors, and provided key legal support for survivors pursuing cases against their traffickers.

Partner: Brac Bangladesh

Project Title: Providing emergency support to vulnerable informal apparel workers in Bangladesh

Award Amount: $440,342

Project Location: Bangladesh

Project Description: At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, BRAC delivered a range of emergency support services to high-risk workers in Keraniganj and Narayanganj, two apparel production hubs in Bangladesh. In cooperation with two GFEMS partners, ELEVATE and Bangladesh Labour Foundation, BRAC completed a survey of at-risk worker households and informal factories. Based on their findings, BRAC distributed cash support and hygiene kits to nearly 1,500 households, and Personal Protective Equipment to managers of over 100 informal factories. All services were complemented by an awareness campaign to support safe working conditions in these unregulated factories.

Partner: CAFOD

Project Title: Recovery and Reintegration Support for Bangladeshi Returnee Migrant Workers

Award Amount: $1,508,841

Project Location: Bangladesh

Project Description: With Caritas Bangladesh and OKUP, CAFOD is delivering holistic reintegration services for vulnerable migrants and returnees, and generating evidence on best practices for successfully reintegrating survivors. This project engages government stakeholders to develop a sustainable strategy that can be scaled and maintains a focus on female returnees.

Partner: ELEVATE

Project Title: Developing a predictive tool and remediation workplan for buyers to assess and mitigate risk of forced labor in their garment supply chains in India

Award Amount: $447,357

Project Location: India

Project Description: ELEVATE developed a risk assessment tool to engage brands in detecting the risk of unauthorized subcontracting in the apparel supply chain in India. The tool will help international buyers and retailers to increase their visibility over the supply chain and potentially identify the risk of forced labor deeper in their supply chain. The completed tool will be used in conjunction with a remediation plan to bolster brands’ efforts to reduce the risk of unauthorized subcontracting and forced labor violations.

Partner: ELEVATE

Project Title: Developing SafeStep, an app for migrant workers to successfully and safely navigate the labor migration journey

Award Amount: $1,297,892

Project Location: Bangladesh

Project Description: In consortium with Diginex Solutions and Winrock International, this project developed and piloted a mobile application to provide Bangladeshi workers with a suite of tools to make informed decisions about labor migration to the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. The app was developed in ongoing consultation with hundreds of migrant workers, ensuring the tool directly meets their needs.

Partner: ELEVATE

Project Title: Pioneering the use of a worker voice tool in Bangladesh’s informal apparel factories

Award Amount: $1,297,892

Project Location: Bangladesh

Project Description: This project deployed the Laborlink mobile survey technology to detect forced labor in informal ready-made garment factories, which are often excluded from traditional government and brand oversight measures. ELEVATE, with its local partners Bangladesh Labour Foundation and Phulki, surveyed over 12,000 workers, including close to 3,000 children, creating a picture of widespread forced and child labor in two industrial production hubs in Bangladesh.

Partner: Fair Employment Foundation

Project Title: The Fair Recruitment Model: An End-To-End Market Solution To Make Exploitative Recruitment Unprofitable

Award Amount: $1,086,455

Project Location: Philippines

Project Description: GFEMS funded FEF to develop, test, and lead market solutions to end forced labor of migrant workers across Asia. The project built an end-to-end ethical recruitment solution for workers migrating from the Philippines. Designed towards self-sustainability and rapid scalability, the project has enormous potential for impact among millions of Filipinos.

Partner: Hope for Justice

Project Title: Addressing Child Trafficking and Slavery (ACTS) in Uganda

Award Amount: $1,653,447

Project Location: Uganda

Project Description: Hope for Justice, with the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham and Platform for Labour Action, aims to standardize and expand trauma-informed support services for survivors of exploitation in Uganda. This is being realized through the development of trauma-informed standards of care, direct service provision, and capacity building for justice sector and civil society care practitioners.

Partner: International Association of Women Judges

Project Title: Women Judges Leading Efforts to Improve Justice Sector Effectiveness in Combating Trafficking

Award Amount: $556,255

Project Location: Kenya, Uganda

Project Description: This project aims to increase the effectiveness of prosecutions and reduce the prevalence of labor trafficking in Kenya and Uganda by providing trainings and resource materials to enhance the justice sector response to trafficking in persons and make it more victim-centered; and strengthening cross-border anti-TIP coordination and informal information sharing among justice sector actors.

Partner: International Justice Mission

Project Title: Improving Kenya’s Criminal Justice Response to CSEC in Targeted Hotspots

Award Amount: $2,148,079

Project Location: Kenya

Project Description: IJM is increasing community and victim confidence in the criminal justice system and improving its effectiveness by strengthening the capacity of law enforcement, prosecutors, and magistrates to understand and respond to CSEC in coastal Kenya. This project also aims to strengthen referral pathways for survivors and enhance coordination between stakeholder groups for survivor support.

Partner: Prerana, Save the Children, International Justice Mission

Project Title: Advancing Rule of Law in the State of Maharashtra: Supporting the Implementation of a Comprehensive Sex Trafficking Response

Project Location: India

Project Description: Prerana, Save the Children India and International Justice Mission liaise and collaborate with local government units to strengthen statewide capability, infrastructure, and responses to combat commercial sexual exploitation of children through trauma-informed services.

Partner: Prerana, Save the Children, International Justice Mission

Project Title: Strengthening Systems to Protect CSEC Victims and Sustain Freedom in Maharashtra, India I

Project Location: India

Project Description: This project expands upon earlier interventions aimed at supporting government institutions to deliver victim-centric, effective, and efficient services to victims of commercial sexual exploitation, and promoting coordinated action by district-level government and civil society stakeholders.

Partner: Prerana, Save the Children, International Justice Mission

Project Title: Strengthening Systems to Protect CSEC Victims and Sustain Freedom in Maharashtra, India II

Project Location: India

Project Description: This project builds on the partners’ longstanding experience working in collaboration with government and civil society stakeholders to improve the efficacy of responses to commercial sexual exploitation including stakeholder coordination and trauma-informed care—reducing the risk of re-trafficking and promoting survivors’ full restoration.

Partner: International Labor Organization

Project Title: Activities to Support Legislative Reform on Labor Migration in Vietnam

Award Amount: $589,729

Project Location: Vietnam

Project Description: With an emphasis on improving Vietnam’s regulatory labor migration framework, this ILO project supports social dialogue and raises awareness of international labor standards with Government, workers’, and employers’ organizations to revise the Law on Contract-Based Vietnamese Overseas Workers and five pieces of subordinate legislation which will give legal affect and detail to the Law. The Law on Contract-Based Vietnamese Overseas Workers now prohibits agencies from charging brokerage commission to workers, allows workers to unilaterally liquidate contracts in situations of threats, sexual harassment, maltreatment or forced labor, includes definitions for discrimination and forced labor in line with ILO definitions, includes forced labor as an explicitly prohibited act, and prohibits deceitful advertising for the purpose of organizing trafficking in persons, abusing recruitment activities to illegally collect fees, and charging brokerage fees – breaching these prohibitions results in recruitment agency license revocation.

Partner: International Organization for Migration (Kenya)

Project Title: Fostering recruitment agencies’ ethical practices and accountability, as well as supporting the GoK to pilot a recruitment oversight mechanism to prevent TIP

Award Amount: $1,364,919

Project Location: Kenya

Project Description: Description of the project, Fostering recruitment agencies’ ethical practices and accountability, as well as supporting the Government of Kenya (GoK) to pilot a recruitment oversight mechanism and community feedback mechanism to prevent TIP: This project is creating sustainable business models for recruitment of migrant workers that are consistent with international ethical recruitment standards. It addresses the drivers of human trafficking by enhancing ethical recruitment services on the supply side and will pilot oversight and community feedback mechanisms with the National Employment Authority (NEA) to monitor and report unscrupulous practices by recruitment agencies. Using IOM’s International Recruitment Integrity System (IRIS), this project trains private recruitment agencies on ethical recruitment practices.

Partner: International Organization for Migration (Philippines)

Project Title: Aligning Lenses Towards Ethical Recruitment (ALTER)

Award Amount: $1,200,000

Project Location: The Philippines

Project Description: The ALTER project is leading a consortium of partners to improve labor recruitment industry practices by supporting and incentivizing the effective, sustainable adoption of ethical recruitment in the Philippines. With a particular emphasis on domestic workers and hospitality workers, the project aims to reduce the prevalence of trafficking among overseas Filipino workers in the COVID-19 context.

Partner: International Organization for Migration (Philippines)

Project Title: Improving Migrant and Community Preparation and Awareness to Counter Trafficking (IMPACT)

Award Amount: $1,800,000

Project Location: The Philippines

Project Description: IOM Philippines, in partnership with local government, is working to raise awareness of trafficking among the most at-risk communities in the Philippines and build capacity for pre-migration training providers. This includes direct outreach to vulnerable communities and enabling providers to train labor migrants on migration risks, access to quality support and resources, and resiliency in the face of trafficking risks in the COVID-19 context.

Partner: Justice and Care

Project Title: Rehabilitation and Reintegration of CSE/CSEC Victims Through Sustainable Systematic Change in Bangladesh

Award Amount: $467,982

Project Location: Bangladesh

Project Description: With a focus on end-to-end support for Bangladeshi survivors repatriated from India, this project provides survivors with trauma-informed and survivor-centric care; trains border guards and law enforcement officials to identify and respond to cases of human trafficking; and builds the capacity of government and aftercare service providers.

Partner: Pratham Education Foundation

Project Title: Consortium for Skilling and Safe Migration in Construction

Award Amount: $241,340

Project Location: India

Project Description: Pratham is part of a consortium of GFEMS partners, working to build a public-private partnership that combines skilling, access to entitlements, migrant tracking, finance, and the creation of alternative recruitment pathways to reduce prevalence of forced labor among internal migrants in the construction sector.

Partner: Sambhav Foundation

Project Title: Consortium for Skilling and Safe Migration in Construction

Award Amount: $842,321

Project Location: India

Project Description: Sambhav is part of a consortium of GFEMS partners, working to build a public-private partnership that combines skilling, access to entitlements, migrant tracking, finance, and the creation of alternative recruitment pathways to reduce prevalence of forced labor among internal migrants in the construction sector.

Partner: Save The Children India

Project Title: Consortium for Skilling and Enabling Responsive Justice for Victims of Trafficking in Five Districts of Maharashtra

Award Amount: $368,691

Project Location: India

Project Description: Save The Children India (STCI) works to strengthen the judicial system by building government capacity to prosecute cases of trafficking, convict traffickers, and ensure victims’ legal support. Through the project, STCI seeks to build an effective and coordinated prosecution system through training and mentorship, and providing legal counseling and assistance to survivors. The project also seeks to impart greater sensitivity among judicial actors toward victims, ensuring that victims are an integral part of the justice delivery system by making the process more conducive to their participation.

Partner: Seefar

Project Title: Empowering Children, Families and Communities to End Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children

Award Amount: $757,146

Project Location: India

Project Description: This project deploys and tests the effectiveness of a behavior change campaign to understand which prevention strategies is most effective in changing knowledge, attitudes, and practices among children, their families, and their communities with regard to risks to Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children.

Partner: Seefar

Project Title: LIFT: Transformational Livelihoods for Survivors

Award Amount: $753,552

Project Location: India

Project Description: An expansion of programming in West Africa and the Middle East, this project delivers trauma-informed counseling and psychosocial programs to survivors of Commercial Sexual Exploitation in West Bengal and Maharashtra. It follows the Seefar LIFT model which has proven successful in creating sustainable income-generation for survivors and reducing vulnerability in a matter of months.

Partner: Seefar

Project Title: TERA: The Ethical Recruitment Agency- India

Award Amount: $412,327

Project Location: India

Project Description: This project established the first recruitment agency in India created for ethical recruitment. The Ethical Recruitment Agency (TERA) educates migrants on their rights and provides job-specific training; provides in-country support to migrants while overseas; and ensures migrants are never charged recruitment fees or exploited.

Partner: Social Accountability International

Project Title: Developing a digital platform connecting buyers and suppliers in India’s apparel supply chain, to incentivize improvements in labor practices and ultimately reduce risky unauthorized subcontracting

Award Amount: $347,757

Project Location: India

Project Description: SAI is developing a digital platform that connects buyers with suppliers to improve labor practices and work​ing conditions throughout​ the supply chain. The platform grants suppliers making improvements ​to their production planning access to new buyers, and ​gives buyers greater visibility into their supply chains. It includes a new production capacity calculator, minimizing the risk that overwhelmed suppliers will turn to unauthorized subcontracting and excessive overtime hours.

Partner: Sustainable Hospitality Alliance

Project Title: Empowering Survivors and Building Youth Resilience against Trafficking through Hospitality Sector Skills Development

Award Amount: $486,113

Project Location: India and Vietnam

Project Description: The youth employment program works to provide livelihood and career opportunities for vulnerable young people via skills training and practical experience - in partnership with the world’s leading hotel companies. This project focuses on interventions with survivors and individuals at risk of commercial sexual exploitation, with the aim of delivering a scalable and replicable model to prevent trafficking or re-trafficking. The Alliance works with local NGO partners and leverages the power of the private sector to provide training and opportunities to enable survivors and vulnerable young people to build a better future.

Partner: Terre des Hommes

Project Title: Building a Future – Improving access to inclusive quality education and sustainable household livelihoods for child victims and those at risk of sex trafficking in Kwale and Kilifi counties

Award Amount: $728,801

Project Location: Kenya

Project Description: In partnership with Kesho Kenya, Terre des Hommes Netherlands (TdH-NL) is implementing a project, in the coastal region, envisioning a reduction in the prevalence of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation among children in Kilifi and Kwale Counties. This is done through strengthening prevention structures in communities and schools while improving access to inclusive quality education and sustainable household livelihoods for child survivors and those at risk of sex trafficking/exploitation.

Partner: Terre des Hommes

Project Title: Community Action to End Child Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation in Napak District, Karamoja, Uganda

Award Amount: $719,986

Project Location: Uganda

Project Description: Terre des Hommes Netherlands (TdH-NL), in partnership with Dwelling Places, is promoting a tested “shield approach,” designed to protect children in Karamoja, Uganda by reducing key vulnerabilities to child trafficking. This is being realized through the strengthening of monitoring, referral, response, and reporting mechanisms; the promotion of positive behavior change; and, the provision of rehabilitation and reintegration support to survivors.

Partner: Willow International

Project Title: Rehabilitation and Reintegration for Survivors of Trafficking and At-Risk Populations in Uganda

Award Amount: $758,416

Project Location: Uganda

Project Description: Willow International, in partnership with The Market Project and the Street Business School (SBS), is expanding holistic aftercare services, legal support, and educational, vocational, and economic opportunities for survivors of labor trafficking and at-risk individuals in Uganda, ensuring successful survivor reintegration and decreasing the likelihood of re-trafficking.