U.S. State Department awards $21 million to GFEMS for expanding and scaling transformational programs to end modern slavery

The U.S. Department of State awarded a $21 million grant to the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery (GFEMS) to support its continued efforts to end modern slavery by making it economically unprofitable.

GFEMS is an international public-private partnership that seeks to catalyze and coordinate a coherent global strategy to end modern slavery. GFEMS’ strategy includes increasing resources, engaging government and the private sector, funding transformational programs and technologies, and ensuring robust assessment of impact across all partners and programs. For its initial investments, GFEMS focused on geographies and sectors with high potential for impact, replication, and scale – especially emphasizing migrant labor, sex trafficking, and construction.

The University of Georgia (UGA) will also receive $4 million from the U.S. Department of State to support prevalence research and programming in Africa. The GFEMS team will work with UGA to share learnings and generate critical data and knowledge for the anti-trafficking field at large.

“At the core of GFEMS’ approach is overcoming one of the major barriers to assessing impact and return on investment in the global anti-slavery field: the lack of robust, actionable, and insightful data. We are thrilled to have this opportunity to collaborate with leading researchers at the University of Georgia to build that evidence base and drive the field forward,” said GFEMS CEO Jean Baderschneider.

GFEMS is grateful for the continued commitment of the US government in the fight to end modern slavery and looks forward to continued collaboration with partners across the anti-trafficking field.

Questions about this announcement can be sent to media@gfems.org.