Walk Free

Walk Free is a joint initiative of the Australian Children’s Trust and Hope for Children Foundation, two Australian based organisations. Our goal is to end modern slavery as soon as humanly possible. ‘Modern slavery’ includes slavery, human trafficking and forced labour.

Walk Free proposes to present itself as a united voice crossing all borders to present the case to eliminate slavery from a global perspective. Walk Free recognises the role of the 70 plus organisations that work tirelessly in this space to achieve the same objective, but perhaps more focused locally, regionally and nationally.

As a new initiative, there is still much work to be done to add detail to the broad strategy. However, the following gives an overview on some preliminary developments.

Walk Free Movement

The power of modern social movements depends on being able to rapidly access a large membership base. Accordingly, early activities will be focused on building an online presence and a membership base, while also supporting the work of existing partners through amplification of existing campaigns.

Initially Walk Free activities will be focused primarily in South East Asia cemented by the MTV Exit partnership, and includes supporting a series of events in the Greater Mekong Sub Region.This will be followed by youth engagements sessions and road shows in Vietnam, Burma and Indonesia.

The organisation will campaign to support ratification of the ILO Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers and has committed to support Visayan Forum to amplify their campaign to get the Government of Philippines to ratify this convention.

Initial research has also commenced to establish a Global Modern Slavery Index and discussions about the establishment of a Global Fund to End Modern Slavery are also underway with private philanthropic partners and global funding bodies.