Google’s non-profit arm announced its Global Impact Awards program last December and has announced three organizations that would be receiving $3 million in grants. All of these organizations are focused on setting up human trafficking helplines to help identify potential victims and provide them with support, no matter where they are in the world.
The three organizations — Polaris Project, Liberty Asia and La Strada International — are working together to form a “Global Human Trafficking Hotline Network.”
In Google’s announcement today, the company says that 21 million people are enslaved in one way or another globally and generating $32 billion in profit for those who are managing the illegal activity. The hope for these organizations is that they can collect data from all local helpline services to be able to view patterns and triangulate the hotspots in the world that are most egregious. Dating back to 2011, Google has invested $14.5 million into anti-trafficking efforts.
Two outside companies, Palantir Technologies and Salesforce.com, are providing analytics and data-integration tools, as well as a hotline center to help scale the anti-trafficking network.
Here’s what Jared Cohen, Director of Google Ideas and Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google Giving, had to say about the announcement:
In the U.S., Polaris Project has collected data from over 72,000 hotline calls, helping local and national anti-trafficking communities better understand the dynamics of the crime. No such actionable hotline database has existed globally — but it doesn’t need to be that way. Clear international strategies, increased cooperation, and appropriate data sharing amongst anti-trafficking organizations will help victims, prevention efforts, and sound policymaking. Slavery can be stopped. Let’s get to it.
Here is the announcement of the awards:
You can read more about Google’s non-profit efforts in an interview that I conducted with Jacquelline Fuller for The Weekly Good.