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Formation 26 September 2013 (2013-09-26) Founders Humanity UnitedLegatumWalk Free Foundation Type United States 501(c)(3) public charity Registration no. United States 30-0805768, United Kingdom 1158838 Headquarters Lighterman House26-36 Wharfdale RoadLondon, N19RY, UK | ||
The Freedom Fund is the world’s first private donor fund dedicated to identifying and investing in the most effective front-line efforts to end slavery. In 2014, the Global Slavery Index reported that there were nearly 36 million slaves worldwide across a wide range of industries.
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The Freedom Fund was founded in September 2013, by three leading anti-slavery donors, Humanity United, the Legatum Foundation and the Walk Free Foundation and officially announced by President Bill Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative on September 26, 2013 where he declared "this is a huge deal and we should all support this."
Freedom Fund’s Mission and Values
The Freedom Fund has set a target of raising USD $100million by 2020 and investing it to bring about much needed strategic focus to the fight against modern slavery. To achieve this, The Freedom Fund has focused its activities on three main areas:
Hotspot projects – The Freedom Fund partners with frontline organisations to directly combat slavery in defined regions with a high concentration of slavery . They do this by setting up "hotspot" projects - clusters of the most effective community-based organisations in these regions. Partnering with these organisations in some of the world's poorest and most marginalised communities is difficult, demanding and time intensive, but it is also one of the most effective ways to achieve large scale and sustainable change. The Freedom Fund's Northern India hotspot has been in place since 2014, and as of October 2015, had liberated over 4,400 people from modern slavery. The Freedom Fund's hotspots are located in central Nepal, Ethiopia, northern India, south-eastern Nepal, southern India and Thailand.Global initiatives - The Freedom Fund tackles underlying systems that allow slavery to persist. They do this in their hotspots, engaging the government, private sector, media, social movements, and other key drivers of change. They also do it by catalysing action on selected global issues and industries that have a direct link to iur hotspots. This allows the Freedom Fund to tackle systemic issues like slavery in fishing, migration, or to help develop new technological tools or legal initiatives. In March 2015, the Freedom Fund and C&A Foundation announced a partnership to tackle forced labour in the textile industry.Movement building initiatives - The Freedom Fund helps to build and empower a global anti-slavery movement, providing the platforms, tools and knowledge for organisations to connect and work together more effectively.Leadership
CEO, Nick Grono has written articles on modern slavery for the Huffington Post, Newsweek, and The Guardian as well as contributing to the Freedom Fund blog. Grono previously served as Deputy President and COO of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. and CEO of the Walk Free Foundation, the international anti-slavery organisation. During his tenure, the Walk Free Foundation built a global anti-slavery movement with over five million supporters and launched the first ever Global Slavery Index. Grono joined Freedom Fund in December 2013.
Impact
In keeping with the Freedom Fund’s investment roots, they take their role in evaluating impact very seriously. They direct resources to anti-slavery initiatives across the world where they can make the biggest difference, measure what works, learn from unexpected results, and share knowledge.
As of June 2016 the Freedom Fund had: