Since our founding over a decade ago, we have grown many new programs from the deep roots of our labor auditing, while maintaining the worker’s perspective that motivated our founding vision. We help others understand the systemic roots of slavery and child labor. We study and work on the complicated systems that make workers especially vulnerable. Still, our work remains very much a story of individuals.

Kitty, a young Indonesian woman, is one. We met her in Brunei where she was placed by a broker for a fee that her family went into debt to pay. Her salary turned out to be a small fraction of what was promised and she returned from two years in the factory, penniless, owing more than when she left. Others are the migrant girls we found in central India last fall sewing t-shirts for the US market. Trapped by a system that provided no protection against exploitative wages and the physical abuse of their supervisors, they were just 12 years old.

The systemic solutions are complex and require everyone’s involvement. We hope this new website will help us to share what we’ve learned, what we consider good practice, how we can help companies achieve it, how ‘social responsibility’ efforts can be evaluated, and what steps stakeholders can take.

We know that careful planning and thoughtful action can lead to more money in the pockets of poor families, fewer injuries and deaths, fewer children working in hazardous conditions, an expanded safety net of civil society advocates, and more freedom for all workers.

Please let us know what you think about what we’ve provided here, and what else you would like to see.

Dan Viederman
Executive Director

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