My name is Aileen. I survived human trafficking.
My name is Rubilin and I survived human trafficking.
My name is Samriada and I survived human trafficking.
Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing illegal businesses in the world today,
with $32 billion in annual profits.
Every year, traffickers lure millions of people into this modern form of slavery,
with the promise of paid work in another city or country.
But when they arrive, they're forced into prostitution, pornography or compulsory labor.
Most of them are young and poor,
and more than 300,000 come from the Philippines.
The people are really poor
and that provides a fertile ground for a trafficker
to manipulate, to deceive and to lure people.
The task had become part of the culture that,
if you're poor, the solution is migration,
and that's where a lot of trafficking takes place.
In Manila, the Visayan Forum Foundation - or VF
is determined to end human trafficking
through an innovative, multifaceted strategy.
What we did was to study how traffickers operate.
We intervene in the most critical aspects of the trafficking process.
They're using this island as a backdoor.
So we try to break the business model of trafficking.
We try to fight traffickers, essentially, in their own game.
To start, VF decided to disrupt the traffickers' business,
by intercepting their victims in transit.
It is the very strategic point for us to intervene,
becasue the victim is not yet sold.
So wherever there are a lot of people being transported,
Visayan Forum is there.
But to implement its strategy, VF needed partners.
In 2001, it formed the first anti-trafficking taskforce in the Philippines,
at the Port of Manila.
It now includes the Port Authority, the Coast Guard,
the Police, the Departments of Justice, Labor and Social Welfare,
and the shipping lines.
This is a concrete example of a networking
of many Government agencies, private corporations
and non-governmental organizations,
working together under one mission.
VF trains its partners to recognize potential trafficking victims in transit.
Traffickers try to load the average cost,
so they traffic them in groups.
More often than not, they don't know each other or where they're going.
Once the employees of a shipping line see anything suspicious,
they're going to coordinate with the Coast Guard, and say,
"We have spotted this group."
They will call us and tell us, yes, we have suspected
trafficking victims on-board.
If VF confirms the crew's suspicions,
they have legal authority to take the children into protective custody.
So I think what we can do is just to bring them to the shelter first
and then we can just process them there.
For children who are intercepted in transit,
it's the first step on a new journey.
VF transfers boys it rescues to partner agencies
and takes girls to an on-site facility,
where it determines whether it's safe to reunite them with their families.
If not, they're moved to VF's residential home - the Centre of Hope,
where they join other girls who have been rescued.
Centre of Hope is a place where they can feel safe.
It is a place where they can re-confer.
It is a place where they can, ultimately, be trained and be empowered.
It is a place for them to acquire a new life.
This is my dream in the future, to become a lawyer some day,
after I finish my studies.
The Centre of Hope helps girls develop job skills,
by working with partners, like Microsoft,
which funds a training program called Step Up.
It initially worked only with trafficing victims,
but its focus soon shifted.
We realized that, instead of working on rebuilding the lives of the victims,
another importnat piece of work was to actually prevent
trafficking from happening, in the first place.
Step Up now has programs in more than 40 at-risk communities
throughout the Philippines.
Trafficking is an economic activity for many of these communities.
We have to show them that, given the right skills,
they don't have to send their children off,
they don't have to give up hope.
Beyond changing attitudes at the grass-roots level,
VF works to end modern-day slavery,
by making sure traffickers are brought to justice,
which, until recently, rarely happened.
In 2009, the Philippines landed on the US State Department's watchilist
because of it's lax approach to trafficking.
The watchlist means two years in a row
you have not made significant progress.
If it comes to a third year, then the United States, by law,
must cut off some of our assistance.
There was a wake-up call, coming from Washington, particularly,
telling us the assistance could be affected.
As a result, the Philippine Government reinvigorated anti-trafficking efforts
And there was a stepping up - intensification of prosecution.
In 2011, after the number of successful prosecutions doubled,
the US removed the Philippines from the watchlist.
In terms of advocacy and awareness raising,
Visayan Forum were vital players.
We could not have attainted that kind of success
if the Visayan Forum was not part and parcel
of the efforts of the Government.
VF is a part of a high level, inter-agency, policy-making group,
chaired by the Vice President,
which ensures that the fight to end trafficking remains a national priority.
It's Visayan Forum which had really opened the eyes
of relevant Government agencies on how huge the probelm is.
VF's transit hub strategy has been so successful,
it has now spread from Manila to six other sea ports and three airports.
The US State Department has cited VF's partnerships with the Port Authority,
shipping lines and Government,
as an example of international best anti-trafficking practices.
VF's efforts have attracted hundreds of partner organizations
and increased public awareness.
We have to end exploitation and human trafficking.
They've also helped rewrite Government policy
and given tens of thousands of young people new opportunity.
What I really hope for the future
is that what we started here, in Visayan Forum,
ending trafficking and slavery in the country,
can be scaled up and replicated by our different partners.
The model is simple, in a way,
because we're harnessing things that people are already good at.
We have done it successfully in the Philippines.
I don't see any reason why it could not be done in other countries.
Trafficking is one of the many evils that we face in our generation,
but this is one evil that we can end in our generation.
My name is Rosalyn and I survived human trafficking.
My name is Janet and I survived human trafficking.
I'm Arlene and I am a survivor of human trafficking.