Timeline of a Movement
Scroll through below to learn more about the movement YOU helped create.
Awareness is Doing the Work
In 2012, leaders from the very organizations in the world in the fight for freedom convened in Atlanta, bringing with them statistics and stories of the tens of millions trapped in slavery, presenting a staggering truth: most of the world knew NOTHING about the largest human rights issue of its time.
Out of that Freedom Summit, The END IT Movement emerged as a vehicle for awareness. The first step in addressing a problem is to admit you have one. The goal was clear; to leave no hiding place for slavery to exist unseen and unchallenged. The people of the world would begin shining a light on slavery.
Taking Over Times Square
If you want to raise awareness worldwide, you have to go where the whole world is watching. So, on February 1st, 2013, Times Square stopped and watched as RED X’s took over the world’s most advertised on block. Slavery still exists but a Movement was beginning and the world was watching. No more.
Raising Your Voice
The RED X’s weren’t just reserved for screens the size of buildings. In the most simplistic of ways, conversations were started in elevators, coffee shops, and workplaces as people noticed the marker on the back of student’s hands. Jokes about late-nights out turned into opportunities to share the truth that millions of men, women, and children were still trapped in slavery. The Movement was growing, and people were taking notice.
Congress took notice
People like Senator Bob Corker, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took up the banner of freedom and was inspired to action because of our Movement. In 2015, with broad-sweeping bi-partisan support, Senator Corker introduced the END MODERN SLAVERY INITIATIVE ACT to affirm the United States' committment to freedom and establish The Global to End Slavery. In late 2016, EMSI was passed and signed into law by the President of the United States.
The Movement Grows
RED Xs started showing up everywhere...professional athletes, politicians, students and accountants alike were raising their voice for the voiceless, leveraging their spheres of influence for the benefit of people they might never meet, but they knew deserved to be free.
On college campuses, local chapters of the END IT Movement sprang up, educating the world’s next generation of leaders about the scourge of slavery. New technology was created allowing companies to track the slavery footprint of their supply chains, and organizations like Rotary International made ending slavery the focus of their influence. Worldwide support of the Movement continued to grow.
Nothing is Impossible
In five years the awareness of modern day slavery may have reached the most powerful office in the world, but there was still work to do.
According to the Global Estimates of Modern Slavery Report put together by the International Labour Office and the Walk Free Foundation, as of 2016, there were still 40 Million men, women, and children trapped in slavery. It's a staggering number, but not an impossible one, after all the world was turning its eyes to the problem.
International Awareness
In 2017, Asthon Kutcher, Co-Founder of Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children gave an impassioned testimony on the horrors of slavery in front of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He wore our RED X and once again the world took notice.
END IT is entering its seventh year, but we’re just getting started. So many have joined us in this fight for freedom, not just for a moment but for the long arc of this Movement. Our ultimate goal—to see slavery end in our lifetime—is closer now than it ever has been, but it will take every one of us telling our worlds to continue to tell the world.
If you’ve been tracking with us over the years, thank you, thank you, thank you. Keep going, we’re with you. If you’re new to our cause, we’re so glad you’re here… it’s time to roll up your sleeves, rep our RED X, and get started.
