Name: Cy Fawkes
Social Justice Group: International Workers Rights
Date of Fieldwork: February 23, 2022
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):The Walkfree Foundation
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :
On Tuesday, February 23, our social justice group spoke with Lauren Jackson of the Walkfree foundation. She is a Research and Policy Officer at the Walkfree Foundation. She is also the co-founder and director of the Children of Massai Educational Programme. Lauren and Walkfree are both located in Perth, Australia. The Walkfree Foundation was originally founded in 2010 by Grace and Andrew Forrest. Since then, they have dedicated themselves to completely eradicate all forms of modern slavery in their lifetime. Their staff have a variety of different jobs, from lawyers to statisticisians, and they all have one common goal, to address the root that causes slavery.
One of the main focal points in Walkfree’s goal of eradicating slavery, is their Global Slavery Index. Walkfree is a very data driven company that makes benchmarks that will help companies keep track of themselves and Walkfree will help them do better. All of this benchmarking is released in the Global Slavery Index. It gets released every four years in a downloadable report on their website. The last one is from 2018 so we can expect another report this year. The newest report will also analyze how COVID has caused risks for migrants and other vulnerable workers.
All in all we had an amazing interview with Lauren Jackson. I really learned a lot and I felt content knowing that people were out there helping with this cause. She also told our social justice group about other people that can help our cause. Another thing that you can do is to speak with your representatives about changing labor policies and boycotting companies that implement this slavery. With this newfound information, I will teach my classmates and peers and hopefully, one day, slavery won´t exist anywhere.
