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Our Solution

 

For people who have experienced and survived the horrors of human trafficking, freedom means not just the absence of exploitation. It means the ability to fully and equally re-integrate into our society. It means being believed. It means having the power, perhaps for the first time, to be in control of one’s own choices. In very practical terms, survivors need to be able to apply to jobs without stigma and stabilize their home life so their children avoid generational poverty.

To realize this freedom, survivors need professional legal services. Below we share Our Work in 3 Areas that enables ALIGHT to remove survivors’ obstacles to freedom and open doors to meaningful and positive changes in their lives.

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Freedom is not the absence of exploitation. It is the power to make life choices in our own best interest.

Marianna KosharovskyFounder & Executive Director of ALIGHT

Solutions to Human Trafficking

Human Trafficking is a problem of great scale and complexity. It has no easy solutions. Survivors need many forms of support on their journey to freedom. Survivors need attorneys who fight for their rights. It is thus essential to creatively engage the legal bar in this cause and also form strategic partnerships across a variety of at-risk areas so that the many different communities vulnerable to human trafficking are included.

ALIGHT – and any other anti-human trafficking organization for that matter – must offer real, tangible value to human trafficking survivors seeking our help. Or get out of the way.

Our Work in 3 Areas

 1. ALIGHT Mobilizing Justice

ALIGHT connects survivors of human trafficking with specialized attorneys who help them rebuild their lives.

A trafficker may force someone into prostitution or theft, leaving them with a criminal record, or take out fraudulent loans in their name, destroying their credit. Traffickers even use survivors’ children to keep control. So even after escaping, survivors can’t get a job, housing or an education. They still aren’t free.

ALIGHT connects survivors to its network of more than 1,500 trauma-informed attorneys, handling criminal records, credit repair, custody, identity theft and more than 25 other areas of law, all at no cost to the survivor. One attorney clears a record. Another repairs credit. Another takes on a custody case. Life stabilizes, and rebuilding begins.

Visit the ALIGHT Mobilizing Justice page to learn more.

Offering Innovative, Next Generation Solutions

We catalyze our impact by using technology to harness extra capacity in the legal community on an app platform that functions as a virtual marketplace where survivors expediently connect to attorneys (through their service providers or the ALIGHT Intake Advocate, who post requests for assistance on the app and support the connection to attorneys).

Through Legal Advocacy, Counsel and Representation

We connect survivors to free legal expertise across different specializations across civil, criminal and family law to resolve diverse legal issues – the right attorney at the right time.

Provide Survivor-Centric Services

Developed with survivor-leader utilization and input on survivor-centric and trauma-informed practices, our flexible model supports survivors choice and control by reducing the number of steps to connect to the right attorney (and thus number of times that survivors would potentially have to retell their stories). Survivors who work with ALIGHT choose when and with whom they work.

2. Training & Community Building

ALIGHT shares its expertise and resources to support service provider, attorney and broader community efforts to fight human trafficking. We believe that involving all the various members of our society is essential to opening new paths for collaboration.

View the ALIGHT Community Training & Presentation Program to learn more about our events and options.

3. Thought Leadership

To advance solutions at the intersection of Law, Technology and Human Trafficking, ALIGHT Executive Director Marianna Kosharovsky and Advisor Simon Cohen presented at the 2017 Princeton University Center for Information Technology and Policy’s “Gender-based Violence and Safety in IT Design: Design Ethics Workshop.” Joining technologists, policy experts, researchers, attorneys and activists, participants gathered to discuss and develop new approaches for creating accessible and targeted solutions. One key takeaway was the concern for the unintended consequences of technology — particularly for vulnerable populations such as survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. Take a look at the lessons on “Design Ethics for Gender-Based Violence and Safety Technologies” from the event.

In 2018, Denver Startup Week invited ALIGHT to present the Headline Event “Tech for Good” to engage and support the tech startup community on social justice initiatives. Read about our recommendations “Startup Basics … and Extra Ethical Considerations for Being Change Agents on Social Justice Issues in our Communities” from the event.

ALIGHT continues this work through developing on-the-ground insights and innovations from operating ALIGHT Mobilizing Justice. ALIGHT appreciates the involvement of ALIGHT Partners across different disciplines as we encounter the opportunities and complexities of this work.

Connect With Us

We welcome new partners in this work.

Get in Touch