Upstate organization honored for child slavery prevention efforts

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The child slavery prevention program of Set Free Alliance, a Greenville-based non-profit humanitarian organization, is a finalist in the social justice category of Fast Company magazine’s 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards.

The Set Free Alliance focuses on rescuing children from slavery and providing fresh water and medical aid to remote villages in Africa and India, according to a news release.

Set Free’s child slavery prevention program follows a microfinance model to focus on preventing child slavery rather than remediation, the news release said.

The World Changing Ideas Awards are featured in Fast Company’s summer 2021 issue, on newsstands now, and are intended to showcase some of the world’s most inventive entrepreneurs and companies tackling urgent global challenges.

“The work we do through Set Free has always been rewarding, but to be recognized in this way from an organization like Fast Company is an honor that is hard to put into words,” CEO Sarah Kelley said in the release. “We are encouraged to be a finalist among some of the world’s leading innovators and problem-solvers, and hope that we can not only continue our work to rescue enslaved children across India, but also empower the villagers themselves to eradicate it to create future generational freedom and community transformation.”

According to the organization, 71% of children in slavery in India are there as the result of parental loan defaults, in which children are sold as a way to pay a parent’s debt.

The Set Free program works to repay loans directly to agents and set terms that the children can no longer be used as payment. In return, loan repayments can be made in the form of food or supplies that go to support children rescued from slavery without families to return to, or cash payments that cycle back into another loan payment and released child, according to the release.

Launched as a three-month test during 2020, Set Free’s child slavery prevention program resulted in the payoff of $89,573 in loans across 74 villages in India, achieving a 98% loan repayment rate, serving 1,309 families and saving 2,308 children from being sold into slavery as well as 708 young women from being sold into brothels, according to the news release.

“There is no question our society and planet are facing deeply troubling times,” Stephanie Mehta, editor-in-chief of Fast Company, said in the release. “So it’s important to recognize organizations that are using their ingenuity, impact, design, scalability and passion to solve these problems. Our journalists, under the leadership of senior editor Morgan Clendaniel, have discovered some of the most groundbreaking projects that have launched since the start of 2020.”

Now in its fifth year, the World Changing Ideas Awards showcase 33 winners, more than 400 finalists, and more than 800 honorable mentions, each selected by a panel of Fast Company editors and reporters. More than 4,000 entries were received from across the globe, from Brazil to Denmark to Vietnam, the release said.

Set Free Alliance began nearly 20 years ago with a focus on drilling fresh-water wells in Liberia, Africa.