Grace Forrest shares her passion to eradicate modern slavery at Auspire’s Lunch with Leaders
“Who made my clothes?”
“Is my coffee fair trade?”
“Am I supporting local?”
“How can I help? how can my business help?”
… these are just some of the questions that we have been made aware to ask ourselves after listening to Western Australia’s recipient of Young Australian of the Year, Grace Forrest, at the recent Lunch with Leaders online session which tackled the ever growing issue of modern slavery.
The online session was sold out to an audience of 150, with some guests projecting the session to a group of people, including local government bodies, businesses, students and teachers. Morgen Lewis, CEO of Auspire facilitated the conversation while Grace presented us with sobering statistics of people living in slavery backed with up-to-date data research to ensure our world’s most vulnerable don’t fall off the agenda.
The online chatroom was buzzing, some expressing deep concern about the issue, but more importantly many were stirred up to do make a more conscious step to put a stop to modern slavery.
“Thank you so much for your work and energy Grace. Thank you Auspire for hosting. I’ve learned a great deal today. Feeling inspired!” – Nahrel
“This is incredibly important work and I hope to learn more. I currently work with school leaders and interested to see if there is an opportunity to progress this. ” – Amanda
“Can you recommend some resources to find ethical products?” – Amy
We thank Grace Forrest for her passion and unwavering sense of purpose. Abolitionism is certainly a role that we can all be a part of.
Grace Forrest is the founding director of Walk Free, an international human rights organisation working to eradicate modern slavery, which affects over 40 million people globally. One of their latest report, Stacked Odds, it reveals almost 29 million women and girls are victims of modern slavery. The team also developed the Global Slavery Index to measure the extent and risk of modern slavery and the effectiveness of our global efforts to end it
Here are some videos for their latest campaign on the reality of modern slavery.