Fighting Human Trafficking By Investing In The Power Of Women
By: Ali Motroni
Ali and other Our Daughters International donors on vision trip with a Women's Empowerment Group in Nepal
In 2019, I spent two weeks in Nepal to learn more about KI Nepal, an organization working to rescue and restore girls from sex-trafficking.
KI Nepal advocates for and serves trafficking victims after they’ve been rescued, and just as importantly, on the prevention side through addressing the root causes of trafficking. Nepal has a large supply of vulnerable women and is considered a source country – a country where traffickers take advantage of the poverty, lack of education, and lack of legal consequences. It is estimated that at least 54 girls or women are trafficked from Nepal to India daily.
While in Nepal, I got to see the full spectrum of KI Nepal’s operations, which includes border stations where many girls are rescued as traffickers try to smuggle them across country lines, safe houses where girls start their counseling and healing journeys, the training center where they learn skills to support themselves for when they reintegrate into society, and women’s empowerment savings groups sprinkled across rural Nepal. At the time, most women in Nepal still could not get a loan from the bank without it being co-signed by a man, so these federally recognized community banks played an important role in economic development.
After an 8-hour drive through the fields and mountains to meet with women representing one of these grassroots banks, I sat on the floor and had my own “Melinda Gates” moment (re: The Moment of Lift) as the colorfully-dressed women shared about the businesses they’d been able to start through pooling their savings and lending to each other. One woman opened a barbershop, and another opened a grocery stand, to name a few.
Fighting human trafficking has always been a cause close to my heart. In fact, my ‘gateway’ into the impact space was co-founding an anti-trafficking nonprofit in the US in 2012. Based on my prior experience, I expected to feel most compelled by the safe house and skills training for the girls who were rescued, as those aspects most closely resemble my previous work. So I was instead surprised and delighted to find myself most deeply moved by hearing from the women’s micro-lending group. It was here, cross-legged on a dirt floor in rural Nepal, where I recognized the importance of strengthening and empowering women globally through economic inclusion in preventing the vulnerability that often leads to girls and women getting trafficked.
In a report published in March of 2022 by the World Bank, it was found that, “Around 2.4 billion women of working age are not afforded equal economic opportunity [globally] and 178 countries maintain legal barriers that prevent their full economic participation.”[1] This type of inequity not only contributes to the vulnerability of women in many developing countries worldwide, but it also affects us all by excluding women from the global economy. McKinsey’s Global Institute suggests that gender equality in the labor force could increase global GDP by $12–28 trillion by 2025.[2] If empowering women globally for their own sakes isn’t compelling enough for those of us in more developed countries, the data shows that creating more inclusive economies actually benefits us all.
My reaction to the grassroots banks, coupled with my work in the impact investing space, triggered a lightbulb moment - rescue and restoration is noble and important work, but how can we use capital to also address the root issues that traffickers often exploit? How can we leverage investment to decrease the vulnerability of women globally? Vulnerability that is magnified by the climate crisis, lack of resources, lack of education, and lack of access to capital?
As a community of investors and philanthropists, are we willing to shift our attitudes from “How do we save women?” to “How do we empower women?” This crucial focal shift to the latter can help us all accomplish the former.
Even in the US, women garner only 2% of venture capital investment dollars. If American women are still this underfunded, what chance do women in vulnerable communities around the world have to access capital? That chance is very low without an intentional investment strategy aimed at empowering women.
As a compliment to philanthropic initiatives serving victims, below is a short, non-exhaustive list of potential avenues of investment to reduce vulnerability and support women globally:
1. Lend to women starting businesses through female-focused agriculture funds. In many emerging economies, agriculture and tourism are two of the biggest contributors to economic development.[3] Lending to female farmers not only creates opportunity for women and their communities, but also addresses local food security. Further, research has shown that women invest a higher proportion of their earnings into their children and communities compared to men, so lending to women has compounding effects.
2. Instead of parking your cash in a traditional savings account, allocate a portion of your portfolio to a gender-smart Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) in the United States. While facts and figures around trafficking in the US are harder to quantify, the sentiment remains the same: vulnerable women and children are the most common targets, and one way this can be addressed is by strengthening lower-income communities and families through investment. CDFIs not only provide capital to low-income borrowers who might not get the support (or capital) they need from traditional institutions, they also offer wraparound services for borrowers—for example, financial literacy courses and business coaching.
3. Invest with intersectionality in mind. While we all feel the effects of climate change, the consequences of weather events, extreme temperatures, and changing climate are disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable communities around the world, and as discussed, women make up a significant portion of the global poor. Women in developing countries also often have livelihoods connected to natural resources- such as water collection or smallholder farming, which feel impacts of drought or disaster. Consider investing in globally focused climate change mitigation, resilience, and adaptation strategies as another way to address gender inequity.
4. Finally, look specifically at gender-lens funds or firms founded by women, which statistically have shown to invest more capital in female entrepreneurs, and therefore could be assumed to have a more targeted impact on female beneficiaries.[4] Don’t be afraid to ask fund managers (female or other) for data on gender-inclusivity and intentionality within their strategy.
Global sex trafficking is a complex issue, requiring a multi-layered approach to dismantle. In addition to the meaningful philanthropic work of rescuing and supporting victims, we must do more to address the root causes that allow the sex trafficking industry to flourish, including using investment capital as a tool to redistribute power to women and girls globally.
While in Nepal, I heard a woman’s story about her experience taking a loan from the community bank. She used the funds to buy domestic water buffalo, selling the milk (and eventually the meat) over the years, and used the profits to reinvest back into her family and her business. I was struck by the pride, hope, and power in her voice. I still think of her often, and am reminded that if we solely ask, “how can we save women?”, we’ve likely missed asking “how can we empower them?”
[1] [1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/03/01/nearly-2-4-billion-women-globally-don-t-have-same-economic-rights-as-men
[2] [2] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/employment-and-growth/how-advancing-womens-equality-can-add-12-trillion-to-global-growth
[3] https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculture/overview#1
[4] https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/19/the-first-comprehensive-study-on-women-in-venture-capital/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKajX_ZGfD0rqp1uAQlg04aoX6MgaS8BxWKaBDnZF3UeEcZpiPDWqqMnAwOxnfn3PbJKvPOUxCTJ_GAXKJ3_Zm17EpOrhWuLkUEDn0r4Ro7aO429wM611DJVWIb6tRFc60Px5eBypKf379QvvzY1P3qttqCsjaW54N_R3hmfAtfP