Mission

MEMS  empowers  victims  of  human  trafficking and mobilizes  communities  to  end  modern  slavery.

Vision

MEMS  envisions  survivor-led  movements  working  in  community  towards  social and economic  justice.

History

Mission to End Modern Slavery (MEMS) was born out of a grassroots summit that took place in May 2014 to address the issue of labor trafficking and wage theft in the immigrant community. It gathered over 200 participants to St. James Episcopal Church in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens, New York. The summit was organized by the Asiamerica Ministries of the Episcopal Church USA in collaboration with grassroots Filipino women’s organization GABRIELA New York and non-profit organization National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON). It featured a panel of labor trafficking survivors, all women from the Philippines who worked in the domestic work, hospitality, and education industries, who shared their stories and demands for justice with community members, elected officials, service providers, and faith leaders, urging them to work together in community with them to fight modern slavery.

As a result of the summit, advocates and survivors formed the Asiamerica Mission to End Modern Slavery (AMEMS). AMEMS evolved into a continuing program of the Episcopal Asiamerica Ministries, the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, and NAFCON to educate, advocate, and build a survivor-led movement to end modern-day slavery.

In 2016, MEMS became a fully-fledged independent organization that seeks to put survivor voices at the forefront of building a community-based movement to end human trafficking. Based in Queens, New York, where many of our survivor base live, MEMS empowers survivors of human trafficking and mobilizes communities to end modern slavery by working with community partners to provide a safe healing space for survivors to share their stories, dismantle shame, reclaim their dignity, and foster movement-building for racial and economic justice. 

MEMS has provided information and resources to dozens of groups of human trafficking survivors who have chosen to organize and fight back against their employers and traffickers. In its mission to build a survivor-led movement against human trafficking, MEMS prioritizes educating survivors on what human trafficking and wage theft are so that they are armed with the tools to spot the issue, and also so they may educate fellow workers and work collectively to organize campaigns for justice to stop the exploitation of migrant workers.

Since our founding, MEMS has:

• Made contact with hundreds of trafficking survivors and low-wage migrant workers from the Philippines and other countries of origin with whom we have conducted intake interviews to assess their situations and eligibility for legal and social services and other community support in our network;

• Organized culturally and linguistically competent support and healing circles for trafficking survivors to share their stories and build community among each other;

• Facilitated dozens of public education events, Know Your Rights trainings, and Train-the-Trainers with trafficking survivors and migrant workers as participants and discussion leaders so that they may gain the skills and feel empowered to organize with their fellow coworkers to assert their rights;

• In collaboration with CUNY Hunter College AANAPISI Program (HCAP) undergraduate students, produced research-based public information materials to trafficking survivors, such as a guide called “Top 5 Trafficking Red Flags” that warns migrant workers about unscrupulous practices by recruitment agencies, particularly in the healthcare industry in the COVID-19 context;

• Assisted trafficking survivors in building, mounting, and sustaining public campaigns to demand justice for wage theft, labor trafficking, discrimination, and other labor violations;

• Assisted trafficking survivors to forming their own survivor and migrant worker-led organizations;

• Led three national anti-trafficking summits to gather survivors, activists, service providers, and government leaders to discuss community collaboration in the anti-trafficking movement;

• Presented research at a roundtable discussion on “Transnational Filipino Activism Against Labor Trafficking” at the CUNY Asian-American/Asian Research Institute’s Asian-American Studies symposium; and

• Advocated on behalf of trafficking survivors and migrant workers by presenting data from participatory action research projects at the United Nations High Level Dialogue on Migration in New York.