Anna Brodersen

It could be the world’s best kept secret.

According to The CNN Freedom Project, at this second there are 20-30 million people living in slavery. In fact, there are more slaves today than at any other time in history, including the duration of the African slave trade.

The League of Nations defines slavery as when one person exercises the ‘right’ of ownership over another person. But today, slavery has various forms including forced labor, bonded labor, child labor and human trafficking, where the victims are transported away from their homes and forced to work.

In the United States alone, as many as 17,500 people are trafficked annually, according to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Every minute two children are sold into slavery according to Innocence Atlanta. Atlanta, GA is a major hub of human trafficking and ranked among the top 14 cities in the U.S. for the highest number of children used in prostitution (Governor’s Office for Children and Families).

For the past 16 years Atlanta has made itself home to more than 60,000 students that attend the Passion conference. Passion is a Christian conference in early January conducted by Generation 268, a Christian organization whose purpose is “uniting students in worship and prayer for spiritual awakening in this generation.” Passion is where students meet to worship and take a stand on many social injustices, including modern slavery. This year, the students donated more than $3.3 million toward efforts to end modern slavery.

One of those students was Drue Voorhees, junior. Although she had watched the live feed of the conference in previous years, this was her first time actually attending Passion.

“It woke me up and made me realize that we need to do something about [slavery],” Voorhees said.  “We can stop it.  It’s a huge problem, and it really put a burden on my heart.”

Free The Slaves is a nonprofit organization working with Passion to free the population currently enslaved and help them stay free forever.

“The reason we began was to sound the global alarm that slavery still exists in the modern world, why it exists and where it exists, where it’s worst,” Terry FitzPatrick, Free The Slaves communications director, said. “We are actually implementing these programs in selected hotspot countries around the world to demonstrate not just that slavery still exists, but that it really can be ended. If you really concentrate on community action and you address the reasons that people are enslaved, and not just rescue them, we can end slavery forever.”

Watching the live streaming of Passion inspired Voorhees to write a research paper about the topic last year to spread the word.

“When I tell people about [modern slavery], they’re so shocked [that slavery still exists],” Voorhees said.

A way to join the movement is to be a conscious consumer, and, according to Free The Slaves, everyone should know what is behind the products they buy.

“This doesn’t just exist overseas or somewhere in poor countries,” FitzPatrick said. “We are all affected by it inside the United States because we buy the products that are made by slaves. There is slavery in every shopping mall in America, and that is because many products from coffee to cars to cell phones to computers are made in sweatshop factories with slaves working there, or they’re made with raw materials like metals or raw cocoa. We are working hard to try to get rid of that in the market.”

Free The Slaves focuses their work outside the United States where they believe slavery is the worst.

“When Lincoln outlawed slavery it didn’t actually end slavery,” FitzPatrick said. “He just started ending slavery, and it’s our job to finish what Lincoln started.”