Unchained Project

The Challenge

Today, 25 million people are held captive in forced labor - all over the world - even in developed countries, there are more slaves in the world than ever before. There are more slaves than over the last 400 years combined. One in four victims of modern slavery are children.

There remains a huge lack awareness that this crisis exists as it is hard to believe in our modern times this is possible, and for those who are aware, what action can they take?

Times are changing. The consumer has more power than ever before with their purchasing decisions and can dramatically decrease demand for those products that do NOT align with their values.  So yes, we can make a difference.

Our Approach

We as a team in The Port Humanitarian hackathon, kept coming back to a lack of awareness in our discussion, if only people knew – this wouldn’t happen. If people know, they would act. See as public pressure mounts, the momentum would shift towards positive change: from denial to ownership and from finger-pointing to collaborative action.

We applaud the organisations, the governments and the NGO’s who are working in this field.   We will collaborate with them to develop an awareness platform to build the bridge between the information out there and the consumer to make sure that we unchain the modern day slaves and we support all shoppers to have the information and confidence to know that everything they buy is made without slave labor.

Results

Project Team

Adolfo Romero

Adolfo is a 24 years old Physics Student with focus in startup development. After the Stockholm International Junior Water Prize he cames back to Mexico with his mission of encouraging more people to innovate for humankind prosperity. He enjoys to share philosophical thoughts and to listen to music with friends and family.

Cyrus Pan Walther

Hello everyone, my name is Cyrus Walther. I am a german student of physics at the University of Dortmund. I just completed my bachelor degree and will continue with my master studies in November, aiming at Beyond-Standard-Model effects in the ATLAS Collaboration. Furthermore I am a CERN Summer Student in a collaboration with the University of Prague. In my free time I like to eagerly practise Jiu-Jitsu and the asian tradition, play the piano, head the local community and bouldering.

Diego Avila

Diego is a materials engineer from Guatemala currently residing in Munich, Germany. He participated in THE Port 2020 and was in Pier 88, dealing with the subject of human trafficking and trying to contribute on the programming side of the project. For Diego, THE Port hackathon has represented a unique opportunity to bring a new perspective to humanitarian issues. Having people from different backgrounds and different cultures to work on SDG goals is a refreshing approach to global problems. In his second year at the Port, he hopes he can be more proactive, meet a bunch of cool people and provide better insight gained through experience.

Ingrid Arkesteijn

Ingrid is very experienced senior major event and program manager working for major international multi-sport events for over 20 years. Events she worked at include Olympic, Paralympic, Commonwealth, Asian, Pan-American Games, the inaugural European Games and several smaller events. She is interested in working with people and learn from solutions from other industries and looking outside the box to tacking challenging issues.

James Jennings

James is an entrepreneur, business consultant, and former executive with experience in coffee, renewable energy, health care, and other industries. This is his third hackathon with THE Port. He enjoys travel, cooking, skiing, hiking, rowing, and making maple syrup.

Kerry Counts

Kerry has 20+ yrs in global communications, working for top brands across multiple industries. She is the co-founder and CEO of Squids Network, an international advertising agency that is set up to work remotely, enabling the agency’s talent to work from anywhere in the world. She is passionate about creating great ideas that make a difference, even if just a dent. She has worked in 3 continents and has a bachelor’s degree in communications and an MBA in international business.

Klara Jarolimova

Klara is from the Czech Republic and currently resides in Chicago, USA. Upon completion of MS in Business IT and Human-Computer Interaction, she found her calling when she started applying her UX expertise in the humanitarian sector and started exploring the role of HCI in combatting human trafficking. Eventually, she would like to expand on this topic as a focus for a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction. She enjoys sports, photography, travel, guitar/piano/djembe jamming, dancing, and sailing.

Monalisa Orofino

I am a Business Designer and a Digital Communication Strategist with experience in Design Thinking and Social Innovation. I am a natural creative problem-solver, with analytical curiosity for all that is new and out of my comfort zone. I love to help interesting people doing interesting things and I love to connect people and ideas to make things happen. I am half-Portuguese, half Italian, born in Germany and currently living in Milan. I feel comfortable working in multicultural teams where I can experience the magic of participatory creativity coming from diverse cultural perspectives. I have been involved in many hackathons, one of them is Versus Virus in 2020. In my spare time, I’m also a Meditation&Yoga teacher and a Shiatsu practitioner.

Sampada Gaonkar

Hello! I have completed my BSc. degree in Physics from St. Xavier’s College ,Mumbai and I wish to pursue a research career in astrophysics, specifically exoplanetary science. I firmly believe that science and ideas around the globe can turn helpful for bringing out a positive impact on the issues faced by the world today and can help reach out to the ones in need. Hence, I am keenly interested in expanding my knowledge on various topics which will prove insightful for bringing out the change.

Simona Kriva

Simona is a proactive and committed global citizen with a passion for community engagement and collaboration. She obtained her Master’s Degree in International Relations at the University of Economics in Bratislava and is currently responsible for the admin and outreach matters of the Neutrino Platform at CERN. She is very passionate about various topics, from environmental justice, women empowerment to self-development. She loves books, foreign languages, mountains, volunteering and yoga.

Victor Kang

Victor is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, UK, whose interdisciplinary research interests include biomimetics, adhesion, biochemistry, and entomology. He is a keen problem-solver both in and out of the lab: his latest side-project is designing an affordable open-source air filtration device to help mitigate indoor air pollution. He also enjoys science outreach and photography. Victor previously worked at a life-sciences consulting firm and has a BSc degree from Yale University.

Resources

Unchained Project