The Freedom Café is a non-profit specialty café and collaborative space providing awareness events, education, training and a simple way to fund the work needed to end human trafficking and the commercial exploitation of all people.
Our Mission
The Freedom Cafe of Durham is a non-profit specialty café dedicated to ending human trafficking and the commercial exploitation of all people. The café provides a collaborative space that invites the local community to take ownership and action toward a slave-free world. Through presentations, discussion groups and community events, we seek to educate local citizens about the complexities of the issue and its root causes, the actions necessary for preventing it, and ways to support reputable organizations working to bring about a world where all people are free.
How we are making a difference
Engaging the Community
The Freedom Café provides an entry point for individuals and organizations to connect, learn, volunteer and invest in the mission to create a traffic-free world.
Hosting the GIFT Box in New England
In collaboration with Stop the Traffik and the UN.GIFT (United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking) The Freedom Café oversees the placement and training for the New England GIFT Box, a walk-in piece of public art, to raise awareness, educate, and empower people to take action to STOP human trafficking.
Funding the Movement
Through our pay-what-you-want café, we raise funds to support education and awareness programing and provide grants to reputable non-profits around the globe serving in areas of prevention, legislation, intervention and survivor after-care.
Promoting Ethical Consumption and Resilient Communities
Human trafficking occurs among people of all backgrounds, yet it is inextricably linked to the exploitation of those in extreme poverty. As we shine a light on supply chains and offer fair and direct trade products we support farmers and the development of resilient communities around the globe and inspire guests to become ethical consumers.
“We have the power to make a different choice…The story I have told you is messy and unfinished, but I think it mirrors the mess and unfinished situation we are all in when it comes to human trafficking. We are all implicated in this problem. But that means, we are all also part of its solution. Figuring out how to build a more just world is our work to do and our story to tell. So let us tell it the way we should have done from the very beginning. Let us tell this story together.”