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Sandy Bay Continues Support of Mekong Club

Sandy Bay Continues Support of Mekong Club

Grant Beuzeval5 Sep 2019 - 06:39
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https://www.hkusandybayrfc.com

Together raising awarness to disrupt and end modern slavery

When the Herbert Smith Freehills HKU Sandy Bay Men's Premiership team takes to the field this weekend for the opening match of the season, they'll once again be carrying the Mekong Club into battle. On the back of the 2019/20 Seniors playing shirts the Mekong Club logo sits proudly atop the players shirt number.

At the Sandy Bay HK Sevens Dinner in April this year, a raffle raised $35,000 for Mekong Club and the club continues to support Mekong Club where possible by raising awareness and highlighting the actions that we as individuals and organisations can take to ensure that we are not contributing to the staggering numbers of marginlised individuals that are trapped into modern day slavery.

Mekong Club CEO, Matt Friedman, picks up the story with an update on recent progess...

"We continue to work to raise awareness of modern slavery across Asia, including here in Hong Kong. Our logo on Sandy Bay's kit has been a fantastic way to raise awareness and bring more people to the fight against modern slavery, and we are very grateful to all who have reached out to us to learn more about this cause after seeing the logo and hearing about our relationship with the club. We wish you a successful season ahead Sandy Bay!

Over the past season, we have seen significant progress made in Asia-Pacific with the introduction of the new Australian Modern Slavery Act earlier this year. This new law makes it easier to prosecute the criminals that exploit others and means that companies with any business in Australia must now publicly explain what they are doing to combat modern slavery in their supply chains. This affects a huge number of companies and has a knock-on effect across factories and supply chains all over Asia, we are very please to see Australia stepping up and leading the way on this and we continue to campaign for similar laws to be put in place across Asia.

We have also been working on applying technology to support modern slavery victim identification and prevention in Thailand. We have been busy piloting Apprise (victim interview app) and eMin (worker documentation app), to help support local NGOs and to empower workers with the tools needed to seek fair employment, and report labour abuses. We have been running workshops and trainings on how to identify possible modern slavery, how to shop and source ethically, and how to combat criminal activity. At our core, we believe that the private sector does have the power to help the 40.3 million victims of modern slavery across the world, and we continue our mission to demonstrate that doing good and being profitable are not mutually exclusive by working closely with organisations to generate change."

About Mekong Club

The Mekong Club is a leader — uniting and mobilising the private sector for a common cause — to disrupt and end modern slavery.

There are more slaves today than at any other time in history. 45.8 million people in 167 countries are trapped in what is known as “modern slavery,” with seven out of ten of these victims directly related to the private sector. These people, who make the products we buy and harvest the food we eat, are exploited every day for their labor. Despite the best efforts made by governments, the United Nations and NGOs around the world, only 0.2% of the victims around the world are helped each year. We need to enlist the help of the private sector.

The Mekong Club's mission is act as a catalyst for change – engaging, inspiring and supporting the private sector to lead in the fight against modern slavery.

For more information - https://themekongclub.org/

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