Nasreen Sheikh: A Survivor-Led Movement to End Modern Slavery

Our mission is really to activate the power of this community to create a more regenerative and equitable future, and we get to do that by working with an incredible cohort of Summit Fellows — people who are working on all sorts of challenges in the world and who do really remarkable work. And Nasreen, our speaker today, is one of our fellows, now a Fellows alumnus, and we're going to tell you a little bit more about her story.

Nasreen was born undocumented in a rural village. She was forced to work in a sweatshop where she experienced the very dark realities of modern slavery — a topic that I have learned so much more about from her, and the really beautiful way she holds both the darkness of what's happening in the world and the opportunity we have to change it. Nasreen leads social businesses and nonprofits dedicated to ending modern slavery. She is a voice for the 50 million people who are voiceless in this challenge right now around the world. And in this session, she's going to tell a bit about her story and also shine a light on consumer culture and the human cost of our purchases.

I want to invite you all to just take a minute to notice — we're at this big event, there's lots of consumption that happened to bring a lot of us here, there's lots that happens in this community context. And perhaps the opportunity we have here is to listen to Nasreen's story, to rethink some of our own personal relationships to consumption, and to share that with others who are on board, to invite more people into this conversation. So with that, we're going to play a brief intro video and then Nasreen will join us on stage. Thank you everyone for being here.

[video]

My name is Nasreen Sheikh. I am a survivor of modern-day slavery and the founder of Empowerment Collective. In today's world, inexpensive products and corporate profit shape the habits of our consumption, often at the expense of human lives and our planet's well-being.

Nasreen Sheikh was born in the rural village of Rashura, India, on the border with Nepal. Her exceptional resilience provided the strength to overcome childhood trauma, and today she is an entrepreneurial advocate for disadvantaged women, an international public speaker, and a leading voice for human rights.

In my village, births are not documented. I do not know my birthday or my exact age. I grew up believing that girls and women are commodities, not human beings. When I was about 9 or 10 years old, I went to work in Kathmandu. I lived and worked in a 10-by-10 sweatshop with six other people for more than two years. When the sweatshop closed, I found myself living on the streets. But it was there that I met a kind man, Leslie John. He was a scholar who spoke many different languages. I became his one and only student. When I was about 14, Leslie helped me acquire my first loan for a sewing machine. Soon afterwards, I met Rita. She spoke my village language and was living on the streets. When Rita asked for help, I taught her how to sew. This was the beginning of my work.

According to the United Nations, as of 2022, 49.6 million people live in modern-day slavery, and over 70 percent of them are women. The Empowerment Collective's contribution to the global effort to end modern-day slavery takes a grassroots approach — building relationships and creating long-term, generational healing. Empowerment Collective is dedicated to raising global awareness and providing marginalized women in Nepal and India the support and skills they need to ensure their self-sufficiency and dignity.

At our empowerment centers in Kathmandu and Tirai, women receive training in vocational skills and health education. They graduate with the confidence to become artisans, mentors, and entrepreneurs in a transparent and fair trade industry. We invite you to join the growing movement of conscious consumption. Let's choose products created with full supply chain transparency that are made with care for our beautiful planet. Each choice we make has the power to bring light to the millions of people still living in darkness. I am Nasreen Sheikh — survivor and leader in the movement to end modern-day slavery.

[applause]

Hello! It's so good to see you all. In 2018, I became a first Summit Fellow. And out of thousands of incredibly talented fellows from 203 different countries applying to be a fellow, I was so lucky to be included. When I walked into Summit, I was not aware of anything.

And after a year later, I met a kind person, Kevin Wilkin, who became my mentor and gave me some tools and knowledge and really helped me step into my power. I also met with Brian Meehan, who became our funder and helped build our second Women's Empowerment Center in Nepal. And last year I met Jeff Rosenthal, who said that I should come and speak at the Summit. So here I am today with all of you. Thank you so much for your time and attention.

I have a question for all of you: how many of you know what modern-day slavery is? Oh, wow — like four or five of you are aware of that. Thank you so much for doing that research and becoming aware of that.

Recently, the GSI report — Global Slavery Index — says that 10 more million people got into slavery, which makes 50 million people. Out of those 50 million people, 28 million of them are in forced labor and 22 million of them are experiencing forced marriage. Unfortunately, I had to experience that.

I come from, as everybody talked about in the video, a very, very rural village with no electricity, no cars, no hospitals — a place where children are born on the floor of their family homes, and neither births nor deaths are documented. When I was born, I saw that my village was beautiful, it has so much access to nature, yet the community was very led by male domination.

I experienced that some of my aunts were really going through hardship. I witnessed a horrific situation in life. I saw that every single girl around the age of 18, 19, 20 was being forced into marriage. And when my own 12-year-old sister was being forced into marriage, I asked my mother: she's unhappy, she's crying, she wants to go to school — why are you forcing her into marriage? And she said, "It's not me." And I was like, then who? And she said, "It's the society, it's the culture." And she said that this is what happened to me, this is what happened to your sister, and it will come to you. This is something generational. This is what this village represents.

Since that time, I was like, oh my God, it's me — I'm going to be forced into marriage. And slowly I became so disconnected from my own family and the communities around me, and I could not find any inspiration or any knowledge or any resources. So what I did is I started to pray, and I would spend most of my time in nature. I would see the sun and I would run with it. I would see the trees and just hug them and pray. And I realized that nature could talk to me and I could talk to nature, and that slowly gave me the courage to decide to leave my village.

When I was around 9 or 10 years old, I decided to leave my village with the help of my cousin, only looking for freedom. I really wanted to be free of that generational trauma, that generational karma. I was thinking that I would leave and I would have a better life and I would be free in the city. But all of a sudden, I was in the capital city of Kathmandu, in a 10-by-10 room with six other people — door closed, windows shut — and the agent is coming and going and saying, "Okay, you have to work and finish these 500 pieces of clothes in a week. It does not matter how many hours you work, but you have to finish this quota on time. And if you don't finish this quota on time, you will not get paid at all."

So for that reason, we had to wake up around 3 AM, 4 AM and work all the way to 8, 9, 10, 11 PM. And still these pieces would not be finished. And that's when the agent would come and splash cold water on our eyes and would tell us, "You have to finish. I'm being pushed by other people, and if we don't finish it, we will not get paid at all."

So that's when I prayed again, and I could not talk to anybody. So I started to talk to the clothes that I was making. And I said to those clothes: whoever is going to wear these clothes, I hope they can feel me, I hope they can see my tears and my blood. And in the sweatshop there was no bed, so I slept on the large bundle of clothes, and I would daydream about where they would end up and who would wear them.

Like that, I worked for almost two years. And the agent made us work for two months and left us with two months' salary and disappeared. Six of us became completely destitute and disempowered and we didn't know what to do. Other people went to find jobs in another sweatshop. And I became a street kid. I think I was around 10 or 11 when I was on the street.

When I was on the street, one thing that really inspired me was seeing all these students going to school. And I always wondered, oh, I wish I could have a book, I wish I could have a backpack, I wish I could have a uniform, I wish I could go to school. But my reality was so different. My family was taken away from me, my community was not there, I was not educated, I was very, very vulnerable. And in Nepal, that's how 10,000-plus women every year get into human trafficking — just being on the street. And I could have ended up in the next loop of slavery.

I just really feel like it's very important for all of us to really connect and understand the power of one. And today I want to pray with you — that instead of these 22 million girls and boys being forced into marriage, I hope they will get education. These 28 million people who are stitching the logos of companies — I hope they will become engineers who actually solve climate change or human rights issues. Those are my prayers that I'm praying with all of you and dreaming with you.

Sharing this story is not easy for me. It took a lot of courage to come here on this stage to share that.

So I'm on the street, I'm feeling destitute, disempowered, I have no one to look up to. And one day a miracle happens. I'm sitting on the street and I see a dog come to me and sniff my hand. And I get startled, because dogs are so wild in poor countries. And behind this dog is this gentle, kind man. His name is Leslie John. He's a white person and he speaks perfect Nepali. And he says to me, "Don't be scared of this dog, he's like my son. Come here and pet him." And for the first time, somebody in my life was telling me, "Come here."

So I immediately grabbed his wrist and I asked him, "Uncle, please, can you teach me?" This person, Leslie John, became my mentor, my father, my teacher, my inspiration. He gave me education around arts and poetry and philosophy. And I really started to understand what human rights are, what is happening in my village, why my village is undocumented, why I don't know my birthday. And then I came to understand that my whole village is part of modern-day slavery, and there is not just me and my village — there are actually 50 million people.

So that really inspired me to take a small loan. I bought my first machine. And the little skill that I had learned in the sweatshop — I started to make my own products. And with those products I was successful. I was making them with love and care, and we had more demand. So I started to work with more women — disadvantaged and marginalized women.

In 2012, I started my first business called Local Women's Handicraft. And my shop almost became an activism place where journalists and artists and the community started to come together, and it was more than a business. In 2012, a woman from Canada came and said, "What are you doing?" And I was like, "Oh, we're just making sustainable fashion." And she said, "Can I write this story?" And she wrote our story in Forbes Magazine. And I did not know what Forbes Magazine was in 2012.

[laughter]

Coming from the country that I come from, we face a lot of challenges — humanitarian challenges, climate change challenges. And in 2015, Nepal was hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. I was in Nepal, and I was on the phone, and the earth shook like this for a tiny bit and then just literally — we fell off, my phone gets thrown out, and within a few seconds, 9,000 people died, billions of dollars in economic loss, and so many beautiful heritage temples got destroyed. So that's when my business also really struggled, and I became more of a humanitarian.

Also in 2016, one of my friends said, "You should come to America and speak." And I was like, me, speaking? I don't know — I'm still dealing and healing with my trauma, and I'm trying to help people. And she said, "No, you should come. People in America don't know what's really happening on the ground. You should come and speak." So I said okay.

In 2016, I came to America. And I walked into this major department store, and I see piles and piles and piles of clothes. And I really did not know who made these. And I started to have memories coming back — oh my God, these are the clothes that I used to make when I was a child. And I came to realize that right now, today, almost 80 billion pieces of clothes are being sold, and people are consuming 400 times more than 20 years ago. It's very shocking. And the clothing industry is the second most polluting industry on our planet.

So that really inspired me to actually open a nonprofit to fight modern-day slavery. And as I came to America, the more I learned, I started to meet with very influential people and I started to understand what indigenous knowledge is, what are these looms, what are these crafts.

In our center, we brought a 100-year-old loom that does not need any electricity. We work with the farmers who harvest hemp. We use this very traditional method — spin and make these beautiful yoga mats. And all these survivors are coming together to stop fast fashion and really connect people with what they are wearing.

Recently, in my research, I saw that if you're wearing synthetic fabric, you are putting 5,000 units of negative energy into your body. And if you wear linen or hemp, it's 5,000 units of positive energy you're putting in your body.

After meeting Gloria Steinem and Pope Francis and so many incredible corporate leaders, I felt like we were all trying our best, but we were so disconnected with the source of manufacturing. People simply did not know how to map their entire supply chain. I would just be traveling around and seeing — people are consuming so fast, and they don't know what they're consuming. Their clothes, their shoes — they have no idea.

I don't know how many of you know about Fashion Revolution? They are campaigning around "Who Made My Clothes?" And you should really look into that organization, Fashion Revolution. You could also join the campaign around "Who Made My Clothes?" and really ask questions. Because what will happen is — as I said, America is importing so much. It's almost 169.6 billion dollars of products that America alone is importing that contain slavery.

So when you go to a shop, the supply chain transparency is completely hidden. And hidden means it's children like us, it's people like us who don't know their birthday, who don't have documents, who can't speak for themselves. And these are the people that are also heavily impacted by climate change. So if you could really start asking questions and start buying from local artists and local businesses, it will not only help all these people who are the victims of those situations, but it will also help the climate.

The more I was learning, I found that America has a very interesting history with slavery. And I was thinking that maybe this is the freest country on the planet, then I realized that actually slavery exists within this country also. There are around 1.1 million people in the garment industry, in the agriculture industry, that are working for many, many hours and not being paid.

I also came to understand how America is such a different country. I see so many people being aware and talking about investing in climate and forgetting about human rights, forgetting about indigenous communities. So it's very important to include us.

And then I met with Fair Trade Certified and Whole Foods, and there's a whole new movement going on around sustainable consumption. One of the ways that I feel like you could really consume good products is by supporting local artists within your own communities or asking questions. You should also think about this: one t-shirt takes almost 300 gallons of water to make — that's water one person could drink for a year. Seeing the impact through our consumption — the food industry, the clothing industry — all of these are very important.

For the last 10 years, I have been documenting my story and really thinking about how to document the story from the perspective of a survivor — from the lens of a survivor. Because a lot of the films and the research are done by very intellectual people, which I honor, but nothing has been done through the survivor experience. We don't have so much formal knowledge or information, but what we have is experience — our experience around our cultures and our traditions and our language. And if you can really listen — we are not the best communicators. I speak five different languages, and it's really hard for me to speak in English. So I'm trying my best to really translate this impact, and I hope that you all can really start asking questions.

This is a new topic. If you can do research, there is a really great organization called the International Labour Organization, and Walk Free, which releases the report around the GSI. We are having the first release in the UK, so if you could keep an eye on it, that would be really great.

I'm just curious — how many of you know where the clothes that you're wearing today come from? Do any of you know? Ah, two people. Thank you so much! I really appreciate that, and I honor you for knowing where your clothes come from, where your food comes from, and making an impact.

Because we live in an interconnected world where everybody is connected. And if 20 years ago somebody would have asked questions about where my clothes come from, maybe I did not have to be in the sweatshop.

Going back to my community — it's terrifying, because we are experiencing generational trauma. I have not been to my village for the last 15 years. Everything is stolen from us, and we need help. We need support. People who have access to electricity and access to internet — that is such a privilege. We forget how privileged this country is. This country represents true freedom, not only for Americans but as inspiration for the rest of the world. So how can you use your technology? How can you use your language and resources to really make a connection with those 50 million people?

I think my time is getting over now, so I will be here and I would like to connect with you more if you have any questions. As I said, I am a learner. I'm still researching, I'm still healing from the psychological things that happened in my life. Seeing my childhood completely blacked out and filled with trauma — it's so hard to see. But it's people like you that give me hope, who come here and listen to the voices of survivors.

And I want to inspire you — if you have companies and if you have organizations, please invite survivors. They will have a different experience, they will have a different story to share, they will have different knowledge to share. And maybe that is one of the ways to really help humanity and the climate, because we are such an interconnected community.

So thank you for having me, and I will talk to you later.

[applause]