We’re excited to share Rethink Supply Chains: The Tech Challenge to Fight Labor Trafficking, a new project we’re working on for the Partnership for Freedom. The Partnership is led by Humanity United, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Pam Omidyar’s foundation, which is dedicated to advancing human freedom.

With $500,000 in prizes, the Rethink Supply Chains Challenge calls upon developers, designers, advocates, and innovators to apply their talents to a critical cause: combating labor trafficking in global supply chains for goods and services.

Forced labor is a very complex problem. The sugar in your coffee, last night’s fish dinner, the shirt you buttoned this morning, your manicure, the smartphone you never leave behind – as a consumer, you have no way of knowing whether forced labor was involved at some point in the supply chain that brings you these goods and services.

As Omidyar notes:

14 mil people in forced labor generate $150 billion for owners every year. Can tech help solve? https://t.co/m5YwG983RO #RethinkSupplyChains

— Pierre Omidyar (@pierre) October 28, 2015

The Challenge seeks tech concepts that focus on one or more of the following areas: elevating workers’ voices, improving the transparency and accountability of labor recruitment, and enabling better traceability of commodities, products, and labor conditions in high-risk supply chains.

We expect to see breakthrough solutions from solvers working on areas such as mobile payments, the blockchain, social listening, next generation sensors, and data mining – and that’s just the beginning.  

Sound interesting? Submit a concept by December 13, 2015 at www.rethinksupplychains.org, or please spread the word!