Leveraging social entrepreneurship to combat trafficking

The RealStars case is an example of a student project promoting an entrepreneurial mindset to influence society. The project is conducted in the context of the course Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Master of Science in Knowledge-based Entrepreneurship) at the Department of Economy and Society, University of Gothenburg. Real Stars is a non-profit organization located in Gothenburg with the aim to work for a better world without sex trafficking. The organization increases awareness nationally and across borders within the EU with the help of campaigns, cooperation with companies’ CSR work as well as art and fashion initiatives spreading the message of “Fair Sex”. The main strategy to counteract sex trafficking is to reduce demand. Sweden is one of a few nations with a legal system prohibiting the purchase of sex. RealStars’ work is based on human rights and its goal is to influence decision-makers at the EU-level. The organization mostly gets support through pro bono work by their partners, making cooperation a key prerequisite for the organizations to grow and attract more attention. RealStars would like companies engaged in responsible and sustainable business to add trafficking to their agendas. An opportunity to collaborate is when companies launch products using the RealStars logotype in their marketing campaign, spreading the message. This case represents a problem of global scale and interest. Social entrepreneurship methods are particularly interesting to find solutions to this problem since the underlying thought is to spread the message with an entrepreneurial spirit, inspiring cooperation.

The students identified sex trafficking as a social problem representing a breach of human rights – people must have freedom of movement and the right to control their own body. This injustice and the exploitation of the human body hamper the victims’ mental and social development, leading to impaired self-confidence and dignity as well as larger social differences. In this case, the social entrepreneur establishes an initiative to form opinion against sex trafficking to increase awareness about the issue and eventually be able to make a difference. The students identified that the organization’s current main focus is to find a large amount of initiatives that can increase awareness on the issue with a broader audience. Therefore, the students suggest cooperating with one of the larger fair-trade coffee chains in town that then can market the organization in their daily operations. An important factor when identifying a collaboration partner highlighted by the students is that there should be some commercial benefits and a contact point where the message can be addressed. The basic idea is that, by addressing the message in a discrete way, for instance trough a short message on a cup or a flyer, spontaneous conversations can occur, and the message can be spread and grow in importance through discussions. It was suggested that this could be achieved by selling postcards in the coffee shop, put up name lists on the counter, use coffee mugs with a printed message and sell specific beverages that include a donation to Real Stars.