Date - Monday 1st July 2024

Bryn Frere-Smith had a background in law enforcement as a police officer in the UK, and worked in covert policing in the Met. After leaving the force, he took a position to work for an anti-trafficking organization called International Justice Mission headquartered in Washington DC, which is the largest anti-slavery organization in the world. He was deployed to support an investigation team in the Dominican Republic and add capacity to local law enforcement, including skills and being deployed to tourist areas and geographies that law enforcement would usually struggle to access.

Bryn was engaged in a project as an investigator responding to the commercial sexual exploitation of children. There are a number of studies conducted in the country by the United Nations and IJM that found in their original prevalent study that one in ten sex workers or people working in  commercial sex industry were a minor they were a child, and in open areas including parks or beaches, one in four were under the age of eighteen.

Bryn identified that organisations and local law enforcement were very effective at getting children young people out of these situations but  preventing a re-trafficking re-exploitation is complex. After returning to the UK, Bryn raised a small amount of funding that was used to support young people that were brought out of those situations with items including school books, uniforms and food groceries.

Bryn then founded Blue Bear Coffee, an anti-slavery organization that sells coffee and using a business model to tackle modern slavery and human trafficking.

In the podcast, Bryn shares the origin story of Blue Bear Coffee, how the social enterprise operates and the projects that they have been able to support with the profits generated.

If you would like to learn more about Blue Bear Coffee, visit their website here: https://bluebearcoffee.com/

Connect with Bryn on Linkedin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryn-frere-smith-00093b99/

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