Survivors Connect

About | APPLY for Display | SUBMIT a Panel
Digital Archives | Event Calendar | Participating Organizations | How to Participate

The mission of The Survivor’s Quilt is to raise awareness about modern-day slavery and to honor the survival of slaves globally. The Survivor’s Quilt provides survivors with a creative medium of expression, healing and a space to directly participate in their own awareness movement.

Aims of The Survivor’s Quilt include:

• To effectively raise awareness about the varied nature of human trafficking and modern day slavery as the Quilt tours the U.S. and other countries in governing institutions, places of worship, schools, conferences and more.
• To link international anti-trafficking initiatives through out the world through a partnership program and provide information exchange and programs.
• To assist in creating Survivor’s Quilt initiatives in countries to break the silence about slavery.
• To provide rehabilitation programs the opportunity to engage in art therapy.
• To offer opportunities for fundraising, empowerment, technical assistance, quilt-making activities and information-sharing for anti-trafficking organizations globally.
• To create a permanent archive of preserved memoirs and art by former slaves.
• To establish a global network of anti-trafficking organizations and provide program continuity to increase the growth and development of the international Survivor’s Quilt.
• To reveal the stories of those trafficked, share the message of hope and courage and inspire the growth of more abolitionists in the anti-slavery movement.

Survivors Quilt & Survivors Connect?

When The Survivors Quilt was founded in 2007, our team identified that not only was this a creative medium through which to raise awareness, but it was also empowering for all survivors and activists involved. Survivors Connect philosophy, approach and design is modeled after the lessons learned from the Survivor’s Quilt, which include citizen-driven participation, transparency, and global connectivity. We invite people globally to be a part of the project!

What Happens to a Panel?

After the panel arrives to us, we log it in to our archive by taking a picture of the panel and attaching it to the primary panel maker’s information. As part of our archive project, we number them along with each person’s information so we have a continuous record for them. We also carefully take the panel and sew it along to the batting with the rest of submitted panels. A set of 25 panels will become a quilt.

Panel makers are notified if their panel will be displayed at a certain event. Survivor’s quilts are on display in museums, universities and public venues all over the country to educate the community about human trafficking and modern-day slavery.

Survivor’s Voices

The next phase of this project is to create a digital archive of each panel submitted so that these creative and oral histories may chronicle this human rights abuse in a very real way for generations to come. This will serve as a permanent memorial to those who have experienced modern-day slavery and will create valuable lessons for our children in the future that slavery still exists and needs to end today. Additionally, our archive system will also allow for an exchanging of messages between survivors and supporters globally.

For those who are interested in adding their story to the Survivor’s Voices project, please feel free to include it with your panel submission!

How to get Involved?

If you’re a survivor of service-provider organization working with victims & survivors and wish to participate in the project OR If you’re a Student Group, Museum, Organization or Individual who wishes to Display the Quilt at your event, email us at quilt@survivorsconnect.org for an application.

Survivors Connect is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.