I have worked with the Polaris Project for several years now – they are a leading organization in the global fight against human trafficking and modern-day slavery and they are transforming the way that individuals and communities respond to human trafficking.

This year, we finished a project that I am still very proud of – helping victim of human trafficking ask for help via a text message. For people trapped in a trafficking situation, sending a text message might be the best of only opportunity to ask for help. And it works…

To power the text messaging service, Polaris partnered with Twilio, who this week launched Twilio.Org to help qualified non profits utilize their service with $500 of Twilio kickstart credits and 25% discount on Twilio Voice and Messaging products, and then you get to work with great guys like Rob, who helped me get everything working.

We are finishing up a new version of the code, and Polaris has agreed that I can publish that code for other organizations to use and learn from. It is still a work in progress and needs some refinement, so I’ll be making some updates to the code over the next few days, and then create a unmanaged package and some instructions about how you can get up and running with Twilio and Salesforce. I will also add in some other features over the next few weeks such as alerts to members of a Campaign.

In the meantime, here is an overview of the solution, and how Polaris is using it to help stop trafficking today…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdDc95_nq2w