Zach Hunter started fighting slavery as a 7th grader. He founded Loose Change to Loosen Chains (LC2LC), an organization that mobilizes people to collect and raise money to fight human trafficking. Hunter is now 19 and the LC2LC is still going strong. The first LC2LC campaign is launching in Taiwan and the idea continues to spread here in the states — a school district in Washington has so fully embraced LC2LC that it’s part of the curriculum and they’ve raised over $70,000 so far.

“It’s spread worldwide,” Hunter said, “which is amazing and humbling.”

These days Hunter is speaking with the Planet Wisdom conference and writing books. A portion of the proceeds from his first book, Be the Change: Your Guide to Freeing Slaves and Changing the World, goes to fight human trafficking.

Here are Hunter’s five ways you can help end slavery:

1.         Get informed.
Don’t just jump on it because it’s fashionable. Move beyond the facts and figures and work to understand the real stories.

2.     Speak up.
Use your influence via social networking, personal relationships, blogs, anything that’s at your disposal. In our world of fluid communication, there’s no excuse for ignorance. In the words of William Wilberforce: “You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.” May that be so.

3.     Prevent slavery.
I support the work of Compassion International. Rather than focusing only on the rescue or only responding when there’s a crisis, I’d like to see us being more preemptive. By sponsoring a child through Compassion you’re releasing the trap of poverty that makes a child vulnerable to exploitation and oppression. When a child who is desperately poor is cared for, gets an education, is involved in their community and is getting fed they are being safeguarded against trafficking.

4.    Control demand.
We all play a part in slavery according to what we purchase. We can look for Fair Trade products, and research which companies are even better than Fair Trade.  It’s a small world — we need to know what we’re supporting with our dollars. You can use Chain Store Reaction to let corporations know this is a priority to you.

5.          Raise money.
There’s no shame in using your wealth (or the wealth of others) to support credible organizations working on the front lines. That’s where Loose Change to Loosen Chains got started—I knew we had some coins laying around that could be put to good use. I just didn’t know how quickly they’d add up. According to Real Simple magazine there’s more than $10.5 billion in loose change in American households. What if that was taken from our sock drawers and car floors and put to good use?

A lot has changed since Hunter started fighting slavery. Awareness has increased and big names like Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore have joined the cause.

“It’s also become a bit of a haute cause, which can be dangerous if we let it become a passing fad,” Hunter said. “It’s very important that the new interest in social justice results in a sustainable passion that drives us to get things done; not to just follow or start a trend and ride it until the next ‘thing’ comes along.”

Hunter is a true example of that sustainable passion.

“We must be dedicated to ending the trade of humans,” Hunter said. “More dedicated than the traffickers are to keeping the trade alive.”