This week on Full Frame: Child slavery

Full Frame

Angie Harmon with Mike WalterHollywood actress Angie Harmon discusses her role as spokesperson for UNICEF’s End Trafficking Project.

At this very moment, there are more than five and a half million children, worldwide, living as modern-day slaves – as forced laborers, sex workers, domestic servants, child soldiers and street beggars.

And it’s all unfolding in virtually every country in the world. We speak with those who are fighting against human trafficking and slavery, one vulnerable child victim at a time.  This week on Full Frame: Child Slavery.

Tune into Full Frame on CCTV America at 7:00 pm ET on September 5, 2015. 

Angie Harmon: Child advocate

Angie Harmon

Hollywood actress Angie Harmon discusses her role as spokesperson for UNICEF’s End Trafficking Project.

Angie Harmon’s still fighting crime on TV, but these days, it’s as police detective Jane Rizzoli on “Rizzoli & Isles” – the role that recently earned her a People’s Choice Award for “Favorite Cable TV Actress.”

Appointed a UNICEF Ambassador in 2013, Angie Harmon is committed to advocating on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable citizens.

For the past two years, she’s served as a spokesperson for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s End Trafficking Project, raising awareness about child trafficking and working to mobilize communities to take meaningful action to help protect at-risk children around the world.

The star also has a line of recycled, hand-cast brass and aluminum jewelry, called the Angie Harmon Red Earth Collection. Her designs are made in collaboration with artisans in Kenya who work with Red Earth; a portion of the proceeds from the sales go to UNICEF.

Angie Harmon joins Mike Walter in our Los Angeles studio to talk about her work with UNICEF and the End Trafficking Project.

Follow Angie on Twitter: @Angie Harmon

Vivienne Harr: Freeing child slaves

Vivienne Harr

Vivienne Harr discusses her efforts to free 500 children from slavery by selling lemonade.

One simple photo. That’s all it took to inspire a young girl to take a stand against child slavery.

Vivienne Harr was only eight years old when her parents showed her a book with images documenting modern slavery. The harrowing image of two young Himalayan brothers caught her eye and sparked the idea that every child, around the globe, deserved to have a real childhood.

Her goal? To raise $100,000 to free 500 children from slavery. And she’d do it by selling, what else? Lemonade.

That was three years ago. Today, the 11-year-old has a full-fledged bottled beverage company that’s donated to charities across the globe.

In addition to bottling and selling her own lemonade online and at retail stores, she has written a children’s book and she’s behind the creation of a philanthropic crowdfunding platform.

Did we mention, Vivienne is only 11?

Mike Walter sits down with Vivienne Harr, and her dad, to talk about turning “compassion into action.”

Follow Vivienne on Twitter: @VivienneHarr

Jane Sloane: Ending child marriage

Jane Sloane

Jane Sloane of Global Fund for Women discusses child marriage.

According to UNICEF, more than 700 million of the world’s married women were wedded before they turned 18.

This means that 28 girls are entering into child marriage every minute worldwide–some 15 million girls per year. Tragically, some are as young as eight years old.

Two of the regions where child marriage is most common are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. As a result of these unions, the leading cause of death for girls ages 15 to 19 in the countries of these regions is pregnancy and childbirth. If nothing is done to prevent child brides from being forced into marriage, 1.2 billion girls will be at risk by 2050.

Jane Sloane is fighting to protect the rights and dignity of child brides and hopes to see an end to the child marriages in her lifetime.

She is the Vice President of Programs at the Global Fund for Women, an organization that has funded 241 organizations in 53 countries that are all working to stop early marriage.

Jane Sloane joins Mike Walter in our Los Angeles studio to discuss what can be done to change the plight of child brides worldwide.

Follow Jane on Twitter: @JaneInTheWorld

Geraldine “Gigi” Freyeisen: Finding fashion on Skid Row

Geraldine "Gigi" Freyeisen

Photographer Geraldine “Gigi” Freyeisen uses photography to capture the fashion side of people living on L.A.’s Skid Row.

Photographer Geraldine Freyeisen, also known as “Gigi”, is trying to capture the chic side of Skid Row. The Los Angeles neighborhood has one of the highest concentrations of homeless people living in the United States. In pop culture and on the evening news, it’s known as a hotbed for drug addiction, crime and prostitution.

But Gigi wants to change the narrative about the people who live there.

Her photography blog, called Swagabonds, shows another side of Skid Row. It documents the street fashion of the people of living here and she is now working on a fashion line with the same name.

On this week’s Close Up, Full Frame visits Skid Row to see how a unique sense of style and some creative inspiration are changing the way people view this homeless community.

Follow Geraldine on Instagram

Tune into Full Frame on CCTV America at 7:00 pm ET on September 5, 2015.