Seeing What Others Walked Past
In 2007, Christine Caine was walking through the Thessaloniki airport in Greece when she noticed something that stopped her cold. Posters of missing women and girls lined the walls — dozens of faces, names, ages. Locals walked past without looking up. Christine could not look away.
She learned that Greece was a major transit hub for human trafficking in Europe. Women and children were being bought and sold in broad daylight, and the infrastructure to fight it was virtually nonexistent. Christine had no background in anti-trafficking work, no legal training, no political connections. She had a deep conviction that every person on those posters had a name and a story, and someone needed to fight for them.
Building A21
In 2008, Christine and her husband Nick launched the A21 Campaign — named for "Abolish injustice in the 21st century." They started with a single office in Thessaloniki. The early days were overwhelming. The team worked with local law enforcement, set up a shelter for rescued women, and began the slow, unglamorous work of victim aftercare — legal support, counselling, language training, safe housing.
The work was dangerous. Trafficking networks in southeast Europe were connected to organised crime. But A21 kept showing up, case after case, rescue after rescue.
A Global Movement
By 2024, A21 operated in eighteen countries across six continents. The organisation had assisted in thousands of rescues, run prevention programs reaching millions of students, and established transit monitoring stations in airports and bus terminals to intercept trafficking in real time.
What began as one woman who could not walk past those posters became a global justice movement. Christine did not wait for permission or credentials. She started where the need was and let the work expand from there.
What This Means for You
You do not need to be an expert to respond to injustice. Christine Caine had no roadmap for what A21 would become. She simply refused to look away. If something is breaking your heart right now — a cause, a person, a community — that heartbreak might be the starting point. You do not need to solve everything. You just need to start.