Most likely - when you hear the word Slavery, you think of the atrocities of the past. The transatlantic slave trade must be the best known, but throughout history people have enslaved each other. Every single one of us has slave ancestors and slaver ancestors. The history of slavery is not just the hugely visible mass-operations that we learned about in school. It's also gone on at a much smaller scale throughout the history of the human race.

So why am I writing this? Because that history continues. Because slavery is still among us in the world of today, and on a shocking scale. That is to say - there's no huge headline slave trade, but over the world, there's enough of it going on to be truly shocking. There are significant numbers of people in the world today who live as slaves. Frankly - no civilised person can tolerate this without doing something to help. The trouble is that so much rhetoric has been wasted on the wrongs of the past that the very same thing going on right now in this world of ours today is almost invisible to us.

But it's not all bad news. Somebody just sent me a link to this story about major corporations using big data to help identify and help with the problem.

When I became aware of the whole issue of modern slavery, I wondered what I could do to help. Nothing, right? Invisible problem - definitely invisible solution. So I looked into it a bit, and discovered that Anti-slavery.org is working hard to find solutions. Not only that, but they've been doing it for 170 years. In all that time, they have never reached a moment when anyone could say "OK guys - job done, we can disband and go and do something more useful instead".

So I've decided to dedicate my run in this year's Egmond half marathon to raising money for this cause. Please join me by visiting my sponsorship page and making a donation.

Thank you.