Ma. Cecilia Flores-Oebanda is the Founding President and Executive Director of the Visayan Forum Foundation, Inc., a Manila-based NGO established in 1991, operating 11 offices covering 20 provinces and cities throughout the Philippines. It is globally recognized as a best practice organization that doesinnovative work for the empowerment of vulnerable migrants especially victims of human trafficking, domestic servitude and other forms of exploitation through building social movements, advocating for policies and delivering of services.

Cecilia is a globally recognized human rights advocate and a multi-awarded freedom fighter. She also serves as an international expert on human trafficking, child labor and domestic work.  She is currently appointed by the President of the Philippines as a member of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking as an NGO Representative for Women’s Sector.

Cecilia received the Anti-Slavery Award 2005 from the Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest human rights organization. She was also recognized by the UK Government as one of the Modern-Day Abolitionists in the celebration of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 2007. In 2008, Cecil was conferred with the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship at the Oxford University in the UK by the Skoll Foundation. She was also named by the US Department of State as one of its Heroes Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery in its 2008 Trafficking in Persons Report and was presented the first Iqbal Masih Award for the Elimination of Child Labor by the US Department of Labor. She was also one of the honorary awardees of the 2011 World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child, whose patrons include H.M. Queen Silvia of Sweden and Nelson Mandela. She was recently presented the Prix Caritas Award 2011 by Caritas Switzerland, for her pioneering and innovative work in the fight against child prostitution, child trafficking and child labor.