Client

Minderoo Foundation

Date

18-09-2025

Client

Minderoo Foundation is one of the world’s leading philanthropic organisations, founded in 2001 by Andrew and Nicola Forrest. Walk Free is an international human rights group, an initiative of the Minderoo Foundation, dedicated to eradicating modern slavery.

 

Walk Free is known globally for producing the Global Slavery Index - the world’s most comprehensive dataset on modern slavery, covering over 170 countries. This data-driven approach helps governments, businesses, NGO’s and community leaders understand the scale of the problem and implement targeted, evidence-based solutions that have a real-world impact.

 

Challenge

A critical tool to support Walk Free’s mission is the Governance Assessment Portal (GAP) a platform used to collect information on government action on modern slavery as part of the Global Slavery Index.

 

The existing GAP platform was time-intensive and complex, making it difficult to navigate and manage data efficiently. Collaborating with external researchers added another layer of complexity, as the system lacked the tools needed for seamless communication and data sharing. Managing and analysing data became increasingly difficult, leading to bottlenecks and inefficiencies across the workflow.

 

  • Complex and Unintuitive: The user experience made it difficult for users to interpret data and access what they needed quickly, impacting productivity.
  • Limited Collaboration: The previous platform lacked the flexibility and functionality needed to support collaboration between Walk Free’s internal teams and external researchers.
  • Time-Intensive: Users were spending significant time navigating the system, slowing down delivery of insights and reporting. 

 

Solution

 

Objective

Rebuild and deliver a streamlined platform that enables more accurate and intuitive government response assessments, replacing a legacy system that was complex, time-intensive, and difficult to use.

 

Approach and Implementation

  • Full system rewrite from the ground up using .NET backend and React frontend.
  • Integrated Okta for secure identity and access management.
  • Modern streamlined platform with intelligent workflows, and improved performance accessibility and usability.
  • Intuitive UI with close attention to UX strategy and research-backed workflows.
  • Extensive testing to ensure performance and accuracy across diverse use cases.

 

Results

  • Time savings across core workflows, with processes that previously took hours now completed in minutes.
  • Improved productivity for internal teams through a simplified and intuitive user experience.
  • Seamless collaboration with external researchers via secure sharing and real-time communication tools.
  • Reduced data friction enabling faster, more accurate analysis and decision-making. 
  • Scalability to support future growth and increased data sets and complexity.
  • Enabled researchers to respond and provide evidence for their assigned work.
  • Accelerated the delivery of insights to inform the Global Slavery Index.

 

Project Highlights

  • A genuinely collaborative partnership with a positive team culture throughout.
  • Delievered on time.
  • Delivered on budget.

SHARED MOMENT
"Working with Diversus was a great experience. What stood out was their collaborative approach - Diversus truly functioned as an extension of our team rather than an external vendor. They brought valuable technical expertise to the table when we needed guidance, while also being highly receptive to our specific requirements and business needs. The project delivery was smooth, timely, and met all our expectations."

Belinda Van Andel - Minderoo Project Manager

Real-world Impact

By modernising and streamlining the platform, the project has significantly improved the speed, clarity, and accessibility of critical data and information - amplifying Walk Free’s global influence and strengthening the collective capacity to fight modern slavery worldwide.

 

Walk Free use this data to mobilise powerful forces for change against these abuses of human rights. Working with governments, businesses, religious and community leaders Walk Free drive systems change. They partner directly with frontline organisations to impact the lives of those vulnerable to modern slavery. 

 

Tech Stack

 

BUILT AND HOSTED ON AWS

API

  • ECS (Elastic Container Service) / ECR (Elastic Container Registry)
  • API Gateway: Route Definitions, ALB to ECS over AWS private network and OKTA JWT validation
  • EC2 ALB (Application Load Balancer)

Frontend

  • S3 Static Website hosting 
  • CloudFront / WAF (Web Application Firewall)

Data

  • MySQL - RDS (Relation Data Services) Aurora
  • Caching - Elastic Cache Redis OSS

Logging / Telemetry

  • Cloudwatch
  • X-Ray

 

APPLICATION

React using Tailwind UI, TanStack libraries and OKTA SDK (Auth) for Frontend.

ASP.NET Core

  • WebAPI for endpoints
  • EF Core ORM for Data-layer
  • Service layer for logic
  • OKTA SDK for OKTA JWT (JavaScript Web Tokens) validation

MySQL

Microsoft DevOps using GitHub platform

  • Code Repository
  • Build/Test/Deploy Pipeline

OKTA

TEAM MOMENT
"This project was more than just a technical success; it was a true partnership. Working closely with Minderoo, we created something meaningful together, built on trust, collaboration, and a shared vision. We're incredibly proud to contribute to a cause that's making a real and lasting impact in the world."

Dien Tang - Director

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