Cambodia Jobs
Emphasis On Education Key To Alleviating Child Trafficking In Cambodia
Source: The Global Playground News dated 11 March.
Last January, Global Playground had the opportunity to visit the Sao Sary Foundation
("SSF"), located an hour's drive outside of Cambodia's capitol city of Phnom Penh. SSF was founded in 2006 to "help improve the living standard of the poorest of the poor and vulnerable families . . . and to develop support for the education of orphans and other vulnerable children." The ultimate goal of SSF is to ensure that vulnerable children are kept safe from all forms of violence, exploitation, and abuse, especially child trafficking. This was also the lifelong goal of the foundation's namesake, Sao Sary, deputy chief of Takeo province in Kus commune, who was gunned down after intervening in a robbery.
SSF runs a house where students live so they can attend school, develop skills, and generally be in a safer environment than they might otherwise be in their own homes. Children at SSF are considered those particularly susceptible to being trafficked, such as those who have been trafficked before, who live well below the poverty line, or who come from single-parent households or families with physical disabilities and low earning potential. In addition, the beauty of a child and lack of access to education also make a child a likely target for trafficking.
To contribute to their keep and to support SSF, the girls who live at SSF spend hours on end making hundreds of elaborate flowers fashioned out of metal rods and colorful nylon, which are then sold at market for use in weddings or other ceremonies. But not all of the organization's work is at the home itself--much of what the organization does extends into the community. Global Playground saw SSF's outreach efforts firsthand when it toured the Cambodian countryside and visited with several of the families that SSF is helping. One family consisted of a single mother and her daughter who were living in a dilapidated structure, but because the home had no walls the daughter was in constant danger of abduction and trafficking given her beauty. SSF is rebuilding the home. In other cases, SSF teaches families how to run a business and provides them with startup capital to do so. For example, SSF taught one mother whom Global Playground visited how to raise fish and grow rice and morning glories (a marketable vegetable in Cambodia) so that she could keep her family out of poverty and her daughters safe.
Global Playground visited SSF to better understand the import of bolstering education in Cambodia. Board member Doug Smith stated, "Part of the reason Global Playground is operating in Cambodia is because there is child trafficking and education is a means to alleviate it." Although SSF's goal is not education alone, Global Playground does see education as the ultimate preventative measure. "If kids are in school and gaining education to allow them to enter jobs successfully and earn decent income, then trafficking is not as serious of a risk," said board member Doug Bunch.
During its visit, Global Playground purchased the entire inventory of the girls' nylon flowers and will sell them at Global Playground's March 27 event in Washington, DC at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
-Jennifer Rinker
To read the profile of one of the families SSF is helping and to view pictures from Global Playground's visit with the family click here.
About the Author
Nonprofit organization works to help absolute poor families to care for their children, avoiding them from all forms of violence, exploitation, abuse against, including child sexual commercial, trafficking, child labor and child marriage.
i am doing the world challenge trip to Thailand and need to raise a lot of money, help with fundraising?
I need to raise £3395 by next June for this month long trip to Thailand and Cambodia where i will be trekking and helping the local community. i already have a job and i am holding a quiz night, should be doing a sponsored skydive and also a sponsored walk. i will also be taking in general sponsers and all of this should hopefully come to about £2500. but i still need help with the last extra bit. any ideas?
Also, i am creative, is there anything i could do with that?
Well done Joanna you've been busy! Now that the real pressure is over you have time to raise the left over money.
How about scratch cards? They're simple to do, hand the card to someone, they scratch a dot which reveals a donation amount. In return they get a motivational quote. Simple and they raise money quickly.
You said your creative but didn't give in an idea in what field. If your creative in music give lessons or help put on a concert. Just take that kind of idea on import it into whatever field your creative in.
You've certainly go get up and go , so there's no stoppin ya.
Cambodia Jobs
Kamworks launches the solar-powered MoonLight in Cambodia.
Sex trade enslaves Cambodia's children
Jannah clung to Ruth's leg, begging for protection. The 12-year-old was in a "complete state" as her mother demanded her youngest daughter be returned to the brothel.
"The girl was absolutely terrified, she was physically clutching to me. She was just sobbing because she didn't want to go back," says Ruth Elliot.
As director of Cambodian-based charity Daughters, Ruth provides support to the victims of sex trafficking in Asia.
She tells the heart-wrenching story of Jannah. To ensure she complied with the brothel owner's orders, the young girl's mother would feed her yama (methamphetamine).
When Jannah fled to Daughters in 2007, without permission, her mother followed - demanding her daughter return to work.
"She was traumatised. It makes me so mad - it was heartbreaking. It absolutely destroyed the girl's future," Ruth says.
Jannah was taken by her mother and has not heard from since.
Human trafficking is a brutal system of modern day slavery affecting 161 countries. A United Nations report tells of approximately 2.5 million people in forced labour including sexual exploitation. Of these 56 per cent are in Asia and the Pacific.
Human trafficking can include people being sold or forced into prostitution, slave labour, illegal adoption, forced marriage, child soldiers and beggars.
Within the last 40 years Cambodians suffered through the brutal Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s, followed by years of civil unrest. A country still trying to steady itself, Cambodia struggles with the trade of humans, particularly in the sex industry.
A 2007 US State Department report cited Cambodia as a destination country for foreign child sex tourists, with increasing reports of Asian men travelling to Cambodia. Corruption is reported amongst police and judicial officers involved in human trafficking:
"Some local police and government officials are known to extort money or accept bribes from brothel owners, sometimes on a daily basis, in order to allow the brothels to continue operating."
The organisations working with victim of sex trafficking say poverty and social circumstances pressure parents to sell their young daughters.
But Ruth attributes alcoholism, gambling and laziness to the reasons parents sell their children to brothels. "Parents can work but they don't want to or they want a new TV."
Daughters works with the brothel owners to help women aged 14 to 25. There are younger girls imprisoned within the industry, but they are more hidden beneath Cambodia's underworld.
AFESIP Cambodia is another organisation battling the trade of humans. Communication coordinator Sophatra Som says families are "pushed by poverty" to traffic their children.
The organisation takes a confrontational approach, raiding and closing the brothels with the help of police.
Death threats are part Sophatra's job, as their monthly raids of brothels can turn dangerously violent
"If we break their rice pot, we break their business and they're not happy. They're our enemies," he says
The raid acts as a warning to others and raises awareness of the issue. "It's the visibility of our work. If we can arrest and put them in jail that's our success," Sophatra says
"I try my best to curb, slow, alleviate this perpetrator. I have to shout so everyone can hear our voice. If we don't shout nobody knows."
AFESIP successfully closes the brothel 50 to 60 per cent of the time.
However, rescuing the girls is not seen as a sustainable solution. Daughters and AFESIP both provide employment options for the victims of sex trafficking, so that the women and their families have alternative income.
AFESIP also works the government and court system to bring about change, but Sophatra emphasises that international collaboration against poverty and trafficking is needed to succeed.
"We won't eliminate poverty in one day, or one year. We need a strategy to eliminate poverty step by step."
Many of the women who do find a way out of sex work are left with psychological scarring.As a British qualified psychiatrist, Ruth provides counselling.
"I see every sort of trauma there is. Most girls have at least half of PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] symptoms."
She lists anxiety, headaches, stomach aches, and jumpiness among the trauma symptoms.
Although there is hope. "In four or five months the symptoms reduce by at least 50 per cent, that's the minimum I've seen, some reduce by 70 to 80 percent. So we do help."
Chantrea is one success story. As a teenager, her family sold her to a husband in China. She worked in a bakery - with her salary going to her husband. Their relationship consisted of him visiting her once a week for sex.
When Chantrea's mother died months later, her husband refused to pay the bus fare to the funeral. Distraught, she borrowed money and left. Her husband divorced her.
Chantrea was approached by the same trafficker who had sent her to China. She was promised a job in a bakery in Cambodia. Burdened with a loan, Chantrea agreed.
There was no bakery. She was locked in a brothel and denied food until she agreed to take customers.
"She was imprisoned in this brothel, forced to have customers and felt like she was in hell. She felt she would die in that brothel," says Ruth.
Chantrea spent 18 months working to pay off her loan. The brothel owner allowed her to leave, but threatened to kill her entire family if she ever went to the police.
Chantrea, now 20-years-old, arrived at Daughters with no skills. She is now one of their most committed and talented employees, working in the t-shirt printing programme and showing a lot of design potential.
Ruth can count on one hand how many girls have returned to the brothels. But it is the girls themselves that tell the success story.
"It's amazing, so many girls come to us and so many girls change their lives. It's so filled with hope. I love doing what I do. They're great girls and we have a lot of fun."
Does she think Cambodia's daughters will have a future free from slavery?
"It will change. It has to change. But, for these girls probably not in the foreseeable future."
About the Author
Marika Hill worked as a news reporter in Cambodia and New Zealand
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