Prevent Child Trafficking Through Education

Dear Friends,

With the help of your support, last month our staff was able to reach out to a local youth dorm  to have a difficult conversation about sex and relationships. Helping youth think and talk about sex teaches them about the potential risks associated to unsafe sex. Teenage pregnancies in Thailand almost always lead to a girl dropping out of school either to care for the child or because of social stigma. With little education but needing to provide, they are at a higher risk of being trafficked. These activities also encourage youth to think critically about the belief that sex work is easy money. By considering the dangers of unsafe sex, they will reconsider working in sex work if they are pressured or tempted to do so.

This dorm is home to many ethnic minority youth, who are generally more at-risk of being trafficked because they face discrimination. These boys and girls must study in the city but their families live in the mountains. 

Our youth leaders were given the opportunity to run the workshop, practicing leadership and organization skills. They broke into groups and gave the youth discussion topics, using Thai proverbs about sex and relationships to ask how the youth felt or thought about sex and relationships in the present day. They talked about the impact sex has on a person’s emotions as well as on a relationship.

They then shared about how to practice safe sex, as well as encouraging the youth to think about how to use their knowledge in practice. “Most of them know about safe sex, but they find it hard to practice. They know they should use condoms but they aren’t brave enough to demand them to be used. Activities like this make it easier for the students to talk about sex, and hopefully use this knowledge and skills to practice safe sex,” explains Bee, Assistant Program Manager.

Working with youth to implement the workshop makes it much easier for students to open up. Peer to peer training allows students to feel more comfortable while also opening the door for staff to speak about this important topic.

Together we are breaking down taboos and talking about hard topics like safe sex and human trafficking with at-risk groups. Thank you for your support of our work. Together, we are preventing child trafficking in Northern Thailand.

With Hope,

The Freedom Story.