I’m in my 2nd week here now and am settling in well. I know almost all the girl’s names now! I’m enjoying it here. With the background that the girls here have come from, you would expect being here to be very intense! But it isn’t at all! The shelter is full of love, fun, and laughter! The girls are really great! They love being able to go to school and learning, and are really making the most of the opportunities available to them here. They have great aspirations for the future. Some want to be doctors, nurses, chefs, 1 girl wants to be an activist like Mickey (the founder of COSA) and another wants to go to Ethiopia to help the children there!

I love seeing the way the girls here look out for each other. They really are like one big family and are very caring and loving to each other. A few days ago, one of the girls wasn’t feeling well and I went in to check in on them when they told me. Around 10 of the girls were on her bed, all trying to look after her! Some were rubbing one hand, some rubbing the other hand, some rubbing her feet, and others her back, stomach and head! It was so lovely to see! A new girl joined the shelter last week and she was just accepted as a new member of the family.

In terms of what I’m currently doing here, as well as teaching the weekend English classes for the girls, I am now also teaching English to adults in the community 2 nights a week. I also helped to run a computer class for the girls a few nights ago. A lot of the free time in the day when the girls are at school is spent planning lessons and activities for the girls. I am currently also writing a proposal for a business workshop I want to run for the girls, and am working on a project with one of the old volunteers to create postcards and calendars featuring the girls here to sell to raise money for the shelter and help raise awareness about the organisation. In addition to this, the girls here all have sponsors who contribute to them financially as well as writing to them. The funds they contribute are used for getting the girls Thai citizenship, for their school fees, and their general living costs. We send quarterly updates to each sponsor about how the girls are getting on so we are currently working on writing those updates. The volunteers here are also jointly responsible for making sure the girls are ready for school on time and have eaten breakfast, supervising their outings, helping them with their homework, disciplining them if they break the rules, and making sure they go to bed on time.

I was taken for a trafficking talk after a few days here with a few of the other new volunteers to give us a background into trafficking, especially in this area.

We were told that COSA work with the hilltribe communities who are a mixed ethnic group who live in Northern Thailand. They were born in Thailand, but are marginalised. They don’t have Thai citizenship. They effectively have squatters rights, but not much more. They don’t have access to free education past 12 years old, so they can’t get good employment. They are not entitled to an ID card or passport. They can’t own their own land so farming is difficult. The Thai government take around 70% of what they earn so they can’t make enough money to have a decent living. Because of the rough conditions that they live in, the children mostly help their families to farm instead of going to school. This is a practical decision for them, not a moral decision as they are just trying to survive. It is not uncommon to see young children not being allowed to go to school and instead, having to work from 5am – 10pm to help the family.

Trafficking takes place in a few different forms in this community. Males 15+ are sold to work on fishing boats where they are mistreated. They regularly get beaten if they are not deemed to be working hard enough, and you regularly see boats returning with less people than they left with as men are thrown overboard if they get sick.

There are then 3-7 year old children who get sold for agricultural labour – picking tea leaves or coffee beans. These children are then at high risk for sexual trafficking as they get older.

Then there are 10-20 year old females who get trafficked for domestic labour which leads to sexual labour. Girls are sometimes rented out to the local men from their own homes which isn’t trafficking but they essentially become sex slaves.

The children involved don’t say no to their parents due to the culture here. They don’t want to feel like they are letting their family down. They don’t even think to question their parents decision or even think about saying no.

There are 7,000-10,000 hilltribe villages here in Northern Thailand, and each village has it’s own community brothel which services the community members and passers-by. It is usually the most cash-rich business in the village as they get regular business so they will often loan money to families in the community in exchange for their daughters working there for 6 months to pay back the debt. Prostitution is actually illegal in Thailand, but is normalised. 65% of Thai men have their 1st sexual encounter with a prostitute.

Nowadays, trafficking is also becoming normalised in the community here. Families who aren’t so poor will sell their daughter just to enable them to afford to buy material things to improve their social status in the sight of their peers. It really is heartbreaking.

COSA was started in 2009 in response to this. Some of the girls here have been sold by their families and subsequently rescued and taken into the shelter, while others were taken in after being identified as high risk for trafficking and were taken in to prevent it. The organisation work on a prevention based approach. They build relationships with the hilltribe communities and their chiefs and help to provide education for the villages and show them the value of education. They work to gain Thai citizenship for the girls at the shelter, and each girl goes to school, and then either university or vocational college. They try to teach the communities that educating their children will provide them with a long term source of income which will help the family for years to come as opposed to the short term gains that they get from trafficking.

There is currently a documentary being produced about trafficking in the hilltribe villages here and the work that COSA are doing. The documentary is being produced by Shine Global who recently won an Oscar for their documentary Inocente. Filming is due to start very soon, and you can watch a trailer below:

The flight to Chiang Mai was only an hour long. I collected my bags and got out quite quickly, and was greeted by a couple of ladies from the organisation who were waiting for me. There was Cath, one of the other volunteers, and Faa the house mother, known as Pii-Faa. I was told that in Thai culture, you put the word Pii in front of someone’s name to show respect to them so for anyone older than you or in a more senior position. It sounds very much like the African culture I grew up with. We drove 45 mins to the COSA shelter where I’ll be working for the next 6 weeks. The shelter is in a district called Mae Rim. COSA (http://www.cosasia.org) stands for Children of Southeast Asia. They work to prevent human trafficking among the hill tribe villages here in northern Thailand. After I arrived, I was taken to the volunteer house which is just a big room with 8 beds inside and a kitchen and bathroom area. It feels strange sharing with so many people after spending the last 5 nights in my own hotel room! This is the most number of people I’ve shared a room with so far. I met the other volunteers who are currently from the UK, America, Canada, and Australia. I was then given a tour around, met the staff, and also some of the girls who were now back from school. There are currently 25 girls here so it is going to be hard learning all their names and getting to know them all. It was then time for dinner soon after. Everyone here has dinner together which is really nice, and the food was good! The younger girls go to bed soon after dinner, and the older girls can stay up until 9pm so I spent the evening chatting to a few of them with one of the other volunteers. The girls here are really lovely and I’m looking forward to getting to know them. The youngest girl here is 6, and the oldest are 2 19 year old girls who have now started university which is great! The role of the volunteers here is to act as an older sister or brother to the girls and just spend time with them and get to know them and support them in any way we can. And then on weekends, we run English classes for the girls.