Help stop the worldwide trafficking of children

UNICEF estimates 1.2 million children around the world are trafficked each year for sex. Some of these children are as young as five years old, and they’re forced to serve up to 30 customers every night, night after night after night. They’re abused, exploited, and terrorized into submission by their captors, living a life of horror, rape, and cruelty that often ends with death by AIDS.

Child trafficking is a multibillion industry.

One of the key countries for child trafficking is Thailand, where the UN estimates 60-200,000 girls and boys are bought and sold for sex each year.

In March 2006, conducted a fact-finding trip to Thailand, which included meetings with social workers, attorneys, and rescued and exploited children. Most trafficked children in Thailand come from poor villages in the north, where they’re either kidnapped by unscrupulous vendors who offer their parents large sums of money to educate their daughters in the big cities, or who tell young teenage girls that that good jobs await them in the city. Other children are sold by their own parents, who may be addicted to opium or alcohol.

Yet most people in Thailand are not aware of the dangers or extent of the crisis. In fact, it is not talked about, and operates in a vacuum of misinformation and lack of information:

• There is little awareness material on child trafficking—what it is, how extensive it is, laws against it, what parents should look out for, what children need to know, etc.
• Parents are not aware of the problem, so they unknowingly believe the lies of child traffickers.
• Schools do not teach children what to watch out for.
• Many of the at-risk children are not educated.

This lack of awareness puts children further at risk. Experts confirm that creating awareness about child trafficking can go a long way toward ending the problem. Awareness is not the only answer, but it is a part of the answer.

has launched a multimedia anti-trafficking campaign, called to create awareness about child trafficking, with the ultimate goal of ending it. We’ll test the model in Thailand, then make it available to other countries around the world where trafficking is also a crisis.

The awareness campaign includes multimedia materials specifically written for Thai children, parents, and schools—children’s books, curriculum, DVDs, posters, and more. will partner with other international organizations to develop and distribute the materials.

Our goals are to:

1. Create awareness about child trafficking, with the ultimate goal of ending it
2. Research, write, publish, and distribute multimedia “awareness” materials aimed at children, parents, and schools
3. Teach children personal safety, build self-esteem, and let them know they are “not for sale”
4. Create and test a replicable awareness model in Thailand, and then share it with other countries that also have a trafficking crisis
5. Serve as a catalyst for long-term, systemic change in the trafficking and commercial exploitation of children

is a multi-year program. is actively seeking individuals, churches, corporations, and foundations to partner with us through financial support. We invite you to join us as we launch this critical program.