Madre de Dios, Thai floods and Rwanda

Flights conducted above the Peruvian Amazon reveal illegal mining, drug labs, and deforestation advancing together: an illegal economy operating under the protection of armed crime, extortion, and contract killings. Trafficking for forced labor and sexual exploitation is not a side effect of that economy.

Ricardo has watched this frontier evolve for over two decades. He shares where he sees things are moving next.

In August, Peruvian commandos descended by helicopter into Madre de Dios, where illegal mining had spread along the Malinowski River into Tambopata National Reserve. Not For Sale has worked in this exact area of the Amazon for over 15 years. The aerial footage captured the deforestation. It could not capture the deceptive recruitment, the manipulated debt, the withheld pay that Not For Sale has documented in the same economy for decades.

One crime scene. Two crimes. The forced labor is slavery. The ruined river and forest is ecocide. They are not competing headlines. They are the same backwards business model.

That is the area where Ricardo and Not For Sale’s team protect over 4,500 people and help conserve 753 square miles of Amazon rainforest, every year.

Heavy rains hit Thailand causing weeks of flooding. More than 30,000 people had reportedly been affected in the Chiang Rai and Nan Provinces.

The flooding leads to displacement, which is where traffickers lurk. A family loses a home, then a harvest, and then their options. An offer “of support” arrives shortly after.

Kru Nam has run Not For Sale Thailand since 2007. She is not waiting for the water to go down. Her team is already moving food and supplies toward the places hardest to reach.

Five graduates volunteered their own summer break to help younger pupils study. No payment. No incentive beyond wanting them to do well. Our community pig project delivered nine piglets.

Bitesize updates from Ntenyo, in rural Rwanda. Read together, they say something much bigger: prevention is not a program. It is a community deciding what it will not let happen to its own children.