While the lockdowns of COVID-19 have made life extremely difficult, this post-lockdown era remains a time of terrible vulnerability and danger.

Director of Not For Sale Vietnam

The friends were taken over 2,200km by bus to the southern tip of Vietnam. Once there, instead of being introduced to an employer, they were taken hold of by a fishing crew that was preparing to set out to sea.

Alang and Chue had been sold.

For several days they were held captive at a port and put through basic training to prepare them for life on the ocean. The boat owner threatened them with a gun, forced them to sign a loan contract, and then demanded that they agree to work off their fake ‘loan’ on his boat.

One of the other fishermen, feeling sorry for the terrified young men, gave them a phone. His whispered warning confirmed their fears: If they went to sea, it would be forever. They would not see land again.

Alang and Chue’s call for help reached Not For Sale partnters Blue Dragon, and by good fortune we had staff in the area working on another case. Within a few hours we were able to guide the friends by phone to escape and hide in a safe place until we could reach them.

The two young men are with us now and will soon be back with their families.

They’ve had a very narrow escape from what would have been a terrible fate. As mountain boys, they had no knowledge of the sea – neither can swim, and before this journey neither had seen a river, let alone the ocean. Surely they could not have survived long on the boat.

Alang and Chue can now get on with their lives, and we’ll see how Blue Dragon can help, but there are still plenty of traffickers out there looking for more victims.

While the lockdowns of COVID-19 have made life extremely difficult, this post-lockdown era remains a time of terrible vulnerability and danger.

Related Articles

It’s ok to be angry, or frustrated, or saddened by world events that you cannot change. But take control of what you can. It may only be a little bit, but it will make a world of difference.

Not For Sale Vietnam Director

No matter what your view, something we can agree on is that this is not how our world should be.

So what to do?

Looking at the big picture, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. How to end institutionalized racism, and a global pandemic, and hold back climate change? None of us can do that… can we?

On our own we can’t change the whole world. But there’s still something we can do – something small but powerful. And the times are calling on us to act.

It’s as simple as this: We each have to find our own little bit. The one thing that we can do to make things better.

For some people, that might mean volunteering at a local shelter to cook meals. It might mean donating to a charity that does work you wish you could do yourself. It might mean picking up the phone and calling someone who’s unable to get out of the house themselves at the moment. It might mean switching the way you shop, so that you buy less and give your business to more environmentally-conscious companies.

What’s your little bit? What’s the one thing that you can do that will make one patch of the earth a better place?

I want to share something that we did at Blue Dragon this week. Something small, but life-changing. Something that will never make headlines, but has changed the world for one little girl.

Since the coronavirus pandemic shut down schools throughout Vietnam, kids here have been doing it tough, especially out in the rural parts of the country where life is already hard.

When schools opened again a few weeks ago, plenty of students simply did not return to the classroom. In the months that schools shut down, many started working in jobs, or got married, or for whatever reason have set off down a path that prevents them from going back to school.

One of those kids is Chu. She’s a 6th grader, just 12 years old, up in the mountains close to China.

Chu’s mother died a few years ago, so Chu has long had an important role in keeping the family together. Her father works in corn fields far from home so while schools were closed, he came to rely on his daughter looking after her younger brothers.

When school started up again, he decided to keep Chu at home. He could work more, and earn more money, with her looking after the brothers.

When we heard about this, Blue Dragon’s staff in the province got on a motorbike and rode up through the mountains to talk to Chu’s dad. He didn’t agree at first. He didn’t see why it was so important for Chu to get an education anyway.

Over a few days, he heard what Blue Dragon had to say and he saw that his own little girl really wanted to go back to school. In fact, Chu revealed that her dream in life is to be a teacher for other ethnic minority kids like herself.

Chu’s dad changed his mind. He could see that Chu wanted, and needed, to be in school. So he agreed, and now she’s back to her studies.

That one little bit won’t bring world peace, but Chu’s life will always be better for it. It’s a well established fact that keeping girls in school is a powerful contributor to social and economic development.

And one day in years to come, I would think that she’ll do everything in her power for her own children to get an education too.

When you do your little bit, you may never know what effects will ripple out to others. You may never see the impact of what you’ve done. You should do it anyway.

It’s ok to be angry, or frustrated, or saddened by world events that you cannot change. But take control of what you can. It may only be a little bit, but it will make a world of difference.

Related Articles

The challenges ahead are complex, but I’m confident that Blue Dragon and Not For Sale Vietnam can rise to meet them. After all, this is what we are here for.

Director of Not For Sale Vietnam

Mid-week, while focusing on cases of sexual abuse of street children, an urgent call came through from a boarding school way up in the mountains that had noticed two of their girls missing. Blue Dragon coordinated between the school and the police, eventually locating the girls in a mini-van headed to the border with China.

The traffickers knew they’d been detected so slipped off the bus before the police could get to them. The girls are now safely with us and police are investigating.

And then a call came to help a 21 year old university student from Ho Chi Minh City. She’d lost her part-time job because of the coronavirus some months back, so thought she’d finally got lucky when she was offered a waitressing position in a café. The café turned out to be a brothel, and for 3 days she had to fight to protect herself before finally being able to call for help. She, too, is safe now.

As these urgent calls for help came through, the street outreach team continued meeting record numbers of homeless children in Hanoi; our staff out in the provinces continued investigating cases of children failing to return to school to see where they are and what they need; and a street kid disclosed that there’s an organized ring pimping out boys at a lake.

So, a week of constant surprise and struggle.

There has been plenty of good news through the week too, of course.

Every one of the 100 Blue Dragon scholars at university and college is back in class. These are all young adults who grew up in Blue Dragon programs and are now pursuing a tertiary education.

We had some wonderful reunions of women who were rescued from trafficking but have been in quarantine for 2 weeks, including a young woman whose son has waited months for the day his mother would walk back through the front door.

And we even had the good news that an organic corn project we’ve been working on in the mountains is yielding excellent results – more on that in a future post!

At Not For Sale Vietnam and Blue Dragon, we’re familiar with turbulence. Our whole organization is set up to respond to crisis. And it looks like the coming weeks and months will continue to demand a lot from us.

While the coronavirus pandemic is largely over in Vietnam, we are seeing its impact in the desperate situations that so many young people are in.

Until the whole world recovers, no one country can return to normal. This really is a case of us all being in the same storm, even if we are riding it out in different vessels.

The challenges ahead are complex, but I’m confident that Blue Dragon and Not For Sale Vietnam can rise to meet them. After all, this is what we are here for. And we are not alone: we have friends around the globe who are cheering us on and donating to make sure the kids have what they need.

Our work now is like riding in two gears simultaneously. We are still dealing with emergency needs arising from the pandemic, while also starting the process of rebuilding lives and communities as they begin their recovery.

There are tough times ahead for the kids. We stand ready to respond.

Related Articles