Kudos: Catalyst Foundation

From time to time, REFORM Talk will offer our kudos to blog posts, analyses or organizations. The Catalyst Foundation fights human trafficking in Vietnam. They were featured today on CNN Freedom Project for their work in the community of Kien Giang.

Some excerpts: “Some 200 families live on this and one other dump in Rach Gia. They are three generations of Cambodians who fled the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. It’s the only home they have ever known.”

“Human traffickers prey on these poor people’s desperation. Children are bought and sold here, some for as little as $100. The parents sell because they are tricked into believing that the buyer has good intentions, that their children will have a promising job and a promising future. They so badly want to help their sons and daughters escape poverty.

Oftentimes, however, the children end up as sex slaves.

“The trafficker looks like your mom, (the trafficker) doesn’t look like a bad guy,” said Caroline Nguyen Ticarro-Parker, who founded the Catalyst Foundation to help Dieu and other children in Vietnam’s poorest communities.

The kids are sometimes stolen, too, when they make their long walk into town to sell lottery tickets.”

““We’re not going to eliminate trafficking. We are not going to change this whole culture of girls feeling unworthy of themselves. But we’re going to change this group of girls. We’re going to change 200 girls. It’s going to happen, one girl at a time.”

For the rest of the story, see Hope for Vietnam’s children of the dump [CNN 2/13/12 by Natalie Allen]

For more information about Catalyst Foundation, see their website here.

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