The Dressember Network: Mentorship and Scholarship in Northern Thailand
An estimated 60,000 children are involved in the Thai sex trade every year. A significant number are girls who come from the Northern region of Thailand, where poverty forces many to drop out of school while young. Uneducated, yet expected to help provide for their families, these children are easily lured into the sex trade.
But what happens when these same children have access to a safe support system outside of their families?
Tarrin’s story shows us the power of mentorship in preventing human trafficking.
Tarrin’s mother left when he was a baby, and because his father struggled with addiction, Tarrin was taken in and raised by his grandmother. She provided him with stability and support needed to flourish.
When Tarrin was seven-years-old, his grandmother was diagnosed with cancer. She could no longer care for herself, much less Tarrin, and she made the difficult decision to move them both in with Tarrin’s father and stepmother. Both were addicts and lived with devastating financial burdens, taking Tarrin from a stable environment to a dysfunctional one.
“I felt lonely,” Tarrin said, as he described the difficult transition. He struggled to make friends at his new school and continually got into fights with other students. He began running away and developed an addiction to video games. This led to fights with his dad, who began abusing Tarrin as a result of the continued conflict.
As Tarrin aged, his family began pressuring him to drop out of school. They tried convincing him that a middle school education was sufficient. But Tarrin prevailed and even got an after-school job to help pay for his schooling.
Tarrin could have easily fallen into the hands of a trafficker. His dysfunctional childhood marked by financial instability and isolation made him the perfect victim. Instead, help came to Tarrin in the form of a mentor. Tarrin was able to join The Freedom Story, a Dressember Network partner that provides resources and scholarships to empower at-risk students to stay in school, achieve their dreams, and break the cycle of exploitation and poverty.
By joining The Freedom Story, Tarrin was able to focus on his education. He was matched with a mentor who provided Tarrin with a healthy relationship he desperately needed. His mentor visited him at school and at home, and was able to help guide Tarrin through the challenges of his home life. Tarrin was able to dream about new possibilities for his future because of his mentor. He stayed on the path to achieve those dreams and empowered him to break the poverty cycle of his parents. A mentor changed Tarrin’s life by meeting his unmet relational need.
The greatest risks to trafficking for children are related to poverty, family history of trafficking or sex work, a history of abuse, and family breakdown. With Thailand being a source, transit and destination for child trafficking, education becomes paramount in combating it at the ground level. The children in Northern Thailand are specifically vulnerable as 15% of all secondary school aged children in the North are not in school, according to the UN MICS survey in 2016. With 22% of surveyed prostitutes in Northern Thailand never attending school and 41.5% having only some exposure to primary education, there’s a direct correlation between lack of education and risk. The Dressember Network addresses this issue by resourcing a Mentorship and Scholarship in Northern Thailand program to help children stay in school, learn new skills and thrive in the academic environment.
Mentorship is one of the heart beat’s of prevention work. Building relationships of trust with students, providing guidance, leadership opportunities, ways to grow their skills and a place they feel safe and valued have been key to deep, meaningful relationships where true change in attitude and behavior can take place. Mentorship within this Dressember Network program takes on various forms, and is tailored to the needs of the students and families, but includes home visits, school visits, advice and support for parents and students.
Prevention efforts like these help children like Tarrin gain access to opportunities that develop their potential, including education, leadership and vocational skills. Mentorship helps students achieve more than they would otherwise be capable of and empowers them to support their families and communities better as a result.
The Dressember Network is made up of 20 organizations that support programs in the following impact areas: advocacy, prevention, intervention, and survivor empowerment. The Dressember Network partners with The Freedom Story, an organization that provides resources and scholarships to empower at-risk students to stay in school, achieve their dreams, and break the cycle of exploitation and poverty. When you support Dressember, you help dismantle trafficking holistically and in a way that prioritizes survivor needs and voices. Ready to join us? Register to become an advocate or make a donation today.
About the Author
Miranda Cecil is a second-year at Northeastern University School of Law. She graduated from the University of North Carolina in 2020 (go heels!) and shipped up to Boston. As a North Carolina transplant in New England, she loves exploring her new area on the weekends. In her free time, she enjoys cross-stitching, cycling, and reading. She hopes to use her legal degree and a passion for urban development to continue advocating for human trafficking survivors (and, despite the Boston winter, looks forward to the style challenge this December).