PROGRAMS : CAMBODIA
Prevention Program
The work AOGE is built on two foundations: rescue and prevention .
As mentioned on the Our Homes page, rescued girls are welcomed into the AOGE family and are housed in our homes where the restoration work continues. Education and vocational training opportunities are provided through a private school and our training center.
However, we understand that the best way to combat human trafficking is prevention. We are dealing with human lives. We do not want more girls and young women to fall victim to the terrible nightmare of human trafficking. Thousands of children are trafficked every year within Cambodia and to neighboring countries to be used as sex slaves. The numbers, although uncertain, are alarming. No organization would be able to restore all of these children.
Not all of the girls we shelter in our homes have been trafficked in the past. Some of them came because they were in a risky situation, whether due to orphanhood, abandonment, neglect, abuse or a history of trafficking in the family. They are part of our family because we want to prevent them from being trafficked.
- RESCUE & PREVENTION
We found the most effective way to reach more children and adolescents in our prevention effort was assistance to needy families. The likelihood of a child being trafficked drops dramatically when a family is not facing a lack of basic needs.
Usually, traffickers approach families and offer to take their children to study or work in Thailand or China with the promise of sending money to the family, thus taking them out of poverty. It is already very common that culturally children, especially the eldest daughter, have a responsibility to take care of their parents. Therefore, if the family’s basic needs are met, it becomes more difficult for these children to be easy prey for predators.
Therefore, we have visited cities and villages in the interior of Cambodia and distributed essential food, milk, clothes and school kits, so families could have relief.
In all villages and towns where the prevention program operates, we invite local people to awareness programs, especially in high-risk areas where the chances of human trafficking are great. Therefore, other children in the community benefit.
Assisting poor families is an excellent tool because the child remains with family in their community. Additionally, a child staying with us costs twenty times more than assisting a family with their essential needs.
Despite AOGE being an organization that welcomes and educates boys and girls, we understand that it is ideal for a child to grow up and be educated in his own family. As a last resort, when the risk of being trafficked or harmed is imminent, we bring a child to live, be educated and cared for by AOGE.
CONTRIBUTE
Make a difference in someone's life
Did you know that in Nepal alone, more than 12,000 girls are trafficked into the sex trade each year? Traffickers, eager for exorbitant profits, take advantage of the poverty, innocence and lack of information of many families to take their daughters to neighboring countries, where they will live the worst experiences a girl can suffer.
The Apple of God’s Eyes was created to combat this evil, helping victims and finding ways to prevent more precious lives from following this dark path. Contribute to this project now!
Want to know more about how this money helps us maintain our projects, get in touch with us!
