Empower 30 Thai Children Through Education

Poverty and illiteracy are proven vulnerabilities in the exploitation and trafficking of people, especially children. The service your generous donations provide ensure children are not only protected from being a victim but advocating for them when they have already experienced the trauma of exploitation and trafficking. Our goal is to prevent trafficking of children. Occasionally, a child enters into our after school and day camp program in need of protection from their predators. 

It was a seemingly very long two months when the stepfather was arrested and charged with two years of sexual abuse. He admitted to sexual abuse and providing child pornography of an eight year old child. The mother became belligerent, threatening her own mother’s life and attempting to kidnap *Precious Gemstone. The grandmother informed the police of her daughter’s behavior and intention to kidnap her from school. The police were rescuing *Precious Gemstone from her classroom as the mother was storming the school’s administrative offices with threats demanding her daughter. *Precious Gemstone was ushered to an undisclosed safe haven shelter for long term care. The mother attempted to remove her mother’s report from the police to learn GRACE was the initial report. She then threatened our staff. All the while, we are praying and trusting God as our Provider, Protector and Strength. The stepfather was found guilty and sentenced to twenty years in prison. He was required to pay retribution of 1,500 baht to *Precious Gemstone (that’s equivalent to approximately $50 USD).

Due to this situation, our Director represented GRACE on the municipality committee of child protection, working alongside the authorities and other NGOs in establishing policies and procedures for reporting child abuse, exploitation and trafficking cases. Since August of 2018, GRACE is aware of twenty-one cases within our care in which children or their parents experienced exploitation or human trafficking situations. These situations are heavy. We have experienced the forced marriage of a fourteen year old, a twelve year old being trafficked into a brothel (a different brothel than where her twenty-five year old mother works), a set of teen siblings forced to work in agricultural fields, a young mother selling her infant to black market adoption agencies, a seven year old girl dancing at local bars in the evenings, others in debt servitude, boys placed into temples to serve as novice monks and beg for food and offerings, and a mother’s agony over her nineteen year old son disappearing from fishing boat labor. These do not include the numerous children living as orphaned children to a single father, grandparents, a guardian, or a slum community leader because their mother is ‘working overseas’ or ‘working in the city’ [in the sex industry]. These cases are of those we directly serve through GRACE in Thailand.

For these and those whom will need advocacy in the future, your generosity ensures hope through eradicating their vulnerabilities.

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Amidst the glimmer of soon returning pre-pandemic normalcy, the Delta variant came upon Thailand as a monsoon. With hopes of economic recovery associated with tourism, hope was beginning to spark across the centers, with staff and families, and tourist on mission to contribute to society goodness. The spark quickly faded and extinguished into friends and families of GRACE not having access to the vaccinations and young families testing positive with the coronavirus. "When will it end?", a lady asked with a sense of despair. Most of the children have no access to school with the complete shutdown. Curfews are activated. No public gatherings. Only banks, grocers, clinics and hospitals remain open. But GRACE.... where the staff established a schedule for times of distributing nutritional, hygiene and educational supplies to the families and children of GRACE. Social media outlets have provided socialization opportunities for the families to stay connected. They encourage one another and share hardships. Determined to gain strength collectively and win the battle against challenging times resulting from the economic and health disaster, families are finding hope in the new normalcy. Your support matters as these parents are suffering in the worst economic condition of their lives. Thank you for helping us to ensure essentials are available. You matter. Please consider donating to help with the multitudes of our families who have no job nor current source of income.

Links:

• Check out our website!
• Follow us on Facebook
• We are SOOOOOO Instagram-genic!