Trafficking Prevention and Foster Care in Thailand

Why are we named Jojo’s Sanctuary? We get asked this question a lot. We named our project in honor of a little boy called Jojo that our founders knew. We founded this project only weeks after his tragic death and in an effort to keep his memory alive and always remember why we do what we do, decided to name it in his honor. Jojo was the nephew of friends who do humanitarian relief work in Thailand. For several years after Jojo’s parents divorced, Jojo and his siblings lived with this aunt and uncle while his father and other relatives remained in Laos. Once his father was more stable, the children moved back to Laos, but their dad couldn’t take care of all the kids on his own, so Jojo was sent to live out in the country with a different aunt and uncle. Sadly for all involved, the aunt did not adjust to parenting well and began abusing little Jojo, resulting in his death at the age of 8 years old. When we decided to form Jojo’s Sanctuary, we did it with the idea that we could reach out into rural communities and teach both children and their caregivers about children’s rights, abuse, and positive discipline techniques to try to prevent this from happening to other children. If children are being abused, their caregivers can be equipped with the information necessary to parent better and get help for themselves and their family. 2017 has seen our outreach program reap good results. Thank you for helping us to continue it in 2018!

Today we had a great meeting with Care for Children, a non-profit assisting the Thai government with creating the infrastructure to support a foster care system. We discussed what both of our groups consider essential trainings for potential foster parents to receive in order to provide the best support for children who cannot be raised by their biological parents for one reason or another. We discovered that a major roadblock for the Thai government is the lack of funding for these trainings.

Since most foster parents are low to middle income, missing a day of work to attend a training, however important, would require them to miss out on income they need to take care of their family. In order to provide this training, families would need to be compensated for lost wages, cost of transportation and lunch. Even though this would total only about $150 per training for 30 families, the social welfare budget is so tight, if they spent this money on a training, it would mean not being able to give financial assistance to foster families for food and toiletries for the children they care for during the months of the training. The money raised through this campaign will be used to come alongside the government to cover the costs of these trainings for current and prospective foster families, improving the lives of both foster children and the families who care for them. Thank you for your support as we continue to work with the Thai government to provide well for their children.