The problem part III

ELF was founded as an anti-trafficking, pro-education foundation. But things have changed in the last decade. Few girls are actually trafficked from Phayao. This sounds like great news, but the problem is now that many girls are now going to work in dance clubs and brothels willingly as a way out of their lives of poverty and little opportunity. So now the problem is we have to present girls with the CHOICE to go to school, the choice to get a decent job and hope they take it.

Additionally, many of the girls in our programs are the daughters of prostitutes. Some of the women who went to work in brothels a decade ago have returned home (prostitutes cannot work for very long) and had children. The sad fact is many of these women have contracted HIV and already died from the disease, leaving their children, some of the HIV positive, to fend for themselves. We are now facing a second generation of children affected by the tragedy that of the sex trade. What seems like a good way to make an income is really a way to enslave generations to the cycles of disease and poverty. Prostitution is not a way out of poverty. It's a way to make sure that your children will be poor and suffer as well.