According to NGOs active in this field, there are as many as 15,000 prostitutes working in Phnom Penh alone. Up to 35 percent of them have been smuggled into Cambodia from Viet Nam. Reporters Mikel Flamm and Ngo Kim Cuc, who spent months visiting brothels in Cambodia for their book called Children of the Dust, say that brothel owners pay traffickers $350 to $450 for each attractive young Vietnamese virgin, while non-virgins and those considered less beautiful are sold from $150 to $170 each.

To help girls like Thuy, leaders of three organizations active in Viet Nam have formed a collaboration called ADAPT—The An Giang/Dong Thap Alliance to Prevent Trafficking. The three organizations are the International Children Assistance Network (ICAN), the Pacific Links Foundation (PALS) and the East Meets West Foundation (EMW). This collaboration is the first of its kind to focus on prevention of trafficking, instead of law enforcement or policy, and the first to be funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The program was launched in the fall of 2005 with a grant of $200,000 from USAID.

ADAPT offers girls like Thuy a way to take the first fork in the road, the one to a bright future. Since many girls are forced to drop out of school because their parents can’t pay the school fees, the first thing that ADAPT does is offer scholarships to at-risk girls until they finish high school (it costs around $1,000 to support a child’s education from 4th grade through 12th grade). These scholarships not only cover the cost of school fees and supplies, but mandate after-school tutoring and a high level of community and parental engagement. By enrolling in this program, girls can’t “get lost.” The program staff, led by program director Xuan Sutter, keep track of all the students and make sure that they are known to the local school and civic authorities.

ADAPT also offers a program to enhance life options for young women who may have left high school already and be thinking about traveling to Cambodia or other parts of the world to find work. For these at-risk young women, ADAPT has a program of vocational training combined with job placement. And for these women who have escaped the sex industry, ADAPT provides reintegration services, including access to health care, counseling, vocational training and other assistance.

However, the focus of the program is on prevention, since it is better to stop girls from getting caught in the sex trade in the first place. There are already 500 girls enrolled in the scholarship program, and the ADAPT staff hope to offer these students scholarships that will take them all the way through high school. Once they have a high school degree, their life options improve dramatically.

To help a young girl like Thuy, or to find out more, visit ICAN at www.ican2.org, PALS at www.pacificlinks.org, and EMW at www.eastmeetswest.org.

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John Anner is the Executive Director of the East Meets West Foundation.