via Khmer NZ
By EVE NEWMAN
lbedit6@laramieboomerang.com
Saturday, August 28, 2010
About five years ago, Ruth Williams was reading a magazine while waiting to see her hairdresser, and she came across an article about a woman rescuing children from sex trafficking in Cambodia.
She saw a photo of a 5-year-old girl she couldn’t forget.
“Her face just haunted me, and I couldn’t get her from my mind,” Williams, a mother of six who runs Puddle Ducks Day Care, said.
Williams wrote a letter to Somaly Mam, who runs a series of centers in Cambodia for girls who have escaped slavery. She never expected a reply, but her letter sparked a friendship with Mam and a special relationship with Srey Mach, the 5-year-old in the article, who is now 10.
“I asked (Mam) what I could do to help, and she let me start sending things for this little girl,” Williams said. “Really, it’s just befriending.”
Now Williams is looking for other women who want to befriend girls in Cambodia.
In 1996, Mam started an organization called AFESIP — the acronym, in French, means “acting for women in distressing situations” — that runs six centers for rescued children in Cambodia.
The centers provide care, rehabilitation, education, job training and help reintegrating victims into their communities. One of those six centers, the Kampong Cham Center, houses 54 of the youngest girls, ranging in age from 5-16 years old. The girl Williams befriended lives there, and Williams is hoping to find women who will take on similar roles for the rest of the center’s residents.
“They’ve all been either orphaned or sold or kidnapped,” Williams said. “Somaly Mam does her best to find their families in cases where she can, but usually if they’ve been sold, they can’t go back (home).”
She remembers sending Srey Mach a pair of pink pajamas. She wore them for a week straight.
“I realized how important it was just to love one little girl. I couldn’t change the lives of everyone, but we could do this for one little girl,” she said. “I’m asking any ladies that want to share part of their love with a little girl and have a personal relationship with them.”
Initially, she worked with her church and the community to gather hygiene supplies, clothing and toys for the residents of the Kampong Cham center, but postal rates have tripled, and sending large packages isn’t feasible. By connecting individuals with girls, she’s hoping to continue supporting them without incurring huge costs.
“There’s no money involved. I’m just trying to find women who would be willing to befriend one little girl, send her a small package,” she said. “It costs about $8 to send a small outfit or a toy or something to Cambodia. Or maybe a postcard with pictures of Wyoming.”
She’s found about 40 volunteers so far. Many of the women who are participating do so together with their families, but Williams stressed that she wants women in particular to be the main donors because of the experiences the girls have had with men.
“Eventually, it would be great if they could have male figures in their lives, but I want to stick to women right now,” she said.
Most of the girls at the Kampong Cham center don’t speak English, so they probably wouldn’t be able to write back. Williams said the relationship would be one-sided, and she’s asking for volunteers willing to make a long-term commitment.
“The girls, more than anything — more than clothes or food — they crave a mother. I know we can’t be mothers, but we can be mother figures to them,” Williams said.
Somaly Mam was born in poverty in Cambodia and sold into slavery as a girl. She grew up working in a brothel before escaping and starting a new life. In addition to starting AFESIP to help victims, she started the Somaly Mam Foundation in 2007 to raise money to fight human trafficking.
“Don’t be scared. Stand up and help to fight,” Mam said in a video about her work. “Love costs nothing.”
The trafficking industry generates up to $12 billion a year and is the fastest-growing illegal industry in the world. An estimated 2 million to 4 million victims will be sold into slavery in the next year.
Williams will travel to Cambodia Sept. 7 with a television crew from Los Angeles that is filming a documentary. The crew heard about Williams from Mam during a recent benefit. Williams said she’s cramming her luggage full of gifts for the girls at the Kampong Cham center along with photographs of the women who will befriend them.
Williams and the crew, Orange County TV, will have a bodyguard with them during their weeklong stay. Mam also receives 24-hour protection, and the centers have been raided in the past.
Williams stressed that victims of sex trafficking are indeed victims, and many of them are children.
“Srey Mach was 5 years old. She didn’t have a choice, and they’re tortured to the breaking point. It’s a horrific thing,” she said.
Anyone who wants to join the effort can e-mail Williams at ruthjaneshirley@hotmail.com. They’ll receive information about the program before they have to make a commitment. Williams said she’s also willing to talk to women’s groups around Laramie about the program.
“Somaly Mam’s big thing is to show these girls that they are not nothing. They have been abused and degraded to the point they don’t think anything of themselves. They think they’re worthless. I think this can really help. Just one at a time,” she said.
For more information about the Somaly Mam Foundation, go to http://www.somaly.org/ .
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