Democrat & Chronicle
(January 31, 2008) — Fairport teenager Natascha Yogachandra took a winter break last month in Cambodia where she heard horrific details of the sex trade visited upon so many young women in Southeast Asia.
This was not your typical teenager vacation, but it was what I'd expect from Natascha and her parents, Debbie and Nat Yogachandra. Almost three years ago, they visited Nat's native Sri Lanka to help with tsunami relief. Soon, they rented their Fairport home, moved to India and set up the small Hope is Life Foundation with contributions from friends and friends of friends.
Their aim was to find a good school for Natascha, and to use the foundation's modest finances to help the poorest of the poor. They helped create small libraries and day care centers, purchased school desks, hurricane lamps, even sewing machines to help young girls learn a trade.
Last year, they worked to raise money to send 10 girls to school for five years. By last summer, Natascha had decided that she'd put most of her energy into making sure young girls get an education, because without skills to support themselves, they are incredibly vulnerable. Then they moved to Thailand to start again.
In an e-mail to me, Natascha wrote of meeting Vansyna, 23, who was whisked from Vietnam to Cambodia when she was 13. She and a friend were lured to a bus that was to take them to a Christmas party. The friends were separated and "Vansyna was taken to a brothel, with a coffee shop façade, where she was sold to the owner. ... She still had no idea what was going on, since she didn't know the language.
"As the tears start forming in her eyes, she is determined to finish her dreadful story. She takes a deep breath and recalls the brothel. Four floors full of girls, classified by ages, younger on the top and older on the lower floors, with around fourteen girls on each floor. She estimates that there were one hundred girls in this brothel alone. One thing that still haunts her to this day is that after the first day of crying, she could cry no more."
After a year, Vansyna was rescued by an organization founded by a woman who had endured the same fate as a child."Vansyna continues to live with a dark cloud hanging over her head, along with the many girls who have been forced into this trade," Natascha wrote. "We need to do something. Anything. Making people aware of the trafficking is the first step."
It is a cruel fate that awaits children of such despair. "Cambodia is a source, transit and destination country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor," wrote Nat Yogachandra. "About 35 percent of Cambodia's 14 million people live below the national poverty line of less than 25 cents a day," he wrote. "It is one of the poorest nations in the world. ... The country now has become a magnet for people who prey on the young and innocent."
The Hope is Life Foundation, he says, will work with volunteer groups to raise the living standards for the girls of Cambodia and will start raising money to build "learning centers" (which both house children and offer supplemental education) to give them the tools they will need. As they say, hope is life.
(January 31, 2008) — Fairport teenager Natascha Yogachandra took a winter break last month in Cambodia where she heard horrific details of the sex trade visited upon so many young women in Southeast Asia.
This was not your typical teenager vacation, but it was what I'd expect from Natascha and her parents, Debbie and Nat Yogachandra. Almost three years ago, they visited Nat's native Sri Lanka to help with tsunami relief. Soon, they rented their Fairport home, moved to India and set up the small Hope is Life Foundation with contributions from friends and friends of friends.
Their aim was to find a good school for Natascha, and to use the foundation's modest finances to help the poorest of the poor. They helped create small libraries and day care centers, purchased school desks, hurricane lamps, even sewing machines to help young girls learn a trade.
Last year, they worked to raise money to send 10 girls to school for five years. By last summer, Natascha had decided that she'd put most of her energy into making sure young girls get an education, because without skills to support themselves, they are incredibly vulnerable. Then they moved to Thailand to start again.
In an e-mail to me, Natascha wrote of meeting Vansyna, 23, who was whisked from Vietnam to Cambodia when she was 13. She and a friend were lured to a bus that was to take them to a Christmas party. The friends were separated and "Vansyna was taken to a brothel, with a coffee shop façade, where she was sold to the owner. ... She still had no idea what was going on, since she didn't know the language.
"As the tears start forming in her eyes, she is determined to finish her dreadful story. She takes a deep breath and recalls the brothel. Four floors full of girls, classified by ages, younger on the top and older on the lower floors, with around fourteen girls on each floor. She estimates that there were one hundred girls in this brothel alone. One thing that still haunts her to this day is that after the first day of crying, she could cry no more."
After a year, Vansyna was rescued by an organization founded by a woman who had endured the same fate as a child."Vansyna continues to live with a dark cloud hanging over her head, along with the many girls who have been forced into this trade," Natascha wrote. "We need to do something. Anything. Making people aware of the trafficking is the first step."
It is a cruel fate that awaits children of such despair. "Cambodia is a source, transit and destination country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor," wrote Nat Yogachandra. "About 35 percent of Cambodia's 14 million people live below the national poverty line of less than 25 cents a day," he wrote. "It is one of the poorest nations in the world. ... The country now has become a magnet for people who prey on the young and innocent."
The Hope is Life Foundation, he says, will work with volunteer groups to raise the living standards for the girls of Cambodia and will start raising money to build "learning centers" (which both house children and offer supplemental education) to give them the tools they will need. As they say, hope is life.
No comments:
Post a Comment