Life is a long story

Not who you expect

We all know what a victim of human trafficking looks like. Or at least… we think we do.

Close your eyes and conjure an image: A victim of human trafficking.

Who do you see?

Almost certainly, it’s not Thinh.

Thinh is a 32-year old man. He has a wife and two young children, all living together with his parents in a large town in southern Vietnam.

Throughout his life, Thinh has had his ups and downs but usually manages to land on his feet. He’s worked in construction and for a while even had his own small business, before it went bust and left him with a small debt.

So when a friend-of-a-friend offered him a chance to make some real money, he was tempted. All he had to do was go to Cambodia for a few months and manage a building site. The money was good because the work was a bit risky – he wouldn’t have a work permit or legal status, but the company was desperate for good workers so they were willing to pay a premium. Thinh saw a chance to get his business debt over and done with quickly.

He made the choice knowing these risks. He knew he was breaking the law.

Trafficked

What he didn’t know was that there was actually no construction job at all. He had been duped into working for a criminal gang that runs fraud schemes online.

Once in Cambodia, he was locked into a massive compound along with hundreds of others. When he tried to turn back, his resistance was immediately met with violence in the form of an electric cattle prod to his ribs.

It was more than 8 months before Thinh had an opportunity to escape. Now that he’s home in Vietnam, he shares little about what he saw and experienced, but when he does speak he trembles with terror.

Shame

To his family and neighbors, Thinh’s absence of 8 months is a mystery. They don’t understand why he returned empty handed after working in a job that should have been lucrative.

If he was really in danger, why didn’t he just refuse to work? Why not escape? After all, he’s a strong man and knows how to defend himself.

Even in his own eyes, Thinh finds it hard to see himself as a victim. Because he, too – just like all of us – thinks of human trafficking as something that happens to people who are weak, helpless, feminine. And he’s none of those things.

He also knows that he broke the law when he crossed into Cambodia without the proper paperwork. To make matters worse: once he was there, he worked in an illegal industry, where profit is made by deception.

Thinh doesn’t expect sympathy and he certainly doesn’t extend any to himself.

Researchers use the phrase “The perfect victim” to describe the profile of a person who is seen as deserving of support after the experience of exploitation. Thinh does not fit that profile.

Deserving

We find it easy to recognise a victim when the story is black-and-white: A child taken from her family. Or a young woman tricked by a stranger.

Those people certainly deserve our sympathy.

But trafficking doesn’t only happen to people like that.

Sometimes it happens to men. To people who knowingly take risks. To people who break the law.

And when that happens, many of us stop seeing the exploitation and start looking for fault.

A recent study examined the experience of people trafficked into online scam compounds in Southeast Asia. One of their findings was that many survivors struggle to be recognised as victims at all.

Not because they weren’t exploited, but because they don’t match our expectations of what a victim should look like.

You can find the full study here – it’s written by a team that includes my colleagues at Blue Dragon.

The paper makes a strong case for what we should already know: Human trafficking does not only happen to perfect victims.

It happens to people who are desperate, take chances, and trust the wrong person.

People like Thinh.

If our compassion extends only to those who never made a mistake, we will overlook many of the people who need it most.

Because the truth is that traffickers do not go looking for perfect victims.

They look for human beings.

Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation is working towards a world where we are all free from exploitation and slavery.

The option to stay

Mai and Peng were on the verge of leaving home to find work. Now they have a reason to stay… and a chance for a different future.

Mai and Peng are proud of their small family.

Raising two children, a girl and a boy, high up in the mountains of northern Vietnam, their lives have never been easy. Mai and Peng married young and, like many of their H’mong neighbours, grew maize for a living.

But as their children grew up, so did their costs. School fees. House repairs. Medical bills for Peng’s elderly mother, who lives with them. The future looked uncertain.

When Blue Dragon first came across this family, their mother Mai was deeply worried. She was having to choose daily between sending the kids to school or providing enough food for them all to eat. At times, they would go to bed hungry.

It looked like they would have to leave their mountain home to find work. And for families like theirs, that path often leads somewhere dangerous.

Out of school

In mountain villages like Mai and Peng’s, for young people to earn an income means one thing: migration. Leaving home to find a job that pays.

Mai and Peng didn’t want to take the kids out of school. Aged 11 and 14, they were still so young; but poverty robs you of choices, and it looked all but certain that their education had come to an end.

What Mai and her husband Peng didn’t fully comprehend was the risk involved in leaving home. By far, most Vietnamese people who are trafficked are those who have dropped out of school early and migrated for work.

This was a family at high risk.

Options

Once we knew of this family and their situation, the question for Blue Dragon was straightforward: What do they need to keep the kids in school and stay safe from the risk of human trafficking?

Mai and Peng didn’t want a handout. They needed an income. So we talked with them and their village leaders to develop an idea.

In the end, it was simple: if families could earn a living at home, they wouldn’t need to leave. A decision was made that ten of the poorest families would be given a grant to start small farms. The selected families received training and veterinary support, as well as the money to buy animals or crops.

Mai and Peng opted to buy three pigs. The total investment, including setting up the pigpens and getting a supply of food ready, was a little under $400. A small fortune for this family.

Where are they now

Fast forward a few years, and Mai and Peng have a completely different outlook.

Their kids are still in school: the son is in Grade 11 and the daughter Grade 8.

Their pigs are thriving. They now have a herd of 8, which they trade for food or raise piglets to sell.

And as a family, they have an income. Last year, they earned about $1,500. They are far from rich, but they have the one thing that keeps them and their children safe from trafficking: stability.

In the coming years, their children will finish school and then will head off for further studies or for decent jobs. Now that they are no longer desperate, they have choices.

A village transformed

It’s not only Mai and Peng’s family who have turned around their fortunes.

All of the other families in this pilot group have used the opportunity to create their own income streams. Some have earned enough money to repair their house, or build a toilet and install electricity. They have worked hard for their success, but just needed a helping hand to get going.

The impact has been so positive that now the community leaders are preparing to expand the idea around the region. What began as support for a few families is now something the community owns.

Recently, the local government raised funds to support 11 more families in the same village. The original group of 10 are now teachers and mentors to the new farmers.

And those who have benefited from these small grants have committed that as they succeed, they will each give an animal from their farm to another family who also needs help to get started.

Prevention

When people talk about preventing human trafficking, the focus is often on awareness – warning people about the risks.

For Mai and Peng, being aware of risk was never going to keep them safe. They needed practical assistance.

They were vulnerable to being trafficked because of their family circumstances. To end their vulnerability, their circumstances needed to change.

And now they have.

Beyond that, their whole community has learned a new way of looking out for each other. The program we put in place can easily be copied, replicated and scaled up.

Traffickers who may have preyed on them before really have no chance now. This is a community that is busy with their farming and no longer need to take risks just to get by.

When people have real options, traffickers have no power over them. Because the most effective protection for vulnerable people isn’t awareness; it’s opportunity.

Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation is working towards a world where we are all free from exploitation and slavery.

Come and see

At first, no one believed the children were being trafficked. What changed everything was not an argument, but an invitation.

Blue Dragon’s first days of rescuing kids from slavery were scary. Not just because of the dangers of confronting human trafficking, but because people couldn’t see that this really was trafficking.

We were seeing children taken from rural villages in central Vietnam and put to work in factories in Ho Chi Minh City. They were lured with promises of opportunity and training. Parents, most of whom lived in extreme poverty and had never been to school themselves, dreamt of their children having a better future. So the children left home with parental consent – by deception, of course – to work in sweatshops.

At that time, Vietnamese law was clear on human trafficking when it involved crossing international borders. But when it came to trafficking within the country, the law was very grey.

Blue Dragon didn’t want that to stop us. There were kids as young as 10, working up to 18 hours a day on factory floors while their parents thought they were in vocational training. We began working with families, village by village, to help them understand the reality and offer to bring their children home.

That’s how our earliest rescue operations began.

Doubt

However, not everyone was convinced. Around the villages, there were parents, community leaders and government officials who thought we were making it all up. I believe the phrase “trouble makers” may have been mentioned more than once.

As our work grew, so too did the pushback. In places, we were not welcome. I remember one day going to visit a family whose child we had recently found in a factory and brought home. Now we were helping them enrol in school again and assisting the father to buy fishing nets so he could earn a better income.

Out of nowhere, a local official appeared, apparently doing his own home visits. I found myself hiding behind a house until he had left, fearing that I’d be detained and asked to leave.

That was more than 15 years ago. Fast forward to today, and Blue Dragon works in seven provinces around the country, engaging communities and government agencies on this same issue of human trafficking. We regularly rescue people from slavery and represent them in court cases against their traffickers.

So what turned the tide, to take our work from being on the margins to being embraced and supported?

An invitation

It was a discussion one day with a local official, Mr “Thi”. He was a good man and cared for his community, but he was certain that no child trafficking was taking place in his area. He argued with us that going to work or training away from home was a better option for the kids than being at home, out of school, with no prospects locally for earning money.

And he simply didn’t believe our stories of kids being exploited to work long hours in hazardous conditions without pay or adequate food.

Our breakthrough came with a simple offer: Come with us. We’ll take you to these factories so you can see for yourself.

By this time, Mr Thi knew us well enough to see that our intentions were good, even if we might be wrong about the issue of child exploitation. The trust we had built by assisting members of his community opened a door that argument alone never could.

And so, Mr Thi accepted the offer. We arranged his travel to the city and accompanied him from factory to factory. He could see with his own eyes the children from his community working on ancient industrial machines and sleeping on factory floors.

Until he saw it, he couldn’t believe it. But once he knew what was happening, Mr Thi became a powerful advocate for protecting children from human trafficking. What began as skepticism had shifted into understanding and trust.

From seeing to action

Blue Dragon didn’t need to lobby for change. A local official took the lead, sharing what he had seen so that stronger protections could be put in place. This quickly spread from the village level to the province leaders – and then to the central government.

Blue Dragon no longer had to hide our work. We received formal acceptance to operate in the communities affected by this form of human trafficking – and we still work there to this day.

When the law was revised just a couple of years later, it included clear reference to “domestic human trafficking”, allowing police to take strong action when children are lured away to work like that.

With the whole community on board, we were able to put an end to child exploitation in those areas. The sweatshops that once thrived on child labour are shuttered. Children from those villages who once were easy targets for the traffickers are now in school, or have grown up to join training and get good jobs. Luong is one outstanding example.

And our success there has opened the door for Blue Dragon to take our anti-trafficking work to other regions of Vietnam that also need it.

What we learned

We started by rolling up our sleeves and doing the work ourselves. This showed others both the problem and the solution.

From there we turned our critics into allies, who went on to “own” this for themselves. Mr Thi and other community leaders didn’t simply start to support Blue Dragon; they took ownership of the issue and took the lead.

And that led to a change of mindset which in turn made possible the revision of the national law on trafficking.

The struggle to end human trafficking is far from over. But those early days taught us something we’ve carried ever since: systems don’t change just because they are instructed to. And they don’t change because well-meaning people promote a great idea.

Systems change when people can see clearly what is happening; and people only see when trust makes it possible.

Sometimes, the work of creating change begins with something as simple as an invitation:

Come and see.

Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation is working towards a world where we are all free from exploitation and slavery.

No silver bullet

Two thousand rescues is a milestone we never set out to reach. The real goal is simpler – and much harder – than rescue.

Blue Dragon is soon to mark a significant milestone: our 2,000th rescue of a person from slavery.

We never imagined that our first rescue operations, about 20 years ago, would be the start of something bigger. At the time, Blue Dragon was a very small organisation and all we wanted to do was help kids get out of trouble and onto a better path. There was never an intention to rescue hundreds or thousands of people.

While it’s significant, this is a milestone that we’re not celebrating.

Because we wish that there was nobody in need of this type of help. That human trafficking was a relic of the past. That when people were in such dangerous situations, systems would kick into place to protect them.

So our rescues are a response to a situation that we wish didn’t exist.

Not helpless

And yet, that doesn’t mean we’re helpless. On the contrary, over the years a vision has taken shape that gives us hope that there may yet be a day when our services are no longer needed.

Because every rescue operation gives us insight into how human trafficking works. Every time we reunite a trafficked person with their family and community, we understand more clearly what’s needed to keep people safe.

Over time, we’ve adapted that knowledge into systems that prevent human trafficking from happening. Slowly but surely, we’re building our knowledge and scaling up in areas of Vietnam where people are most vulnerable.

Loan

One young woman we have rescued is Loan. She was 20 when she was trafficked.

A single mother with a toddler, Loan just wanted to work. She didn’t want to be a burden on others; she wanted a job of her own so she could earn money to raise her daughter.

She came across a job ad online and applied for a position in a company. It would take her away from her village in the north-central region of Vietnam, but she could safely leave her child with her mother for a few months while she got started.

Loan was aware of the risks of human trafficking. She’d heard the stories and followed the news. But this job was in Ho Chi Minh City, far from the enslavement compounds of Cambodia and Myanmar. So she set off, hoping that this job might mean a better future for her baby.

What transpired was very different to what Loan dreamt. She was met by traffickers posing as business people who took her by car to Cambodia without her knowledge. Within a day of leaving home, she was sold to a criminal gang who forced her to work as an online scammer.

To refuse meant certain torture. If she was to survive, Loan had no choice but to follow orders.

She was in captivity for 6 months before she found a way to call for help. Blue Dragon was able to locate her and get her to safety within a few days, and soon she was home with her family.

Recovery

Once home, Loan was free but not OK.

The reasons that she had to travel away for work – her extreme poverty and need to care for her child – were now even more pressing. On top of that, while in slavery she had received no treatment for an autoimmune condition so her health was incredibly fragile.

And every person who experiences exploitation comes away with trauma. Loan had spent 6 months living in fear of her life, watching those around her be beaten violently.

Her effort to improve her life had made everything so much worse.

Tao

Tao is a young man who Blue Dragon also rescued from slavery.

Aged 19, we rescued him along with nine others from a scam compound in Myanmar.

Having grown up together in the same village, the group thought they had safety in numbers. They went online and found jobs advertised as sales positions in Laos. The ‘company’ even covered the cost of traveling from their home to get there. With little understanding of the world beyond their mountain home and minimal formal education, they had no idea what might lie ahead.

Once they reached Laos, their recruiters split them up and took them into Myanmar, where scam compounds operate on an industrial scale. Civil war keeps them safe from the eyes of the world but the chaos of the region makes it possible for Blue Dragon to rescue Vietnamese people who have been trafficked there.

Just like Loan, once Tao and his friends were home, their problems were far from over.

Tao was driven to find work to ease his family’s debt. While he had been in slavery, he had not been able to send money home – so the debt was now even worse.

Beyond rescue

The stories of Loan and Tao show us that people are vulnerable to being trafficked for very practical reasons, and often there’s more than one single factor.

Loan was a single mother in poor health with no hope of finding a job near home.

Tao had no formal education; no job; no knowledge of how to safely migrate for work; and debt to pay.

Conventional wisdom says that anti-trafficking organisations need to raise awareness to keep people safe. But we can see from these real-life situations that people need education, jobs, training and support services. Sometimes they need cash in their hands – direct financial aid – to get them through a rough period. And all of this has to be delivered by well-trained social workers, psychologists and law enforcement staff.

These are all very practical needs and they demand a practical response.

Working around Vietnam in both rural and urban areas, Blue Dragon has developed protective systems that are owned and implemented by local communities.

These systems include setting up volunteer boards who take the lead to keep their community members safe from human trafficking. When a family is struggling to earn an income, or a child stops going to school, or a person is planning to travel away for work, the boards have a role in offering assistance and advice.

The result is profound and simple. When kids are going to school and when people have decent living conditions, human traffickers don’t stand a chance.

And because all of these initiatives are led by community members, the system can be rolled out wherever it’s needed.

That’s what Blue Dragon is working on now. Refining the system we’ve developed and scaling it up.

While we do this, we continue to rescue people who have been trafficked.

Our reason to celebrate isn’t that we’ve rescued 2,000 people and it won’t be the day we reach 5,000 or 10,000.

The real reason to celebrate will be the day we don’t need to rescue anyone ever again.

Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation is working towards a world where we are all free from exploitation and slavery.

Invisible

What happens when a child is loved, known and cared for — but unseen to the system meant to protect him?

Trong waved me over to the table as soon as he saw me.

It was lunchtime at the Blue Dragon centre in Hanoi. Kids were drifting in – some from school, some from the streets – and the meal was just getting underway.

There at the back of the room, sitting with a table of kids, was Trong.

He’s 7 years old but Trong was surrounded by a group of teens. They saw themselves as Trong’s protector, making sure he ate plenty – as Vietnamese families do.

It’s been a while since I saw Trong, so I joined his table and we chatted endlessly while we ate. When he finally had his fill, the teens helped him clear up his bowl. Trong raced out the door, back to the drop-in centre to play.

And that was it. A brief encounter over a bowl of rice. But I haven’t been able to get that moment out of my mind.

Trong’s mother and father are both Blue Dragon ‘alumni’.

His mother died when he was just a baby; I don’t think Trong has any memory of her.

His father is in prison. He’s a good young man, but grew up without the support of a loving family. As a single dad, he has struggled to get a job and settle down. He’ll be released from prison soon and I know he’ll be eager to start over, reunited with his son.

So Trong is living with an aunty who loves him very much despite her own difficult situation. A young woman in her 20s, raising her brother’s child is a heavy responsibility.

On top of it all, Trong has no birth certificate. His mother died before the paperwork could be completed and with his father in prison, there just hasn’t been a way forward.

And no birth certificate means no school. Trong was initially accepted into Grade 1, but partway through the year he had to leave because his family couldn’t provide the documentation that’s required.

So now he studies with Blue Dragon teachers a few times a week and while our lawyers are poised to help him get a birth certificate, there’s nothing we can do until his father comes home.

In the midst of this complexity, all this grief and hardship and loss, is this delightful 7 year old boy who loves to play and enjoys being doted on by the Blue Dragon teenagers.

There’s a predictable process that will take place here. When Trong’s father is released from prison, Blue Dragon will help him get set up with a home and a job – maybe some vocational training first. We’ll start work immediately on the birth certificate and aim to get Trong back into school when the new academic year rolls around in August. From there, we’ll continue as needed.

For now, Trong waits. Not because anyone denies his need to learn, or his right to be cared for—but because a system designed for order has no place for a child whose parents are absent.

Trong’s story asks to face a larger question: how many children in our world are quietly excluded, not by cruelty, but by procedure?

If we are serious about protecting children, then helping Trong is critical, but not enough. We also have to fix the systems that inadvertently make a seven-year-old invisible.

Blue Dragon’s work bridges the divide between helping children in immediate need and making systemic change for the benefit of all. You can read more about our legal advocacy here.

Starting over

It’s been a long hiatus. Time to return to the Life Is A Long Story blog.

I’ll be posting on the first Monday of each month (and sometimes more), starting February 2.

As always, I will share moments and insights from behind the scenes at Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation. My purpose is to inspire hope that our world can be a better place, but I’ll never gloss over the ugly truths of injustice and hardship.

Sometimes I will share important news and articles, and I’ll start that today with this link to a story we’ve just published: Fortresses of Fraud. In late 2025, some of our team went on an undercover visit to Cambodia to witness the development of online scamming compounds. What we saw was eye-opening and disturbing.

Keep an eye on your inboxes for coming posts!

Baby. Bathwater.

Burning the house down is great theatre, but it doesn’t make anything better.

Two things can be true at once.

It can be true to say that US government foreign aid has sometimes been poorly managed and funded things it shouldn’t.

It can also be true to say that US government foreign aid has done remarkable good for the whole world, including for America, and has saved millions of lives.

With a wave of change sweeping through the United States, the daily news cycle is overwhelming. All of us are finding it difficult to keep up. Some of my friends are talking nonstop about the issue of US foreign aid being cut and USAID being closed. Others haven’t even heard that this is happening.

I feel that there’s nuance missing from the discussion. So after a couple of months break from writing, I’d like to wade in on this highly controversial topic and say some things that perhaps nobody will fully agree with. And that’s OK.

Where we stand

My organisation, Blue Dragon, has benefited enormously from US funding. In addition to the people of America donating generously, about 10% of our budget has come from the US government. Not from USAID, but from the State Department.

Within the Department there’s an office called JTIP, which deals with human trafficking around the world. It releases an annual report evaluating the efforts of every country on the planet in their efforts to deal with human trafficking. And in identifying areas for improvement, it offers funding to make that happen.

Unlike some foreign aid programs, JTIP funding has been particularly flexible, covering direct action, research, and training, according to local needs. Above all, this program has been funding activities in countries that have little other funding available.

Because the US understands that human trafficking anywhere affects all of us.

Funding for Blue Dragon in the past few years has enabled us to work on the issue of human trafficking into forced scamming compounds. These are criminal enterprises in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, where people are lured with false promises of work and then forced to operate online as scammers. They set up fraudulent websites and apps; they create fake social media profiles and send out millions of emails; and they scam billions of dollars from people.

Who are their victims? You are. I am. I’ve lost a few hundred dollars of my own to scammers. If you haven’t had the experience yet, I can guarantee that you know someone (other than me) who has been scammed.

Frozen

US government funding for Blue Dragon’s work on this is now frozen—just like every other anti-trafficking organization that was receiving these funds.

We don’t know if it’s permanent. It might be unfrozen. We’ve been told that there’s a 90 day suspension during which all foreign aid is being reviewed. So I’m not giving up hope. We have an extremely difficult 90 days of budget shortfall and I’m grateful that many of our friends around the world are pitching in to help with this.

But after 90 days, nobody has any idea of what will come next.

And for those organisations who were receiving anti-trafficking funds from USAID? That source appears to be gone forever.

So… the US political movement that was so vocal about protecting children and stopping trafficking? Well, they’re the ones who just cut off the largest source of global funding for anti-trafficking work.

The flip side

At the same time, I know as well as anyone else that US Government funding has sometimes not been managed well. I’ve seen grants for human trafficking prevention go to agencies that have never been involved in this field of work, while agencies with expertise and experience have been overlooked.

That’s been incredibly frustrating and I know that money hasn’t been used as well as it could have been.

Do I think that closing it all down and freezing everything is the answer? No. That’s not even attempting to solve the problem.

Burning the house down in this way is great theatre, but it doesn’t make anything better.

We all know the old saying about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Right now, it feels to me that that’s what we’re seeing.

It’s not too late and I can only hope that the funding reviews lead the administration to see that there is lots of good in the programs that the government funds. Cutting these out will be harmful to us all – including the American people.

Cutting efforts to combat online scamming will only lead to more Americans falling victim. As I’m quoted saying in this Wired article, these cuts may save millions, but will cost billions.

Similar arguments could well be made about funding to other forms of anti-trafficking work and to other causes. We live in such an interrelated world that the domino effects of development aid really do reach all of us, even if we never realize it.

If somebody doesn’t figure this out soon, we’ll all be realizing how much we’ve lost.

Lots of great charities are in need of support in this time of uncertainty. If you can support Blue Dragon, your gift will go toward protecting people from human trafficking and keeping families safe from exploitation.

Zen and the art of charity work

Blue Dragon has rescued dozens of people from slavery in recent weeks. But knowing that thousands more need our help, how can we find strength to keep going?

In the heart of Myanmar’s war zone, 21 young men were held captive, forced to scam strangers online. Blue Dragon sent a team to rescue them. Last week, they arrived home.

Then we worked with authorities from both Vietnam and Laos to rescue 13 women, most aged 18 to 25, from brothels in the Golden Triangle. With the arrest of 5 traffickers and the closure of several of these terrible brothels, a whole trafficking ring has now been wiped out.

*A brothel in the notorious Golden Triangle, where human trafficking is prevalent.*

These are significant achievements. And yet, we know that there’s vastly more to do.

There are still tens of thousands of people awaiting rescue; and hundreds of thousands at risk of being trafficked if they are not given the protection they need.

So as an NGO, how does Blue Dragon reconcile this gap between celebrating our achievements while acknowledging the crushing reality of what remains to be done?

Darkness and light

My way of dealing with this over the years has been to embrace the contradictions. To accept that light and dark can exist in the same time and space.

This means striving to make things better while also being at peace with what we cannot change for now.

The necessity of this mindset is especially important in our work with street kids.

Blue Dragon’s social workers are out on the streets every night, talking to kids who’ve experienced abuse, hunger and neglect. What we see and hear is often deeply traumatic.

Our instinct is to want to try to fix things. After all, that’s what we’re here for. We want to see development: kids back in school, parents starting jobs, families leaving the streets to live in safe homes.

But at the same time, we need to accept that this takes time. We can’t always achieve what we would like. And some situations will never change, no matter what do.

Rather than be disappointed, we need to see the value in simply caring.

NGOs like Blue Dragon are under constant pressure to get results. With their focus on development, they don’t typically place a lot of emphasis on “caring”. There are all sorts of reasons. It’s not sustainable or measurable or replicable.

It is, however, human to care. And Blue Dragon has found that we can do both. We can strive for development while accepting that sometimes all we can do is care.

I’m reminded of a grandmother we know, raising her extended family on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. “Lots of people and organisations come by to give us things or tell us what to do,” she once shared. “But you’re the only people who stop and talk with us.”

We’d love nothing more than to help this grandmother and her family off the street. In a flash, we would rent them a place to live and get them started in a business to earn money from home.

But they’re not ready for that – they don’t see the possibility. Maybe they don’t yet trust that we will really help them for the long term.

So all we can do is go by a couple of times a week, sit on the side of the road with them and share some hot tea.

And that’s OK.

Contribution

Being at peace with how things are doesn’t mean that we give up trying to change things.

Blue Dragon is still out there offering help to street kids. We’re still rescuing people from slavery and working village to village to prevent human trafficking from happening.

As we do this, we know that just by caring and trying, we’re already making a contribution. If “all” that we do is show a child that someone cares for them, that’s already an achievement.

Recently we reconnected with a young man named To who lived on the streets as a child. He was one of the most challenging kids we’ve ever worked with because he had never lived in a home or followed anybody else’s rules.

In many respects, To was best described as a ‘wild child’ and we always felt that we had failed to make much difference in his life. He never went back to school or settled into a home; he just kept on drifting about and getting into trouble.

When To came back to Blue Dragon earlier this year, after more than a decade of absence, he saw things very differently.

From his point of view, his time with us had been the best time of his childhood.

Our concern was always that we never achieved the change in his life that we believe he needed. However, his only concern was that we cared for him. That’s what he needed more than anything else.

Solving the world’s biggest problems requires strategy and resources put to work over a long time.

But we don’t have to wait forever to have an impact. We can do so in each moment. Because the here and now matters just as much as tomorrow.

This is the final Life Is A Long Story for 2024. I’ll be back in January with more stories from the kids of Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation. You’re most welcome to donate to this important work here.

The Road Home

A rescue operation to set free 21 people from slavery. Late-night street outreach in the city’s dark corners. These are powerful moments: but what comes next?

Blue Dragon’s work can get the adrenalin racing.

This week alone we rescued 21 people.

All were enslaved in one of Myanmar’s notorious “scam centers” where people are forced by armed criminals to work online under the constant threat of torture. Getting them to safety involved a swift escape from the traffickers, followed by a journey over land through a war zone.

Much of our work is less dramatic, but similarly complex. Working on the streets of Vietnam’s two biggest cities, our task is to meet children who are sleeping rough and offer them help.

When we first meet them, we never know what situation we are walking into. Are pimps controlling these kids? Are human traffickers watching from the shadows?

Unfortunately, there’s only one way to find out.

Reunion

But as exciting as all of this can be, what comes next is just as important: the journey home. True impact happens in the quieter, unseen moments that come next—moments like reuniting a child with their family or helping a community rebuild.

Whether we’ve met them on the city streets or rescued them from slavery, Blue Dragon takes great care when it comes to reuniting children with their families.

And that typically involves accompanying the child back to their home, however remote that may be.

Doing this allows us to understand how to help the family – and sometimes the whole community.

This week our staff traveled for 3 days to reunite a boy named Hung who we met on the streets of Hanoi. He’s just 14 years old and hadn’t eaten for days when we found him.

He came to the city looking for a way to earn money for his family. The journey home showed us very clearly why he needed to do that.

Following a very long bus ride into the mountains, the road became impassable by anything with more than 2 wheels. Hung and our staff took to motorbikes to travel from the main road to his home.

Here’s some video taken on the way:

The start of the motorbike ride to Hung’s home.

After some hours, the road was finished. The rest was by foot.

After the journey

Of course, the whole point of taking Hung home is so that we can find out what caused a child to make such a long and dangerous journey to the city – and then deal with that problem.

All of which means that getting Hung home doesn’t mark the end of the story. Just the end of a chapter.

Now he’s safely with his family and they know who Blue Dragon is. We’ve started discussions about helping them start some farming and improve their home. If we can make Hung’s living conditions better, he has no need of leaving at least until he’s old enough and has a plan.

Family reunions might not be the most exciting aspect of Blue Dragon’s work, but they are vital to our success.

Going beyond rescue means helping children and families to heal.

With Christmas and the new year coming, Blue Dragon is inviting our friends to donate for children like Hung. Just $1 is enough to provide a meal.

Start-Up Mode All Over Again

Blue Dragon’s 20th birthday is drawing to an end. But rather than be satisfied with what we’ve achieved, 2024 has been a year of new beginnings.

I look back on Blue Dragon’s early days with a mix of nostalgia and relief.

Nostalgia because they were simpler times. We had no staff and no money; and everyone’s expectations of us were very low!

Which brings me to relief. Having no staff, no money, and very few people to believe in us meant that everything had to be done from scratch. The hard way.

So after 20 years, you might think we’d be content to take it a bit easier now. We’ve made tremendous progress, worked out how to get things done, and have some impressive achievements to our name.

But ‘taking it easy’ isn’t in our blood.

In fact, as 2024 nears an end – and with it Blue Dragon’s 20th birthday – our signature achievements this year are the new journeys we’ve begun.

Ho Chi Minh City

After 20 years of assisting Hanoi’s street kids, Blue Dragon has now started operations in Vietnam’s southern megacity.

We have a small team who goes out onto the city streets offering assistance to children and families sleeping rough.

While we do that, we’re working with other agencies who are already established in Ho Chi Minh City to see how we can help the whole system work better.

Our 20 years of helping Hanoi’s street kids has taught us a great deal. The Ho Chi Minh City operation has the benefit of the principles and philosophy we’ve developed; our ‘whole stream‘ strategy and belief in ‘massive interventions‘.

But beyond that, we’re beginners.

Street kids in Ho Chi Minh City are different to the kids in Hanoi. They’re on the streets for different reasons. The work they do to earn money is different.

*A street outreach worker (in black) talks with a family living on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City.*

There are many cultural differences, too, and of course many different agencies and nonprofits who are involved.

So far from resting on our laurels, we’re back in ‘start-up’ mode, creating a new wave of change in the country’s largest city. The year ahead will be one of scaling up to meet the need and expanding our reach.

Nghe An

Far from the colorful streets of Ho Chi Minh City, the province of Nghe An is better known for its harsh landscape and remote, rugged mountains.

Over the years Blue Dragon has worked here on and off. Many of the people we rescue from human trafficking grew up in Nghe An, and many of the cases we represent in court take place here.

In 2024, we took the step of starting up in the province on a more permanent basis. The strategy to prevent human trafficking that’s been working well in other parts of the country is now being brought to the mountains of Nghe An.

We’re working in a very isolated region that is usually overlooked for support because of its remoteness. And that’s exactly why we need to be there – to go that extra step further where we’re really needed.

Always more

The problem that every charity faces is that there’s always so much more we could do.

To succeed, we have to choose carefully where to put our money and our time. The decisions that we make have an impact on the lives and wellbeing of many. When it comes to human trafficking, these decisions can even be life and death.

I’m excited that as our 20th year comes to an end, we have these new beginnings awaiting us. There’s so much opportunity to help more people and learn more about how to effectively end human trafficking.

Being in start-up mode is never easy. But it brings the potential for real, lasting change.

And that’s what Blue Dragon is here for.

Blue Dragon Child r en’s Foundation is on a mission to end human trafficking.