Why Support This Cause?
Friends of Thai Daughters works to support the most at-risk girls in need of assistance in the mountains of northern Thailand. The girls at this NGO come from backgrounds that include severe poverty, drug addiction or selling drugs in the families or villages, family members in jail, villages whose headmen are well known for being part of the human-trafficking network, substandard education, lack of educational opportunities beyond the 6th grade, orphaned children, forced labor, etc. This charity removes these girls from these extremely risky and impoverished situations and brings them into a safe house where they can live for free and go to school. They send them to school all the way through university to give them the best chance at a successful life as possible. Your money will go towards school fees, room and board, and other daily life expenses for the girls.
Another very important area your money will go towards is helping to get Thai nationality and ID cards for the girls who do not currently have them. Many people in northern Thailand are ethnic minorities that have come across the border from Burma to escape violence and poverty, or from Laos looking for better economic opportunities. Others are born in villages up in the mountains of northern Thailand to poor families and are never registered with proper paperwork in Thai hospitals. In either case, these people are stateless, having no national identity. What this means for such stateless individuals in northern Thailand is that the opportunities available for them, even those lucky enough to be helped by an organization like FTD, are very limited. Without residency and an ID card in Thailand, "you can't own land, take out a loan, start a business, get married, receive free education and healthcare, travel, vote, or a myriad of other rights." (Kemasingki, 2017) In addition, these people do not have access to the better careers that are reserved for Thai nationals. For example, one current girl at FTD, a very intelligent and highly motivated girl from Burma, has a dream to become a medical doctor. However, because she does not have Thai nationality, that door is currently closed for her. If they are not one of the lucky few being assisted by an organization such as FTD, this clearly puts them at much greater risk for human trafficking as they look for ways to survive financially. Thailand does not have a clear policy for how to handle the stateless within their borders, and so each case must be fought on an individual basis which can take years. FTD is doing its best to get all of their girls Thai nationality to open up the whole spectrum of possibilities for their futures, but this process takes a lot of time, hard work, and money. Your donations will go a long way towards helping them navigate this difficult yet extremely important process. (For more information on the issue of statelessness and human trafficking in Thailand, go to https://www.pressreader.com/thailand/the-nation/20170314/281595240337600)
