October 15 is Blog Action Day when thousands of bloggers all over the world write about the same subject. This year it's water.
And you're wondering how in the world I'm going to connect water with child trafficking. Oh yes, there is a connection.
About 5 years ago when I knew Born to Fly wanted to get involved with the fight to stop child trafficking, I talked with Rob Morris, head of Love 146. Rob told me about some villages on the border of Cambodia and Thailand where little girls walk a long distance from their village to the nearest well.
Child traffickers know their routes. It doesn't take much planning to find a little girl walking by herself. And voila--another innocent child joins the worldwide trafficking trade. Her destiny is to be raped for profit 30 or 40 times a night for the rest of her life. All because she had to walk to find water.
Rob told me how Love 146 was working to dig wells in these high-risk villages so that little girls didn't have to walk far to get water. In the villages where they'd dug wells, the rate of trafficking was going down. And girls could spend time in school instead of lugging water jugs.
No water = child trafficking.
Water = No child trafficking.
This isn't just a problem on the Thai/Cambodia border, of course, but all over the world.
There are so many things we can do to help stop child trafficking. Who knew that digging a well would be one of them?
Now you do.
UPDATE from Rob Morris at Love146: "Thanks Diana. The children in those communities are now in school & getting an education. No longer prey for traffickers." Pretty awesome!
A big thank-you to everyone who donated to the 10/10/10 Twitterthon to stop child trafficking. We've raised more than $5,600. Even though 10/10/10 has passed, you can still donate by clicking the orange "ChipIn" button above (or here if you're reading this by email).
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