We are very excited to announce the beginning of a new project in Songpinong! Together with our friends at the Child Rights Protection Center (CRPC), we have put together a Project Team that has planned out the timeline and details of the Family Aid and Development Project (FADP).
Our goal with FADP is to inspire and facilitate long-lasting, sustainable, and impactful change within the pilot village of Songpinong by working closely with girls from CRPC’s shelter and empowering members of their communities. CRPC operates a full-time shelter for twelve girls who are at-risk for human trafficking. Before coming to live at the shelter, these girls likely would have been forced to drop out of school and would have been vulnerable to exploitation. Often, their families and the people in their villages live without basic necessities like bathrooms and mosquito nets. CRPC aims to take a holistic approach to family development by not only giving the girls a safe and loving home but also by addressing the root causes of the problems affecting their families and communities. It was for this reason that Songpinong was chosen as the pilot village of FADP – it is home to half of the girls living at the shelter. With this project, our aim is to empower and equip the girls with the tools and skills to effect change in their own villages. In doing so we aim to prevent the kinds of circumstances that put vulnerable girls at risk in the first place. It is this hope that inspired the Family Aid and Development Project.
It is easy to see the extreme and pervasive poverty within the communities, as well as the urgent need for basic necessities for families living in such desperate conditions. As winter is approaching, it is also worrying to see families without proper protection from the elements, enough food, warm clothing, and more. However, we also recognize that nobody, no NGO, government, or individual, can know what these community members need the most as well as they themselves know. While these people urgently need items such as blankets, kitchenware, and soap, they also need to play a participatory role in their own lives and development in order for any lasting, sustainable impact to be made.
The Family Aid and Development Project was therefore designed starting from the ‘Aid’ perspective – by asking the girls at the shelter to provide a list of families in need and how we could best serve them this winter, and also from the ‘Development’ perspective – by empowering the girls to design and implement a research and development project. Beginning with the girls from the CRPC shelter, FADP will connect with people living in the girls’ home village of Songpinong to give them a sense of agency and purpose. The project will give the villagers a sense of agency and purpose, and allow the Project Team to learn from their insight on how best to implement a participatory project which will effect lasting, positive change in the community.
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