Members Christine and Greg recently met Kim Miller from the Blue Dragon Children's Foundation to hand over some of the foreign currencies collected through our Rotary bins located at Sydney Airport before she goes back to Vietnam next week. We could donate the Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Lao money, which amounted to approximately $500 Australian Dollars. Kim has been with the Foundation for ten years, and she talked about the positive changes they are making for the Vietnamese people. She told us about how and why the Vietnamese people are lured into places like Cambodia to work for ‘scam factories’; they are targeted because they are taken away into locations where they do not have contact with people who speak the same language and put into areas that they do not know how to escape from or learn how to return to their own countries. These young people are held under guard, beaten and tortured (and sometimes) have their organs removed if they do not comply with what they are told to do.
Kim said that it costs about $1,000 to rescue one person. The cash we gave will be used to purchase petrol, food, drink and emergency supplies like shoes worn during rescues. (At times, people need to walk out of places like Myanmar through jungles at night and hide during the day to get back to Vietnam, and this can take up to 28 days)
With today’s technology, sometimes those captured can ‘drop a pin’ on their location, which is how they are found.
Kim said the Foundation's other role is to educate the Vietnamese people about the signs of what may be a ‘scam job’. This is done through local schools and the development of anti-trafficking boards made up of local community members.
Kim advised that the Foundation is starting to see that the regions that have had this education, combined with the Foundation's support to alleviate poverty and provide families with sustainable incomes, a decrease in the number of people falling victim to people trafficking and continues to work in collaboration with the Vietnamese government to roll this program out further.
Kim’s current title is Partnerships Coordinator, and Kim is currently an advisor to the NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner's Advisory Panel 2024-2025.To date, Blue Dragon has:
- Rescued 1,594 people from trafficking
- Represented 285 people in court cases
- Sent 6,396 kids back to school & training
- Provided shelter to 1,815 girls & boys
- Placed 466 teens in jobs
- Served 687,023 meals
- Built 269 homes for families
- Reunited 810 runaways with their families
- Obtained legal papers for 13,553 people
- Played 3,586 games of soccer!
The previous Randwick Rotary had been supporting the Foundation from its inception nearly 20 years ago, and our club continues to support them yearly. Rotary Marrickville also supports the Foundation, not only through this joint cash donation but also directly.
We look forward to welcoming Kim to our Club next year when she will be our guest speaker.