The Freedom Story

January 20th, 2022 - At the start of 2022, it’s a great time to take stock of where we are, and where we’re headed. This week, our CEO, Rachel Goble, is sharing some of her thoughts, helping to set our tone and intentions for this coming year. Listen to learn more. Welcome to The Freedom Story podcast where we bring you our weekly updates, in audio version. For more information, please visit www.t...

January 13th, 2022 - It’s the beginning of the third year of a global pandemic, and many of us are coping with the Omicron wave. It feels like so many are getting hit with this one. Even if you and your family have so far managed to escape COVID, you likely know others who haven’t been so lucky. It’s a long time to go through upheaval and a long time without a sense of normalcy–only a continual at...

January 6th, 2022 - 2022 is off to a fantastically strong start, thanks to our community of donors who gave so generously to help support children at risk of trafficking. Listen to learn more. Welcome to The Freedom Story podcast where we bring you our weekly updates, in audio version. For more information, please visit www.thefreedomstory.org.

December 26th, 2021 - When Sara’s father died, her life changed irrevocably. She describes her father as the pillar of their household. When he passed, she says, “After that, our home felt pointless, lonely, unbearable, desolate, and millions of other feelings all at the same time. At that time, it could be said that the mental state of the people in the house was very bad and very hopeless.” List...

December 19th, 2021 - Like many boys his age, Det* loves sports. “I like to play sports because it makes me healthy. It also helped me learn self-discipline, patience, and strength while building relationships with friends,” he says. His favorite subject in school is PE. It helps him relieve stress. Det has faced multiple stressors in his young life, and we believe they put him at risk. Listen to...

December 12th, 2021 - Among the Hmong people, it is common to believe that girls’ education is less important than for boys. When a girl gets married, she becomes part of the husband’s family and no longer contributes to her own. From many parents’ perspectives, especially among older generations, even a college-educated woman will find value only with her husband’s family. For families that are i...

December 5th, 2021 - Boribun* is a 14-year-old who loves to sing and play guitar. He is Hmong, an ethnic minority from a village with deep drug addiction and drug trafficking problems. His family is large, with no reliable income, which is another source of stress. The world around him is rife with instability. Music is his escape. Listen to learn more. Welcome to The Freedom Story podcast where w...

November 28th, 2021 - We’re thrilled to announce a new video that shares about two sisters, Saifon and Panee! These young women are stateless, meaning they don’t have any kind of national citizenship. Statelessness leaves them without the legal protections that governments give based on citizenship, and they are also denied access to many of the basic rights citizens enjoy. Listen to learn more. W...

November 22nd, 2021 - Surachat knows what it feels like to suffer from depression. He is quiet and avoids people, especially those he doesn’t know. Beneath the reticent exterior, this young man carries a life of pain and hardship and the weight of ensuring his and his younger brother, Surachai’s, survival. Listen to learn more. Welcome to The Freedom Story podcast where we bring you our weekly upd...

October 21st, 2021 - The COVID pandemic has made it even more of a challenge to do outreach to areas, like migrant communities, that are already difficult to reach. However, our team has taken on the challenge and found creative ways to still spread knowledge and awareness to marginalized people. Because of COVID, many things have been prohibited: large gatherings, the travel of migrants, and outs...

October 7th, 2021 - While Thailand managed to avoid the brunt of COVID-19 cases last year–including a 200-day stretch with 0 cases–this year, Thailand has been hit much harder. Strict lockdowns and border closures kept case numbers low in 2020. COVID’s second wave hit migrant worker communities outside Bangkok in January 2021, but it was well contained. Listen to learn more. Welcome to The Freedom...

September 29th, 2021 - People in the communities with which we work are already beginning to see the impacts of climate change and the instability it brings to their lives. Though they live close to the earth and its natural resources and their communities have contributed relatively little to the causes of climate change, they are among the first to become most vulnerable to extreme weather event...

September 23rd, 2021 - In Southeast Asia, climate change looks like a whiplash between extremes: rising heat, intense rainy seasons, and droughts. We’ve witnessed this in our own community of families and children we support. The intensity of the rainy season damaged their crops. Ginger became moldy and spoiled. Floods ruined the rice. Droughts caused water shortages, making farming–and their live...

September 21, 2021 - The #MeToo Movement has helped foster a critical shift in the conversation about sexual consent from “No Means No” to beyond even “There Must Be a Yes” to “There Must Be Enthusiastic Yes.” Listen to learn more. Welcome to The Freedom Story podcast where we bring you our weekly updates, in audio version. For more information, please visit www.thefreedomstory.org.

September 16th, 2021 - In 2018, a  flood hit a Hmong village in the Nan Province of northern Thailand in the nighttime . Villagers woke up to find their houses floating toward the river. A landslide occurred, an essential bridge broke, two children died, over 400 homes were damaged, and the farmers–the vast majority of the villagers–lost their entire crop and a whole year’s income. Listen to...

September 8th, 2021 - A couple of years ago, one of our partner organizations reported on a case where a teenage boy had been arrested for trafficking. He and his girlfriend had broken up, and he subsequently took revenge by sharing explicit footage of her online via multiple apps for money. They were both underage. This is about how kids can get involved in trafficking other kids. Listen to learn...

March 11th, 2021 - Welcome to The Freedom Story podcast where we bring you our weekly updates, in audio version. For more information, please visit www.thefreedomstory.org.

December 28, 2020 - “When I was eleven, my mom died in a motorbike accident… that was a huge change in my life,” says Phikun.* Listen to learn more. Welcome to The Freedom Story podcast where we bring you our weekly updates, in audio version. For more information, please visit www.thefreedomstory.org.

December 22, 2020 - When Arpa*, mother of two girls Preeda* and Ying*, was growing up, she wanted to study. “But we were poor. We didn’t even have rice to eat. So I decided to go to work. I studied until 3rd grade. I can read and write a bit and that was enough. I wanted my kids to have a chance to study more than me. But in the past, when school started, we would really struggle to find money to...

December 15, 2020 - When we first started working in anti-trafficking, poverty was the trafficker, the biggest factor aiding and abetting vulnerability to exploitation. But in recent years, as kids started getting access to mobile phones and the internet, trafficking increasingly shows up in the form of exploitation online. Listen to learn more. Welcome to The Freedom Story podcast where we bring...

December 8, 2020 - “My biggest concern and fear has always been, ‘What will I do to get Pon his citizenship?’” Listen to learn more. Welcome to The Freedom Story podcast where we bring you our weekly updates, in audio version. For more information, please visit www.thefreedomstory.org.

December 1, 2020 - Early this year, we had a case that was a narrow escape – one of the narrowest we’ve encountered. Listen to learn more. Welcome to The Freedom Story podcast where we bring you our weekly updates, in audio version. For more information, please visit www.thefreedomstory.org.

November 23, 2020 - When Mai* was seven, her parents sent her away from their home in Myanmar to live with her aunt in Thailand so she could get a better life. It was not the promise they imagined it would be. Listen to learn more. Welcome to The Freedom Story podcast where we bring you our weekly updates, in audio version. For more information, please visit www.thefreedomstory.org.

November 19, 2020 - A Personal Essay, by our Research Writer & Editor, Dr. Jade Keller. Listen to learn more. Welcome to The Freedom Story podcast where we bring you our weekly updates, in audio version. For more information, please visit www.thefreedomstory.org.

October 29, 2020 - Over the years, there has been growing awareness of the prevalence of sexual assault and violence–whether sex trafficking, rape, child abuse or any of its other myriad forms. What that prevalence translates to is a lot of people who have suffered, and who may still be suffering from, trauma . Listen to learn more. Welcome to The Freedom Story podcast where we bring you our weekl...