Development and Education Programme for Daughters and Communities (DEPDC)

Thailand is one of the most popular travel destinations in Southeast Asia. Under the slogan "Amazing Thailand" Thailand intended to attract more visitors to visit the kingdom and spend more money in the country hoping that tourism would help it to recover from the economic crisis.

Even though tourism can create many jobs and brings a lot of the urgently needed cash into the country it also creates many problems. Child exploitation and child prostitution were the results of a growing sex tourism that Thailand had to face. Apart from being a crime against defenseless children this also damaged Thailand's reputation in the world.

There are many reasons why a young girl from a remote and impoverished region might be forced or lured into prostitution.

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Often there are familiy problems, broken families because of divorce or because the father went to find work in a far-away city and never sent money or did not return back home. The mother might have to care alone for three or four children. Sometimes the mother married again and the daughter is being mistreated by the new step father. Family members may be sick, drug addicts or disabled. There may be younger sisters and brothers who still go to schools. In many cases the land was lost that once provided an income for the family because it was given as a guarantee for loans which could never be payed back. Sometimes the father lost the land by gambling.

All this puts an enormous pressure on the eldest daughter. She will start to think how she is going to help her mother and what she could possibly do to earn a lot of money.

Traditional values and social structures that could offer orientation and provide guidance have lost their strength and in almost any village there will be an example of a girl who went to the big city and from time to time visits her home with a lot a money and a fashionable outfit.

This is the scenario that might make the young girl think entering prostitution could be an acceptable solution for her misery.

Far away from Bangkok in the northermost part of Thailand, Mae Sai, Chiang Rai province, a group of social-workers and teachers set up the fight against this tragedy that destroys the lifes of thousands of young girls every year.

They intend to attack the problem right here at it's roots. DEPDC focusses on prevention in order to save girls from poor families and from the hilltribes before it is too late.

Before he founded DEPDC Sompop Chantraka had been researching about the northern thai prostitution problem. As he was getting to know the mechanisms of this business which has become a large scale "industry" and the reasons why girls became prostitutes his motivation to help them and to find alternatives was growing stronger.

He understood that for these girls education is the key to building up self-confidence and developping their skills and potentials.

"The ones who have already gone to work as prostitutes we can't help them much but for those who are still here we can offer education as a better choice. DEP, Daughters' Education Programme had come into my mind because I saw that wherever girls had gone to be prostitutes it was very likely that some of their relatives or cousins would soon prepare to go too. I tried to persuade girls who I met during my visits to their villages to think again about their decision and consider starting a new life with studying and learning or job training. Finally, we formed a small target group of girls, the first 19 daughters and I spent my first money which I had earned from the research work on their education." he said.

Through the years what has once begun as a small initiative of an individual who did not want to look away nor accept what he had seen has become a large and successful project. It's center situated in a beautiful hilly area outside Mae Sai town has grown into a small village that is offering a safe and friendly place to live and learn for hundreds of children and young women.

Meehka, a 15 year-old Akka girl told us how her hope for a chance to study had become real when she had a chance to meet Sompop who was visiting her village.

"One of my sisters went to become a prostitute because she wanted to help our family. But I don't want to be like her. I want to have a future, I want to study as much as I can. Teacher Sompop came to our Akkha village. He talked with my family. My parents have got six children. I think he pitied us children so he asked if we wanted to study. At that time on the hills there were no teachers and no schools. I replied that I really wanted to study and my older sister decided to join me. So he took us to the DEPDC center. Finally I had a chance to learn. " she said.

At the center the girls have many opportunities to study and attend job training programmes. Just as important as these programmes are the many activities aimed at developping their self-confidence, such as learning to speak in public and organizing their own community life. A piece of land belonging to the center is used for organic farming supplying the vegetarian restaurant run by the girls with fresh vegetables free of chemical substances.

organic farming

During school holidays DEPDC arranges study tours for the children to let them see and learn about other parts of thailand and experience other sides of life and society.

"We started to organize study tours for the children to show them that there are many women who are sucessful with businesses and other aspects of life. We took them to meet and talk with teachers, professors, social activists and female leaders in order to encourage them and to light up their dreams and their imgination of their future. We also took them to see women working as handycraft workers, as another example of the women's potential. We want to let the children see a bigger world and imagine alternatives of employment." Sompop explained.

The sucess of DEPDC speaks for itself. In the last 10 years the center has already saved 600 girls from entering prostitution. Many of these daughters had the chance to continue their studies and start careers that once seemed to be unreachable for them.

Though the work and the example of DEPDC communities in the area became more aware of child rights issues, teachers have learned and have developed their ability to help the children and other new networks similar to DEPDC were born and spread widely to other provinces around the country.

Sompop also sees some positive changes in the attitude of the thai society and government. "The legislation about education and child labour has been improved. The concept of child rights has been introduced and if this is taken seriously, I believe the situation will improve, because then we can take adventage of state mechanisms. We can demand the enforcement of the new laws, indentify wrongdoers and inform the police in a much more effective way."

"On the other hand we are increasingly concerned about prostitution agents shifting their area of business to the neighbour countries, Laos, Yunnan (China) and Myanmar. Because these countries are less developed, the prices paid for girls are much lower and the ignorance and lack of information in these regions easily lets them become victims of the these agents. Nowadays, these neighbouring areas are more and more confronted with the same problems as northern Thailand and the number of cases where young girls are being smuggled or kidnapped and forced into Thailand's or other asian countries' sex industry is increasing.

These tendencies we have been observing in the last years lead us to form a network called "Mekong Basin Network for Child Rights" which will help to raise public awareness of these new dangers. One of our first activities was to organize a seminar about the issue of child rights for NGOs (Non-government organizations) working in the Mekong Basin area."

"One of our future projects will be the foundation of a Center of Child Rights Protection in Chiang Rai. We are trying to mobilize people from different professions like police officers, doctors, teachers, development experts to form an alliance with NGOs and establish the new center and care for the children" Sompop said with his firm voice.

Saisuda Pohl (c) thailife.de

Case Study - stories of former daughters of DEP

Sakunrat, aged 20

Sakunrat comes from the Chiang Khong district on the Laos border of Northern Thailand. Born into a poor landless family she faced a particularly difficult childhood. Her parents divorced just after she was born and several years later her younger half-sister drowned. She attended the first three years of primary school before it was decided that she should live with her father in Mae Sai. She intended to drop out of school after grade 6, as her father, a farmer with no steady income, could not afford to finance her secondary education.

After hearing about Sukunrat's plight and knowing that she was a risk of being lured into the sex industry, Sompop visited her school, consulted with her teacher and father and offered her a scholarship. She became one of the first daughters in the Daughter Education Program.

Sukunrat while in the DEP program, completed three years of high school, at the age of 16 she joined the Youth Leadership Training Program for 3 years. With a combination of exceptional English language skills and experience afforded by her training at DEP, in 1996, at the age of 19, Sukunrat was invited to attend an international conference in the United States of America to represent Thai youth.

On her return to Thailand, she decided to enroll in the Pan Pacific Hotel Training program at Grand Hyatt Erawan. This has since led to a job as a receptionist at a 5 star hotel in Chiang Rai.

Pimjai, aged 20

Pimjai, now 20, first encountered Sompop at school when she was 13. She like some of the other girls she was apprehensive. Having heard that the scholarship was funded by a Japanese agency, she says that "At first, no one was brave enough to go. We were scared that it wasn't a real offer and that we were going to be sold in Japan". However, her parents insisted that she should join the DEP, reassured by the the fact that four other girls in her village were going as well.

Pimjai completed three years of secondary education with DEP help and then, along with a few other DEP girls, opted to enter a six-month hotel training course. She has been working as a waitress at the Shangri-La for six months and is using her earning to fund a home study course offered by Bangkok's Ramkhamhaeng University. She has just completed her second year and experts to earn her bachelor's degree in 2000. She is majoring in mass communications and hopes to work in broadcast media. "if it weren't for DEP, I wouldn't be here today", she says, a confident smile lighting her face.

Tippawan, aged 20

Before joinging DEP at the age of thirteen Tippawan who was an only child completed her primary schooling in Mae Sai. Her mother remarried after her father was killed in a car accident, and so she was essentially raised at home by her mother and step-father. The family's livelihood was rice farming and a noodle shop.

Although her parents' income could have supported her through secondary school, Tippawan's mother had no intention of permitting her to study past grade 6. "Before, people didn't see the importantce of studying" says Tippawan.

A staff member from DEP, canvassing her village, persuaded her mother to allow her daughter to continue with her studies at DEP, "I was so glad, because I wanted to continue with my studies, being so young I didn't have any skills to do real work", says Tippawan.

Tippawan completed junior high school with the assistance of a DEP scholarship. In addition to the standard government curriculum, she was taught about social issues, public speaking and self esteem. After finishing grade 9 at 15, she worked briefly as a clerk, and then used the money she saved to travel with a friend to "get out for the experience and to see something new", she says.

She returned to DEP three years ago, first working as an office assistant and then moving onto her current position as a preschool teacher. "It has occured to me to be a teacher, but now I think it's great", she explains. "Maybe I will eventuanlly move to a different position but either way I would like to stay on at DEP. Most of my friends quit school after grade 6 and a lot of them went on to become prostitutes. This was basically the only alternative outside of the home. Sompop helped me to avoid this fate, and now I want to return the favor in any way I can".