An giang/Dong thap Alliance for the Prevention of Trafficking (ADAPT)
We provide economic alternatives and/or educational opportunities for at-risk young girls and young women and their families and community to fully understand and avert trafficking risks.
About You
Location
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Your idea
Sector Focus
Civil society
Year the initative began (yyyy)
2005
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Web site (url)
Positioning of your initiative on the mosaic diagram
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Vulnerability of targeted populations
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Increase community resilience
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic
Reintegration of trafficking victims allows for renewed belief that communities could beat back the traffickers' reach. Reintegration is also important in safeguarding the families that have already been impacted by trafficking and a real chance of stopping traffickers from younger siblings and neighbors.
Name Your Project
An giang/Dong thap Alliance for the Prevention of Trafficking (ADAPT)
Describe Your Idea
We provide economic alternatives and/or educational opportunities for at-risk young girls and young women and their families and community to fully understand and avert trafficking risks.
Innovation
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
We provide economic alternatives and/or educational opportunities for at-risk young girls and young women and their families and community to fully understand and avert trafficking risks.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field?
Comprehensive web of services aimed at prevention: scholarships for most at-risk young girls, vocational & job placement for drop outs, and reintegration support for those who are lucky enough to return home.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
Direct services with office in the field, near the border of Vietnam and Cambodia. Dedicated staff and volunteers. Long term scholarships are most important as they add resilience to the community and protect young girls for few more crucial years. Economic alternatives to crossing border allow for peer counseling. Advocacy at the grassroot level.
How do you plan to grow your innovation?
Program is scalable. Community Partners have been identified. Grassroot groups of women activists have been trained and supported.
Next stage will hopefully involve several private sector partners (some already identified) who will provide jobs and support revenue-generating endeavors.
Do you have any existing partnerships, and if so, how do you create them?
ADAPT is a collaborative among three Vietnamese American NGOs including Pacific Links Foundation, East Meets West Foundation and International Children Assistance Network (ICAN). ADAPT receives partial support from a USAID-GDA grant. Some new partners have been identified for the next stage of ADAPT.
More partnerships need to be acted upon.
Impact
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact.
Inoculate Mekong Delta's vulnerable communities against human trafficking by building grassroot awareness and concrete alternatives to crossing borders.
What are the main barriers to creating or achieving your impact?
Vietnam remains today a sending country. Socio-political conditions seem to point fingers to poverty and therefore an inability to stop the flow across borders. Remoteness of areas create additional barriers to information. ADAPT lacks resources to pull together new partnerships to build on its success, though at least a dozen of large corporations/funders have expressed interests in working with us.
How many people have you served or plan to serve?
1,300 young women aged 10-25 in addition to their families. We hope to reach out to 10,000 people with anti-trafficking messages.
Directly
1,300 for now.
Indirectly
already served another 1,500 people through the channels built.
Please list any other measures of the impact of your innovation?
* Advancing the working of local government and women leaders to solve the problem in their areas.
* Instilling the message of "JUST SAY NO TO TRAFFICKING" among vulnerable communities
* Banding together public-private partnerships against trafficking
Is there a policy intervention element to your innovation?
Indirectly. We showcase some realistic solutions to the Vietnam National Comprehensive Action Plan against Trafficking.
For example: By successfully negotiating with the local government to open the first Safe House in our province, we have pushed for more attention to the cause.
By bringing more partners to the cause, we spread the words that Trafficking cannot be condonned.
Exactly who are the beneficiaries of your innovation?
at-risk young girls and young women as well as returnees/victims and their families.
government and private sector partners.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
The three partner organizations are committed to see the 500 young girls through high school, providing the communities with human resources against trafficking. The USAID-GDA grant partially funds the program in its first three years.
If known, provide information on your finances and organization
$300k/ year with significant of volunteer efforts that would add up to another $150k.
Currently 6 staff with 3 long term volunteers. Additional 10 short term volunteers have delivered professional knowledge support to ADAPT.
No revenue is generated at this point though the next stage of ADAPT will likely generate revenue through "teaching" restaurant and beauty salon.
What is the potential demand for your innovation?
Program can grow to have another 1000 young girls in school and 5000 with sustainable jobs. More than 50,000 people residing at the border districts could be made much more aware of the tragedies caused by human trafficking, resulting in more vigilant governtment/police response to this problem.
What are the main barriers to financial sustainability?
Cost structure has been lean due to large number of volunteers. In order to grow the next stage, ADAPT will need to have solid management in place, especially with regards to business ventures.
The Story
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
In 2003, the Vietnamese American community started to express serious concern with regards to the issue of trafficking and the growing number of brides marrying off to foreign land. We led a fact finding team of 5 orgs to the border provinces in 2004 and pulled together this collaborative in 2005.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material
Diep N. Vuong co-founded Pacific Links Foundation, an international NGO with transfer of knowledge programs in Vietnam, currently serves as its President and chairs the Vietnamese American NGO Network (VA NGO Network). Since the early 90s, Diep has focused her effort on poverty alleviation and community participation for multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, UNDP, and international NGOs such as Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) and East Meets West Foundation. She was instrumental in the implementation and success of SEARAC's multi-year micro-credit program throughout 14 provinces in Vietnam. Di?p designed and spearheaded the implementation of a counter-human trafficking collaborative program called An Giang Dong Thap Alliance for the Prevention of Trafficking (ADAPT).
Emphasis of Work
We focus on mainly on prevention. Our work with the victims/returnees allows us to protect them and especially their family members.
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Comments
Your organization appears to have a simple yet effective approach to preventing and addressing trafficking in the border area between Vietnam and Cambodia. Education and training appear to be key in the prevention model. Are there ways to measure the effectiveness of the program since 2005?
Your website mentions that economic conditions make training and job opportunities challenging for these women. I'm not sure how feasible this is, but are there ways that your organization can promote entrepreneurship among the women who receive help from you? You might already do this, but do these women get business training so that they can ultimately start their own ventures? A repair operation or shop for all those crucial bicycles? I'm interested in learning more about the partnerships that are in the pipeline because I could see quite a few private companies wanting to get involved to fulfill their social responsibility missions.
Since 2005, we have set, met, and achieved the following goals for ADAPT:
Scholarship program
-Goal: 400 scholarships/year.
-We are currently supporting 560 scholarships.
Vocational training & job placement
-Goal: 400 young women trained in 3 years. To date, we have provided 793 women with vocational skills training.
-Goal: 300 young women placed in companies. We have placed 293 in various employment opportunities.
Reintegration services
-Goal: 50 returnees
-We are supporting 16 young women.
While it is hard to concretely determine effectiveness (as we mainly work on prevention, it is hard to say whether the girls in our program would have been trafficked without our intervention) we use the above target indicators to track and further motivate our work progress. Other measures of effectiveness include looking at school drop out or retention rates. The drop out rate for girls in our scholarship program is much lower than that of the national average.
And while we do provide few micro-credit loans to young women and their families to fund small and sustainable start-up businesses, we are working to expand our vocational training and job placement component and be involved in direct job creation. We are developing plans to establish a Vocational Training Center and Restaurant for at-risk young women and returnees to gain further employable skills. The Vocational Training Center will offer training in such areas as the culinary/hospital industry--trainees can practice and hone their skills in the Restaurant--and in various handicraft trades--trainees will produce products that will directly be sold to businesses in HCMC or online.
We are seeking and mobilizing a diverse range of public and private partners, such as companies, to join us in this exciting endeavor.
Hello Diep,
Could you please share with us how many individuals have been placed in jobs through your program? Could you provide some more context behind your impact numbers? How are you engaging the 1300 young women? What do you provide for them and how do you empower them?
Thank you
Dana Frasz
Ashoka's Changemakers
Hi Dana,
Thanks for asking about our work and the impact we've worked hard to achieve so far. The following is a break down of the 1,300 young women we work with:
Scholarship program - We are currently supporting over 500 scholarship recipients through direct payment of school tuition, health insurance, uniforms, books, bicycles, and tutoring classes. Scholarships are committed to the girls for each year they remain in school until they graduate from high school.
Vocational Training and Job Placement - We have provided vocational skills training for roughly 790 young women in such fields as sewing, embroidery, child care services, and hair and beauty care. Of this number, approximately 300 have been placed in jobs while others have received micro-credit loans to start their own business ventures.
Reintegration - We are currently supporting 16 cases through individualized care and assistance services including health/medical check ups, counseling, educational and/or vocational training opportunities, and additional assistance for the young women's families as well (such as through micro-credit loans).
Each of the components above include education and awareness raising on safe migration issues and the risks of human trafficking. Through pairing education on trafficking issues with viable life alternatives and support, such as in the form of educational attainment opportunities and employment opportunities, we are equipping young women with confidence, agency, and choice as well as tools to become productive members in their communities.
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Tiffany Bui Rothman
Dear Diep,
This is wonderful what you are doing. I did a great deal of research for one of my performance project once on the topic of trafficking. It was very emotional drainning. Congratulations and all the best.
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Tiffany Bui Rothman
www.templeofrosesinc.org
Dear Tiffany:
Thanks for your comment.
I looked at your website and thought it is wonderful work that could have great healing potentials.
The work we do continues to be draining. My constant question is what would happen when we pull out?
Diep
dnvuong@pacificlinks.org
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