Come and see

Blue Dragon’s first days of rescuing kids from slavery were scary. Not just because of the dangers of confronting human trafficking, but because people couldn’t see that this really was trafficking.

We were seeing children taken from rural villages in central Vietnam and put to work in factories in Ho Chi Minh City. They were lured with promises of opportunity and training. Parents, most of whom lived in extreme poverty and had never been to school themselves, dreamt of their children having a better future. So the children left home with parental consent – by deception, of course – to work in sweatshops.

At that time, Vietnamese law was clear on human trafficking when it involved crossing international borders. But when it came to trafficking within the country, the law was very grey.

Blue Dragon didn’t want that to stop us. There were kids as young as 10, working up to 18 hours a day on factory floors while their parents thought they were in vocational training. We began working with families, village by village, to help them understand the reality and offer to bring their children home.

That’s how our earliest rescue operations began.

Doubt

However, not everyone was convinced. Around the villages, there were parents, community leaders and government officials who thought we were making it all up. I believe the phrase “trouble makers” may have been mentioned more than once. 

As our work grew, so too did the pushback. In places, we were not welcome. I remember one day going to visit a family whose child we had recently found in a factory and brought home. Now we were helping them enrol in school again and assisting the father to buy fishing nets so he could earn a better income.

Out of nowhere, a local official appeared, apparently doing his own home visits. I found myself hiding behind a house until he had left, fearing that I’d be detained and asked to leave.

That was more than 15 years ago. Fast forward to today, and Blue Dragon works in seven provinces around the country, engaging communities and government agencies on this same issue of human trafficking. We regularly rescue people from slavery and represent them in court cases against their traffickers.

So what turned the tide, to take our work from being on the margins to being embraced and supported?

An invitation

It was a discussion one day with a local official, Mr “Thi”. He was a good man and cared for his community, but he was certain that no child trafficking was taking place in his area. He argued with us that going to work or training away from home was a better option for the kids than being at home, out of school, with no prospects locally for earning money. 

And he simply didn’t believe our stories of kids being exploited to work long hours in hazardous conditions without pay or adequate food.

Our breakthrough came with a simple offer: Come with us. We’ll take you to these factories so you can see for yourself.

By this time, Mr Thi knew us well enough to see that our intentions were good, even if we might be wrong about the issue of child exploitation. The trust we had built by assisting members of his community opened a door that argument alone never could.

And so, Mr Thi accepted the offer. We arranged his travel to the city and accompanied him from factory to factory. He could see with his own eyes the children from his community working on ancient industrial machines and sleeping on factory floors. 

Until he saw it, he couldn’t believe it. But once he knew what was happening, Mr Thi became a powerful advocate for protecting children from human trafficking. What began as skepticism had shifted into understanding and trust.

From seeing to action

Blue Dragon didn’t need to lobby for change. A local official took the lead, sharing what he had seen so that stronger protections could be put in place. This quickly spread from the village level to the province leaders – and then to the central government.

Blue Dragon no longer had to hide our work. We received formal acceptance to operate in the communities affected by this form of human trafficking – and we still work there to this day.

When the law was revised just a couple of years later, it included clear reference to “domestic human trafficking”, allowing police to take strong action when children are lured away to work like that.

With the whole community on board, we were able to put an end to child exploitation in those areas. The sweatshops that once thrived on child labour are shuttered. Children from those villages who once were easy targets for the traffickers are now in school, or have grown up to join training and get good jobs. Luong is one outstanding example.

And our success there has opened the door for Blue Dragon to take our anti-trafficking work to other regions of Vietnam that also need it.

What we learned

We started by rolling up our sleeves and doing the work ourselves. This showed others both the problem and the solution.

From there we turned our critics into allies, who went on to “own” this for themselves. Mr Thi and other community leaders didn’t simply start to support Blue Dragon; they took ownership of the issue and took the lead.

And that led to a change of mindset which in turn made possible the revision of the national law on trafficking.

The struggle to end human trafficking is far from over. But those early days taught us something we’ve carried ever since: systems don’t change just because they are instructed to. And they don’t change because well-meaning people promote a great idea.

Systems change when people can see clearly what is happening; and people only see when trust makes it possible. 

Sometimes, the work of creating change begins with something as simple as an invitation: 

Come and see.