Monday was a day of great hope coupled with great uncertainty. I wrote on Monday evening about the challenges being faced by 3 kids here at Blue Dragon:- a 13 year old girl, “Huong,” who has been rescued from a forced marriage in China but whose mother…

I was riding a bicycle across Hanoi’s famous Long Bien bridge when the boy, “Hieu,” appeared from underneath the railway lines.Long Bien is a city icon, and serves as the rail bridge across the Red River. It’s also home to countless homeless children -…

This photo was taken in China on Friday by a member of the Blue Dragon Rescue team.  The girls are Vietnamese teens who were trafficked at different times and by different gangs for sale to the Chinese sex trade. One girl, aged 16, was sold to a b…

When Blue Dragon’s rescue team receives a call for help, we start an investigation immediately.Investigations sometimes take just a matter of hours or days. And sometimes, they take months.On Thursday, one of our longest running investigations came to …

A few months ago, I had never heard the name ‘Hardwell.’I had no idea that he was the world’s Number 1 DJ, and I hadn’t even heard of electro house music.And yet, on Sunday last week, I joined a crowd of 13,000 – mostly young Vietnamese – to pack out a…

The sex trafficking and sexual assault of boys in Vietnam are issues that have been snowballing over the past 2 years. Blue Dragon has been coming across new cases every week; some weeks, we meet 3 or 4 boys who have been abused. Their stories are pain…

Could it be true?Could we really have such a fairytale ending?In late 2005, Blue Dragon met a 13 year old boy selling flowers on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. That boy, Ngoc, had been trafficked by gang of women who forced him to work through the ni…

In recent months I have been writing about the incredible dangers that Hanoi’s street kids face: in particular, the danger of being trafficked and sexually exploited.So far this week, Blue Dragon’s Street Outreach team has met 3 new homeless boys. Two …

“Bin” and “Thay” are teen girls, not quite 15 years old; and yet already have been through a hell most of us will never know.Each was taken separately. Although they are both from Ha Giang province in northern Vietnam, they didn’t know each other befor…

In the past month, Blue Dragon’s Legal Advocacy team has represented two children in court. Although they were both cases of sexual abuse, they were completely separate matters.The first case went to court in July. A 44 year old man, Lan, was sentenced…

Vinh* is 14 years old. He is homeless, sleeping in one of Hanoi’s many supposedly-outlawed 24 hour internet cafes. He plays computer games all day, and when he runs out of money he contacts a pimp who calls himself “Aunty” and makes money from traff…

When Blue Dragon was just beginning, our focus was on getting street kids and homeless children into safe homes and schools. And while that’s still a large part of what we do, along the way something else has happened: those kids have grown up and many…

Back in 2009, I posted a photo of a boy named Than with his beautiful artwork at a Children’s Home in central Vietnam:(… and the original link is here). Than is 21 years old now, and he’s graduated from decorating the walls of the Home to studying at…

This morning, Blue Dragon has rescued 4 children from garment factories in Ho Chi Minh City: 3 boys and 1 girl. All are aged 13 and 14, and all are from rural villages in central Vietnam.Before the day is out, we hope to find at least one more child wh…

Ninh and Tan* say they are 12 and 13 years old respectively. They look much younger than that, and in reality they probably don’t know when they were born.The boys are neighbours from a Hmong community in northern Vietnam. Five months ago, a trafficker…