About a year ago when I started BE FREE YOGA and began holding ‘practice for freedom’ yoga classes to raise funds for Project Futures, an acquaintance sent me an email suggesting that I might be interested in Free To Shine – a really cool Australian founded grass roots organization based in Cambodia that believe children should be in schools, not brothels, so they work to prevent sex trafficking by empowering young girls in the rural villages with an education.

I had a look at their website and absolutely loved what they were doing. There are heaps of NGOs in Cambodia that are rescuing young women and children from the sex trade in Cambodia, which is great, but very few programs are geared toward preventing sex trafficking in the first place. For every girl that is rescued from the brothels, traffickers are straight back out into the rural villages to get a new girl to replace the one that was rescued. How great would it be if none of these girls ended up in the brothels to begin with?

A few days later, the universe did what is does and I got a call from a really cool chick, Victoria Van Houdt, who wanted to hold a ‘practice for freedom’ yoga class in Brisbane, but wanted to know if it was ok if half the funds raised went to Free To Shine (an organization that she volunteered for!) and the other half to Project Futures. Victoria joined me on this recent trip Cambodia and is now an official member of the BE FREE YOGA team. We haven’t decided on a job title yet, but it will be something along the lines of Be Free Yoga Lawyer/Psychologist/Organiser/Planner/Business Development Manager. She’s really, really qualified.
Thanks to Victoria reaching out all those months ago, Free To Shine is now a part of our movement and we have seven ambassadors based in Australia and the US holding regular ‘practice for freedom’ yoga classes to raise funds to enroll girls in their program. In the last six months we have raised enough to enroll 27 girls, girls who’s chances of being trafficked and exploited are drastically reduced and who have a brighter future due to the education they are receiving. It makes me so happy each time I receive pictures of the girls we have helped thanks to Free To Shine.

My own daughter, Harper, starts school next year. I feel blessed that she was born in the right place, at the right time so that this is possible, because for millions of girls her age around the world, it is not. I think we have a responsibility to ensure all girls in the world get the same chance.

Since I was going to be in the area visiting AFESIP, Nicky Mih, Free To Shine’s beautiful founder and CEO, invited me to their head office in Siem Reap to meet the team and get a clearer insight of the work they are doing. Oh, and we thought I may as well teach the EEOs yoga while I was there.

Free to Shine’s head office really lived up to it’s name, it was warm and bright and love at first sight when I met the team.  Before we practiced, the Education Outreach Officers took me through the process of how they identify girls at high risk of being trafficked in the rural villages and how they go about enrolling them into their scholarship program. I was so inspired by their passion and commitment to help these young girls and realized that this wasn’t just a job for them, they genuinely cared. And because many of them haven’t had an easy journey in getting an education themselves, they have a deep understanding of what these families are going through and relate to the girls easily.

They explained to me the whole process – how they regularly go out into the rural villages, and when I say rural, I mean rural! An initial assessment is done with the girl and her family, and their team begin gathering information from neighbours, the local village leader and the school director. They identify the girls most likely to be targeted by traffickers. Then a detailed application is submitted to their Leadership Team and upon enrolment onto their program each girl receives a uniform and a bike, a bag full of books and pens and off she goes to school.

Their team in Cambodia then visits with each girl regularly, to provide ongoing support and encouragement – a key part of keeping her safe and in school. They reiterate the importance of education, encourage the parents to support their children in continuing their studies, and even teach that a university education is possible. They not only support the girl’s education, they also guide her and her family and help them problem solve.

Each time their Education Officers visit the girls, they change her library book, which the girls LOVE!. All of their books are in their local language, and have pictures of Cambodian children in Cambodian villages, so they are culturally appropriate. Some of them even have the English translation with them which is great for those girls beginning to learn English.

Some of the girls do not have adequate housing. They currently live in houses with so many holes in the walls and roof that they get very wet and cannot sleep when it rains, and in the rainy season it rains a lot! Some of the girls live in houses that are completely missing walls. Free To Shine have built 2 new houses so far, with another one planned.

It’s not an easy job, and the EOOs face many challenges, which they shared with Victoria and me. But mostly we heard good stories, the EEOs preferring to share their successes rather than challenges, and from what we heard, they have done so much good and have helped so many girls. So far they have enrolled 247 girls in their program and raised over $300 000.

I told them about yoga and explained that they were actually doing yoga each time they travelled to the villages to help these young girls because compassion and helping others is a part of yoga. Nicky told me that last week that Veasna, one of the EOOs, said that he was going out to the village to do yoga. This made me smile. These guys really are yogis in a way.

 After hearing all their amazing stories and learning about the work they do, it was time to get our OM on! We all headed upstairs and I taught the funniest, least serious yoga class I have ever taught. All of them have a great sense of humour which became most evident while I was trying to teach them yoga.  At the end of the class, after a very short Savasana, there was a pose off, which really isn’t yogic, but it was funny. Veasna effortlessly pulled out Mayurasana (Peacock pose), even though he’s never done yoga and another EEO told us that he had spent time training to be a Monk when he was a child. They were a very interesting bunch and I enjoyed spending time with them. It gave me peace of mind to know that the girls in this program were in such good and loving hands.

I often hear people say that they don’t trust NGOs in countries like Cambodia because there’s so much corruption and they can’t be sure where their money is going. This is part of the reason why I wanted to visit the NGOs that BE FREE YOGA supports. While I have always trusted whole heartedly the organsiations that we support, I want to be able to say to people, “I have been there and seen for myself the great work that these organisations are doing. I’ve met the young girls who have been touched by these programs and see how they shine despite the darkness that surrounds them.” Now I can.

Countries like Cambodia need NGOs to fill the gaps in government social and economic policies. Just because there may be a few dodgy NGOs, doesn’t mean we should throw our hands up in the air and refuse to help based on the premise that we cant be sure that our contribution will make a difference. Nothing in life is a sure thing and outcomes are generally not within our control, but the business of philanthropy requires a certain degree of faith. Most of the time, when you give, good comes from it.

I can personally guarantee that if you give to Free To Shine, some good will come to some little girl, who might otherwise have had a lot of bad coming her way.

If you’ve got a moment, I strongly urge you to watch Nicky Mih’s video (link below) about the sex trafficking trade in Cambodia and how she came to create Free To Shine. Nicky is one of the most beautiful, honest, compassionate and caring people I have ever met and I admire her deeply for what she is doing. Don’t hesitate to support this organization. What they are doing is making a difference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8Xfwzwt0XZs

What an amazing, humbling, awe inspiring, eye opening and emotional journey.

During my recent trip to Cambodia, I visited AFESIP’s shelters for trafficking survivors in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap and saw with my own eyes the amazing work they are doing and the positive impact their program has had on the women who reside there.

My intention with BE FREE YOGA was not just about raising awareness and funds to help support organisations like AFESIP, I had also always planned to somehow make yoga available to sex trafficking survivors at shelters like this all around the world as part of their rehabilitation and healing.

Those of us who practice yoga, understand the mind body connection and how trauma is held in the body. Yoga is a way back to the self, a way to reconnect, to heal, to let go deeply, to find our rhythm, to become whole, unified, to reclaim our body, cultivate present moment awareness and find our peace.

While talk therapy is useful in working through trauma, it is not enough. It deals with the mind only. I am determined to make yoga accessible for trafficking survivors all over the world, because I truly believe that no matter what people have been through, they have the capacity to heal themselves if they are open and willing and have the tools.

I had planned to teach yoga to the girls at each shelter during my stay, as well as spend time with the Psychologists that support them, sharing my knowledge of trauma sensitive yoga so that they could start to integrate some yoga therapy into their sessions with the girls.

The yoga classes went really well and I felt that the girls loved it. I certainly loved teaching them.

It takes a lot of courage to try yoga, to be in your body, to turn your attention inward and be with whatever is when you’ve been through what they have been through. They were brave, open, receptive and very giggly. Not what I had imagined. They touched my heart deeply and I feel so grateful to have been given the opportunity to share yoga with them. We may not speak the same language or share the same experiences, but there is something about practicing together, moving and breathing in synchronicity that makes you feel deeply connected with one another.

 I also enjoyed spending time with the Psychologists at each centre and was pretty pumped to learn that Vechheka, the Psychologist working at AFESIP’s Siem Reap centre had incorporated yoga therapy into her program. She sent me some photos of the girls reading their yoga books, meditating and practicing yoga in their new building on their new JADE yoga mats (that were kindly donated by EMP Industrials) and it moved me to tears. I’m not sure how big an impact my visit would have had on the girls at these shelters, but all I can do is plant a seed and hope that something will grow from this. Vechheka is super keen to do her yoga teacher training, so BE FREE YOGA will sponsor her to do it next year. That way the girls will have a qualified yoga teacher at the shelter there to guide them and hopefully inspire some of them to also become yoga teachers.

As is the nature of life, with the highs come the lows, and while I enjoyed spending time with the girls and the staff, observing all the good they had achieved, I also learnt just how dire AFESIP’s future is due to the negative influence of the media over the last few months. So here I was, finally teaching yoga to the girls at AFESIP’s Tom Dy centre in Phnom Penh, only to discover afterward that they were actually having to close their doors before the end of the year due to lack of funding. One girl was even turned away while I was teaching a class. I felt pretty upset to say the least. It became clear that yoga wasn’t a high priority on AFESIP’s list right now and what they really needed was more financial support.

Without going into too much detail about the controversy surrounding AFESIP’s, founder, Somaly Mam, in a nut shell,  Newsweek recently made it their mission to take Somaly Mam down by discrediting her story as a sex trafficking survivor. ‘Somaly Mam: Holy Saint (and sinner) of sex trafficking’ made for a great headline, but Somaly is neither saint or sinner, she is simply human, and a beautiful one at that, who has helped thousands of women and children in Cambodia escape a life of sex slavery. Regardless of what the words in her book say, it’s her actions that speak to my heart.

Besides, the question shouldn’t be “is Somaly Mam a sinner or a saint?” It should be, “has Somaly’s organisation had a positive or a negative impact on the plight of marginalized women in Cambodia?” I’m not an expert, nor do I have all the facts, but I do trust my instinct, and based on my own experience teaching yoga to the girls and working with the staff at AFESIP, I feel strongly that the impact that AFESIP has had is a positive one.

There are many different perceptions, but only one reality. Often we are strongly influenced by things outside of ourselves and our perceptions become so distorted by what we see in the media and hear from other people, that we lose touch with what is real. The young women and girls who have been rescued from sex slavery and given shelter, love, food, rehabilitation, as well as job training skills by AFESIP, are real. But sadly now they face an uncertain future because of a few journalists’ very narrow perception based around Somaly Mam and her ‘story’.

Many individuals and organisations, most notably the Somaly Mam Foundation have dumped AFESIP as a beneficiary in light of these recent media claims against Somaly Mam, so as a result, the girls at these shelters are the ones who will suffer deeply.

I hope people will be willing to open their mind, take a step back and see clearly the bigger picture and continue to support the great work AFESIP is doing. It is such an incredible organization that has done so much to help exploited women in Cambodia and shed light on the global sex trafficking trade.

Buddha himself said “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

BE FREE YOGA still stands behind AFESIP and will continue to raise funds to support them through our ‘Practice for Freedom’ movement. For more information about AFESIP or to make a donation, please visit www.afesip.org

Yep, we’ve started our own day – September ‘05 is now BE FREE FRIDAY!

We’re calling on the yoga community, students and teachers alike, to join us in the movement to END HUMAN TRAFFICKING by holding a ‘Practice For Freedom’ event on this day. Your event can be anything you want it to be, a yoga class in the park or at your local studio, a dinner party or movie night with family, friends and fellow yogis…you are only limited by your imagination. If you hold a regular yoga class on this day, turn it into a ‘practice for freedom’ event by donating the proceeds to our cause.

Once you’ve come up with a fundraising idea, post something promoting your event on Facebook or Instagram using the hashtag #practiceforfreedom and tag BE FREE YOGA. Then invite your networks and ask them to make a donation to help combat human trafficking.

Donate the proceeds from your event to PROJECT FUTURES (www.projectfutures.com) or FREE TO SHINE via our website HERE.

This campaign is just as much about raising awareness about slavery as it is about raising money for victims, so spread the word and inform your guests about the harsh reality of human trafficking. Let them know:

• There are an estimated 20 – 30 million people enslaved in the world today, more than at any other time in history
• Half of whom are just children, some as young as 4 years old
• UNICEF estimates that more than 2 million children are sold into sex slavery every year
• Slaves are subjected to rape, physical and mental torture, horrific living conditions, starvation, forced abortions, as well as threats made against their life and their families lives
• Women and girls make up 98% of victims of trafficking for sexual servitude
• Slavery is not confined to the developing world, Australia is also a destination country for human trafficking
• People all around the world (including our own backyard) are forced to work against their will without pay in factories, brothels, farms, mines, restaurants, and as domestic slaves.

Taking away a person’s freedom and exploiting them for financial gain is an incomprehensible violation of human rights. Community awareness and education is the first step towards abolishing these practices. The more that this subject is brought into the spotlight and discussed openly, the more pressure we can put on governments to take action and the more chance we have of changing cultural attitudes towards slavery.

If you’ve ever thought you’d like to be part of the solution to some of the world’s problems, then this is your chance.

Take part in BE FREE FRIDAY on Sep 05 and help END SLAVERY. The Australian Yoga Journal will be featuring someone who takes part in the campaign in their Nov/Dec issue. You will also be in with a chance to WIN a Lululemon prize back including a yoga mat, towel and water bottle. So get involved.