ADAPT

ADAPT also recognizes the need to assist young women returning from abroad in reintegrating into the local community. If they do not receive much-needed immediate assistance from the local community or NGOs, they are likely to leave again, and may be taking other young women with them. The reintegration component of ADAPT has the following services

1. Physical and mental health and support services.

2. Vocational training, job placement, and follow-up.

3. Additional income-earning opportunities with micro credit support.

Vocational Training: © 2007 diLuNa
The Subtle Sensitivities and the Obvious Challenges

ADAPT's reintegration component aims to assist girls who have been trafficked across the border and have returned to reestablish a functional life in their communities of origin. In its assistance with returnees, ADAPT seeks to work with both official and unofficial returnees.

The official returnees generally receive HIV/AIDS testing upon arrival as well as in the transition centers during their stay abroad and can enlist the support of the Vietnamese government and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for assistance. However, the pipeline that sends the official returnees home often involves heavy red-tape, and the lack of available social services and facilities to assist these girls. Consequently, not everyone can gain access to the official routes, especially for those who make the escape on their own. Many attempt to return unofficially to Vietnam. We estimate that the
number of unofficial returnees far outweighs the number of the official ones. These cases are not apparent to many international NGOs (INGOs) that seek to help them but are visible to the community where they returned. They shy away from public attention because many have been told that they could possibly be jailed for illegally crossing borders. As a result, unofficial returnees are difficult to locate. Upon arrival back home, these girls are once again at-risk of being trafficked since there are no social safety nets or support structures in place that would provide the extremely individualized and expensive assistance that these cases would
demand.

For official returnees, ADAPT gets referrals from its local governmental counterparts. From there, ADAPT works closely with the Hội Phụ Nữ (Women’s Union), Chi Cục Phòng Chống Tệ Nạn Xã Hội (an agency of the Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (DoLISA)) , and International Organization for Migration (IOM) to provide on the ground assistance. As for assisting unofficial returnees, ADAPT has directly asked community members to help identify the returnees in their areas. ADAPT has printed and widely distributed more than 5,000 flyers detailing its re-integration programs.

Once a returnee is identified, ADAPT takes immediate action. In many cases, if these girls do not receive instant and much-needed assistance, they are likely to drift back into the risky human trafficking underground. When a returnee returns home to find her family on the brink of starvation, just in the same situation when she left, she has little option but to return across the border or move to larger cities to find work. She may also have to face the stigma by her community that she has a “spoiled” past. In our experience, we have witnessed cases of returnees leaving after only a few days back at home. Some girls come home to find a completely empty house with overgrown grass and weed taller than her head. Others return only to face unwelcome relatives who do not want to house them. Some do return to the welcoming arms of family members. In the cases where family love is strong, we face another heart rendering dilemma: The children are left to ask themselves “What can I do to save my starving family?”. Such questions have prompted several to depart yet again. Many tears have been shed and will continue to flow. ADAPT has grown up with each case reinforcing our resolve to prevent the tragedies from happening and recurring.

In our experience, to truly support a returnee and give them a fighting chance at successful reintegration, we need to provide comprehensive assistance that also covers her family and not just the girl alone. The aid they require usually involves finding a stable job, a safe place to live, basic health care, and of course the mental and emotional support that they too can reintegrate back into a “normal” life. In addition, we also feel compelled to assist their sisters and nieces. Once a sister has been trafficked into prostitution, the risk is significantly higher that their female siblings will also end up in the same trade. In some cases, we also seek to assist the parents in finding stable income-generating activities, especially when there are younger siblings involved.

This kind of customized and comprehensive assistance is very time-consuming and very demanding in terms of ADAPT staff efforts and our resources. Add to it the expenses associated with visits or short-term material donations for the family (such as clothing, rice, books, etc). ADAPT was built to be scalable, with a lean structure to focus on prevention work, and now the needs have come in. Long term volunteers who can serve as qualified social workers, counselors and/or provide connections with good local healthcare providers are much needed to assist the mental and physical health of these returnees. We also encounter difficulties in finding safe places to house the returnees who do not want to return home or have a need to remain elsewhere for vocational training. As the numbers of returnees are expected to increase this year, we are looking for long-term solutions to house and provide training some of the returnees.

Your donations will help us provide better options for the returnees and to expand our services to cover more cases and truly give these young women a fighting chance at normal life. After all, many of them have risked their own life to gain a foot back in life.