Champassak Project

In the Champassak province of Laos, the lure of work and life in a big city is drawing young people away from their homes – many of them young girls. The opportunity to work across the border in Thailand is attractive for many young people excited at the prospect of leaving home and finding a good job. The Champassak province of Laos is a particularly poor area with very few jobs available for young people. Many children, especially girls work in the home caring for their siblings while their parents are working locally or even across the border in Thailand. Young people often don’t complete their schooling with school fees being unaffordable for their families. In search of work, young people travel across the border to Thailand where they run the risk of being exploited by unscrupulous employers or trafficked into slavery, sex work or the drug trade. The health and safety consequences for their home communities when they return home can be considerable. For example, the rates of HIV