Puket School Beach Project

Puket is Asia's number one tourtist destination, with four million tourists yearly. This large flow of tourists from around the world has acted as a push factor to attract migrant workers form the poorest regions of Thailand in the hope of making a living.

Children run away from their parents either to escape abuse or "help" their parents to reduce the high cost of maintaining a family. These children become extremely vulnerable

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Bamboo Shoots Children's Center (Phnom Penh Street Children Project)

It is estimated there are 20,000 children who spend time on the streets in Cambodia, 10,000 in Phnom Penh alone. About 1,000 – 2,000 of these children are abandoned or orphaned. The Bamboo Shoot Children's Center works directly with street children aged 5-18, their families, and communities from its base in central Phnom Penh.

The project has contact with more than 10,000 children who spend their time on the streets begging and scavenging to survive. Bamboo Shoots Children's Center took in its first children in November of 1993.

With a focus on homeless children, the center caters to the immediate survival needs of street children who are homeless and abandoned in Phnom Penh and provides opportunities for these children to choose to leave life on the streets and begin to create new lives. The center serves children from the Beung Kok squatters who do not have access to school and its non-formal education and also runs a library with activities to prepare children under the age of six for school.

Mongolia - Children of the Tunnels

It is estimated that nearly 4,000 are now living on Mongolia's streets with 70,000 more at risk of leaving home. With nowhere else to turn, many children have sought refuge in the underground tunnels of Ulaanbaatar.
In 1997, World Vision began the Lighthouse Centers—two drop-in centers and four residences — to provide safe-havens for the Children in Especially Difficult Circumstances (CEDC) program.

The centers offer shelter, clothing, food, and basic medical care. The children receive academic training, which prepares them to return to school. Counseling helps them cope with the hardships in their lives and develop positive relationship skills. To date, more than 60 percent of participating children have reconciled and reunited with their families.

Cambodia — After-Care Program for Trafficked Children

The trafficking and sexual exploitation of children remains a serious problem in Cambodia. Many children, some as young as five years old, are brought into the sex trade by relatives, friends, or complete strangers

Unbelievably, some parents — out of financial desperation — willingly sell their children to brothels.

Despite the progress made by improved law enforcement, increased prosecutions, and awareness of the problem, the sex industry continues to thrive, and many children continue to be victimized.

World Vision's emphasis on protecting children and their rights as human beings is the result of more than 50 years of work with children and families in difficult circumstances.

We have learned many valuable lessons along the way. Primary among lessons learned is that children cannot be served and nourished in a holistic way if they are not protected from exploitation and violence.

Protection is the right of every child. But in the threatening absence of caring, responsible adults, children often suffer in violent, isolated circumstances where they are relentless targets of adult criminal acts. These children may find their very survival (food, shelter) is dependent upon the same adults who exploit and abuse them.