THANK YOU FOR MAKING A DIFFERENCE!
At Retained Lives, we are deeply committed to making a difference in the lives of children and families in Cambodia. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, our mission is to address the root causes of sex and human trafficking by providing hope, opportunity, and empowerment. Cambodia faces profound challenges as a major source, transit, and destination country for sex and human trafficking.
Poverty, lack of education, and limited job opportunities leave many vulnerable to exploitation. That’s why we’re dedicated to investing in the lives of Cambodian children and their families through education, skills training, self-confidence building, prevention awareness, and other empowerment tools to help them live successful and fruitful lives.
Our Mission & Vision
Guided by our faith, our mission is to care for the poor and vulnerable, creating pathways out of poverty, and preventing the conditions that lead to sex and human trafficking. Our vision is bold yet simple: to see a world free from human trafficking, where families thrive and children grow up with opportunities for a brighter future. Your contributions will make a profound impact, and we are deeply grateful for your partnership in this mission.
CAUSES, EFFECTS & SOLUTION
There are many causes of human sex trafficking in Cambodia. The U.N. Inter Agency Project on human trafficking states, “Human trafficking in Cambodia has increased because of the number of factors, including poverty, social-economic imbalance between rural and urban areas, increased tourism, lack of employment, education and safe migration, poverty being the most significant cause of human sex trafficking.”
Walk through a village in a third world country and see with your own eyes the appalling and shocking conditions impoverished people live in. Often, the very basic elements that sustain life, such as clean drinking water, nourishing food, adequate housing and health care are in short supply or do not exist at all.
Human sex trafficking is one of the most tragic effects of extreme poverty. Can you imagine being so desperate to meet the basic needs of your family that your only option for survival was to sell your daughter?
In Cambodia, girls as young as four years old are sold as sex slaves. These girls will have a life of torture and indescribable suffering with little or no hope of rescue. they are often beaten into submission by their owners and johns, chained to beds, burnt with cigarettes, raped repeatedly and in some cases, killed. Most will die of incurable diseases by the age of thirty.
Because of the age of the girls being sold in Cambodia, it has become a destination for pedophiles. The country has a significant child sex tourism problem.
The good news is that there is a positive and permanent solution to the sex slavery crisis in Cambodia.
Lifting families out of poverty is precisely what Retained Lives is doing. We are combating human sex trafficking on a multi-levl basis. First, Retained Lives is eliminating poverty in homes, by providing sustainable jobs for mothers. Next, we are investing in the lives of their daughters with education, job skills, self confidence building and more. By doing this, we are creating an economically-stable environment that protects their future daughters from the ravages and hopelessness of extreme poverty.
