Helping to Turn the Tide on Human Trafficking

For their last major push for awareness and funds, they are inviting Upper School students to make a contribution and wear purple to school on January 14. 

In December, the students had a unique chance to engage with their chosen charity. Niamh, Lily, Ty, Louise, Helena, Daniel, Jane, and Aria participated in a Zoom session with Helen Sworn, the founder of the Chab Dai charity. Mr. Bowser told us, "The students' engagement and questions were inspiring and I want to highlight what an amazing opportunity they had to speak with Helen. We were all inspired by the work of her charity." 

We asked a couple of students to tell us about the Freecember movement and what they learned from the Zoom call. Ty (Grade 11) replied, "For the past two years at TASIS I have participated in an event called Freecember (freedom + December), which is a month dedicated to raising awareness and funds to help end human trafficking and modern-day slavery. My fellow students and I challenge ourselves in order to raise awareness as well as funds – one hundred percent of which are donated to Chab Dai, a Cambodian-based anti-human trafficking organisation. During the month of December, we were given the honour to talk to Chab Dai founder Helen Sworn. Her first-hand experience and accounts enlightened me to the frightening scope of this issue. Despite this, Helen was extremely optimistic and inspiring. I'm so glad we were able to talk!"

Helena (Grade 10) added, "Talking to Helen was an amazing honor to me. I enjoyed listening to what she had to say about how she was inspired to start Chab Dai and how they’ve been helping people to have freedom and control of their lives once again. I think everybody was a little emotional in the meeting and her words were often hard to hear, as she described some situations with victims of modern slavery and human trafficking throughout the last 16 years."

"I first heard about Freecember through my history teacher, Mr. Bowser," she continued. "I knew about modern-day slavery before and had an idea about how awful it is. But you really have no idea until you see the numbers. An estimated 40.3 million people were in modern slavery in 2016. It is heartbreaking to know that this is still such an enormous issue in the 21st century, but I decided that it was important to do something about it and so I ended up getting involved with Freecember! This year, as I was learning to play basketball for the first time, I chose to raise funds by scoring at least 10 free throws every day and asked some people to consider donating a pound for every point I made. I think the total was around 300 by the end of December! Having the satisfaction at the end of the month, after raising money for such a worthy organization like Chab Dai, is probably the best part of it all. Everyone can make a change, and I’m happy that my school provided me with the opportunity of being part of such a wonderful group of people that worked together to battle such a relevant issue in our modern world."

Please contact Chris Bowser if you are interested in finding out more about how to donate electronically or utilize UK Gift Aid.