Get Ready for Boys

$95.00
For the most vulnerable to trafficking, six months to give them hope again

The Get Ready program bridges the gap between at-risk teenage boys who are not ready for formal work training or employment. It gives them a chance to go back to school or to find safe employment, instead of ending up trafficked for labor, into begging rings, or working on the streets in crime and street sex work.

Thanks to a grant from CLS, we have funding for the first pilot from November 2009 to August 2010.

Football team

This program is especially important because the participants are at the greatest risk for trafficking into sex work and exploitative labour. A great resource is “I thought it could never happen to boys” by Alistair Hilton et al in 2008 on the sexual abuse and exploitation of boys in Cambodia.

The research challenges a lot of myths – that sexual abuse of boys in Cambodia is rare, or only happens with foreigners. The report called urgently for programs to help these boys and Riverkids is responding.

We have eight boys (at risk teens already in our football program) starting a pilot Get Ready program at Blum House in November 2009.

Once they enter the six month program, we start looking at their future – reintegrating them back into school, enrolling them in a vocational program or finding a safe apprenticeship for them. More than 85% of our Get Ready girls have successfully graduated!

A typical day is breakfast, Khmer language lessons and basic math lessons, a Lifeskills class, lunch and then two skill classes. Lessons are conducted Monday to Friday with a half-day on Saturday for field-trips or extra lessons.

The Get Ready for Boys skill classes will be sewing, cooking and woodwork or mechanics, depending on the availability of qualified skill teachers. The skills are not taught as employable skills but as a way to teach the teenagers how to learn.

Teenagers in the Get Ready program do not pay for courses or materials. They receive a Food Box equivalent to US$10 a week of nutritious dry foods and toiletries to replace the lost income from forgoing child labour, so parents don’t force them to work at nights or pull them out of the program.

These are the sons, brothers, boyfriends, and someday the husbands and fathers of children who will be at risk for trafficking. Like the girls in our Get Ready program, when they escape trafficking, more than just their lives are changed.

Get Ready for Boys