The hope of earning 3,000 baht (almost USD 100) per month was only a dream for a young Lao girl and her parents. For 13 year old Noy, the other side of the Mekong River seemed like a land of opportunity.

Born into a poor farming family, Noy and her six siblings lived in a village deep in the forest of southern Laos. With no local school to attend and the inability to attend school elsewhere due to the difficulties of travelling, Noy, had no education and no idea of what life outside her village was like.

The remote village rarely received any visits from outsiders, but last February a stranger arrived and announced that there were some easy and well paid jobs just across the Mekong River. Noy had known of many girls and boys who went to work across the border in Thailand before, and with the promise of an all-expense paid journey, Noy and her father believed the man’s lies. “I wanted to help my family and earn some money so that we could have a better life,” Noy says.

Noy’s father, head of the village of 13 families, had no idea that the man was a broker. “I knew that my daughter would cross the border to work illegally, but the man persuaded me and told me that everything would be fine and many people from other villages had done so before.”

Noy recalled the difficult journey as she travelled out of the village for the first time. “There were three people who he sent, including me,” says Noy. “I was scared and I didn’t know what to do, where was I heading, or what I would I face.”

After crossing the river by night, Noy and the others were locked in a house and eventually transported to Bangkok where she was delivered to her new employer. Noy’s ‘job’ was to do housework for a family for three years to repay the debt paid to the broker. Treated terribly by the owner and kept locked up in the house, Noy knew quickly she needed to escape. “I slept on the hard floor and was given little food to survive,” she explains.

After just seven days of working, Noy fled. With just USD 2 in her pocket Noy wound up in a restaurant where she found a meal, a new job, and eventually help from the police. Together with related government officers, World Vision assisted Noy in returning to her family in Laos.

“I wanted to work to help my family with financial support, but I will never follow anybody across the border to work on the other side of the river again,” says Noy.

Noy’s father also still wants Noy to have a job that can help her gain money, but now he will be more careful about strangers who approach them, who may likely be traffickers. “I don’t want my daughter to cross the border to work illegally in Thailand, but if there is a job that she could do in the town, I would go check the place out and ensure that it is safe before my daughter goes to work there,” he says.

For others, the dream of finding work outside of the isolated village will continue to lure them into labour trafficking as the opportunities for work and education at home are so few. To break the circle of trafficking, it is important that the people of the village understand how to identify and avoid the recruiters.

Through its Mekong Delta Regional Trafficking programme World Vision is working both to stop trafficking and help victims by providing support and skills training to individuals like Noy.

While her surroundings and opportunities haven’t changed, Noy’s experiences have given her a new perspective on life. She now hopes to use her trafficking experience to warn others in her village about the dangers the trade. She sees herself as an advocate for anti-trafficking and is doing all that she can to ensure that others will not fall into the same trap that she did.

“It is the best thing I could do for my community,” says Noy. “I know the other young girls would believe the recruiters and I don’t want this to happen again in my community.”