Friends of The Freedom Story, it’s that time of year again! A preview of what’s ahead: We’re gearing up to launch our end of year fundraising campaign – it’s the big one that is key to making sure all our programs keep running next year, and that our students are well taken care of! This means we can continue mentoring and tutoring students to help them not only stay in school, but also succeed there. It includes home visits, so we can make sure things are going well at home for the kids and their families. It makes possible awareness raising workshops to help protect kids from sexual abuse, trafficking and exploitation, and to help local community members learn about and advocate for their rights. All these things help reduce an at-risk child’s vulnerability to trafficking.
We’ve got some great things to share with you too, as we head into giving season.
A Preview of What’s Coming:
In the upcoming weeks, we’ll be:
- Officially launching our campaign–keep an eye out for details, including the special link to Give when we officially launch our campaign
- Celebrating Giving Tuesday
- Sharing some extra special real life stories that we’re sure you won’t want to miss
And if you want to have a little more fun while raising money and attention to the issue of trafficking, you can pledge to wear a dress (or tie) every day in December, as part of the Dressember campaign! (Note: This is a separate anti-trafficking fundraiser from our End of Year Fundraising campaign.)
Why This All Matters So Much
Because of your support and the support of other committed donors, over the years we have provided more than 220 scholarships to at-risk students. We estimate our wider education programs have provided more than 30,000 hours of mentorship, 12,400 hours of resources, with resource centers being accessed more than 15,500 times in the last four years alone.* We maintain a graduation rate of 91% while working with the most at-risk students in the region. We estimate that our workshops and events on rights, child protection, child abuse and the Thai law have been accessed over 7,700 times since 2015.
If that all sounds good to you, please help us keep it going!
If you want to help us continue our work, please donate to our End of Year Fundraising Campaign. Every dollar matters. If you’re looking for other ways you can help, you can also:
- Keep an eye out for our stories, starting next Tuesday!
- Share about our work, our mission and our call for support with your social media networks
- Invite an interested friend to coffee and talk to them about why you believe in The Freedom Story
- Send emails to people in your network who you think would be interested in supporting us, and encourage them to include us in the gift giving season–whether on Giving Tuesday (December 3) or through the holidays!
Thank you SO MUCH for all your support for the work we do. Let’s make a world where children’s choices are not defined by their vulnerabilities. With your help, we can continue to prevent trafficking so that children can thrive!
*Note: When we count access, this includes cases where the same student participates in a workshop multiple times, or when a community member comes to multiple different workshops. For many things, we don’t track individuals, only attendance numbers, for privacy reasons (and staff capacity). We feel it is also important to include repeat visits, as these are evidence that people find value in our programs and want to keep coming.
