When Nicky Mih established her human rights organisation Free To Shine, in 2010, it was with a view to ending the sex trafficking of young girls in rural Cambodia.  She followed a simple core idea: “‘It starts with you’,” says Mih, CEO of Free To Shine, “that’s the simple truth.”

Mih, the CEO of Free To Shine, spent a month in Cambodia with more than 200 survivors of sex slavery, and was determined to try to help: “I kept reading these harrowing stories about girls in the sex trade and it got to the point that I had to act, I had to do something to help,” she says.  The survivors explained to her that when girls are rescued from brothels, the traffickers simply go out into the villages and take a new young girl. The survivors desperately wanted these girls to be protected, and they believed that if these young girls were in school they would not be trafficked.

Free to Shine’s Nicky Mih believes education is the key to a better life.

What Mih discovered was that there were  organisations collaborating with the police on rescue operations; there were aftercare centres; there were legal teams working in the justice system to bring about prosecutions, but there was very little focusing on helping girls in rural villages, and nobody  out in rural villages specifically identifying young girls at risk before the traffickers got to them.

Enter Free to Shine, Mih’s new organization, which works on the principle that it is women who can create real change in the community. By putting these girls back in school, Mih believes, the girls have the opportunity to get a better job to support their families and their community. Working to make sure girls are less vulnerable to sex trafficker’s means that the girls on their program never have to suffer the horrific experiences of trafficked girls.

Mih will be speaking about Free to Shine at the upcoming at Freedom Summits, hosted in Byron Bay on the 23^rd, 24^th and 25^th of October. The Freedom Summits donate a portion of their proceeds to Free To Shine, helping them to equip rural girls with the skills and education to create a future for themselves and to break the cycle of sex trafficking.

“The Freedom Summits offer us a great opportunity to tell people about what we do,” says Mih. “The more people can see how our education program works, the more support our girls can get.”

“We believe children should be in schools, not brothels. So we identify girls at high risk of being targeted by traffickers, get them a uniform and a bike, fill a bag with books and pens, and visit them regularly to keep them in school and keep them safe. “

– Claire Schnackenberg

To find out more or get involved, check out freetoshine.org  or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FreeToShine.org

The 2015 Freedom Summit will be held at the Cavanbah centre – and this year Lyn White, from Animals Australia will be a key speaker. To buy tickets or to learn more about the Freedom Summits check out freedomsummits

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David Stirling and Adam Rodwell with (front row left to right) their employee-trainees, Mex Po, Channa Cheiv, Vanna Van and Piseth Say. Photograph: Jane Camens

When David Stirling and his partner Adam Rodwell booked an ‘add-on’ to Cambodia for their holiday to Singapore, little did they know it was going to open up a major life-change writes Jane Camens.

It’s not exactly your typical tree or sea change swapping suburban Brisbane in order to run a  café and hair-dressing school in Siem Reap – and it all happened because of a $19 budget airfare, David and Adam told me when I ran into them on a recent trip to Cambodia when our Belgian resort host recommended we stop in at The Little Red Fox for what he said was “the best coffee in Siem Reap’s new trendy district”. It’s where he goes each morning for his coffee fix.

The reccomendation was too good to ignore.  When we got to the café, which was everything we were told it would be,  we were keen to find out how and why two Aussies had decided to start a cafe, having arrived in Cambodia just for a short holiday.

The Little Red Fox’s affogatto made with gourmet coffee ice cream direct from the Glass House Park Hyatt.

Adam, 27, had never travelled far beyond Brisbane’s north and south coasts before David, 29, gave him a budget airline ticket to Singapore with a $19 add-on option to fly to one of half a dozen destinations in Asia. They chose Cambodia – a country neither of them knew nothing anything about.

Their plan was to start the holiday in Siem Reap and travel around the country. Somehow though, the journey never eventuated.  They stopped in Siem Reap – and that was that. When I dropped in for coffee, apart from getting to know Siem Reap – gateway to the astounding UNESCO World Heritage site Angkor Wat – inside out, they still hadn’t seen much more of Cambodia than a nearby village, Anlung Pi.

Anlung Pi is a garbage dump which is home to many families. It’s also the home of a non-government organisation called Volunteer Development Children’s Association (VDCA) which works with children who live on and scavenge for survival among the garbage.

The VDCA offer free education in Khmer, English and morality studies to over 300 children from the Anlung Pi village and rubbish dump.

“We spent some time with VDCA which helps get kids off the dump and into education,” says David. The experience changed them both. “For me, being here is about the Cambodian people,  they’ve had such a difficult time for so long, missing all the benefits of modernization. They are sponges for any kind of information and new skills that can further their country and give them a hand. It’s about giving Khemers chances they wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

Both David and Adam realized their skills were transferable and could make a difference to some of the local young people. Adam had worked at Era Bistro in South Brisbane and teaches  café skills, David, who is an award-winning hair stylist, continues to work with children in Anlung Pi helping with basic head and scalp hygiene.

Their café, and a hair salon that David was in the process of opening upstairs, are employing and training young locals both in hospitality skills and hair styling. They don’t pay a fortune but they are serious about the training. They advise their small staff that if they’re offered a better job they should take it.

The café does indeed serve good coffee, thanks to Adam’s insistence they use ‘real’ milk, as opposed to UHT, endemic in cafés throughout the town.  “I whinged about David buying tickets to a place I’d never heard of,” he says, horrified now at his former ignorance of Cambodia and its people.

The Little Red Fox Espresso shopfront in Hup Guan Street.

They live above their coffee shop in Hup Guan Street.  The area was recently named Kandal (meaning ‘centre’) Village. Or simply ‘The Village’, according to another expat shop owner across the road, a former New York graphic designer the owner of the cool designer men’s wear shop Trunhk. The boys pay $700 a month to their French-Vietnamese landlord and have a five-year lease on the property with first option to renew which makes it an affordable as well as an interesting lifechange.

For information about the inspiring Volunteer Development Children’s Association project, go to vdca-cambodia

Find The Little Red Fox Espresso on thelittleredfoxespresso

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