Matt Parker

Yeah.

I was with my wife and my kids running a children's home in the north of Thailand.

That's what we had moved to Thailand to do, was to care for vulnerable people.

And my wife and I have just always had a heart for the global poor, and we've always wanted to help.

And I found myself with my family in northern Thailand caring for 48 young girls in a children's home.

And

It was during that time of trying to understand what are the needs that these young women have and why did they end up in this situation where they needed to come and live in a children's home.

Some of them were orphaned and some of them just had maybe one parent living and there was incredible poverty that was driving some of that decision to take care of them.

So I drove to their villages

and interviewed the village chiefs.

And it was a really cool experience for me as chickens running around thatched roofs in the middle of the jungle.

And every village leader, as I would interview them and say, hey, you know, tell me about girls that end up working in large cities south of here.

How does that happen?

And what was happening, and as explained to me, men in trucks would show up to their village and offer jobs that sounded legitimate, but only to the pretty girls.

And they have this saying in the village that there are no pretty girls in the village.

And these are minority groups, Lisu, Lahu, Aka, Hmong.

And they're mostly rice farmers, agricultural.

So if the monsoon comes through and wipes out their crop, they're facing extreme hunger and poverty, and they've got kids to care for.

And so when a guy drives up in a truck and offers a great job to your daughter...

you kind of feel like, oh man, this is a great opportunity.