A new project helping the deeply abused and impoverished children of Cagayan De Oro (CDO) in the Philippines. The vast majority of these children have either escaped or have been recused from the sex trade, all of whom have truly harrowing stories to tell. We have already built a children’s village of three safe houses for these young victims of sex trafficking.

This gives the vulnerable girls a safe space to live for the first time in their lives. The village has proved to be a great success and is a very happy and bright place for the girls to start their road to recovery and to feel fully protected. The Economist very generously contributed to this project last year which can be seen here: https://www.indigochildrensfund.com/girls-home-cdo

Now that these young women are safe it is time to start building their lives back up. This new centre will provide a vital step in this process, not only from much needed therapy and counselling, but also opening up the girls eyes to what is possible for their futures and how to get there.

The aim is to help these girls and the children of the community to learn about available opportunities via vocational training, focus groups and visiting speakers from around the world.

A number of these children are particularly vulnerable because they lack any kind of legal status having been kidnapped at a very young age.

This centre will provide pro-bono legal assistance to the girls and also the children and families of the surrounding areas, many of whom are slum dwellers of the city landfill.

This centre will ensure the children have all possible opportunities for a brighter and happier future. Without centres such as this, the children are far more likely to turn to drugs, prostitution and other crimes as opportunity is severely limited.

Our children's village has been such a great success and we are delighted that it's time for the next stage in the girls lives. The village will continue to grow in numbers of girls but there will also be girls moving on when they are ready and it is safe to do so.

Last week we broke ground on the new building: