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fresh off the press

Here's an email I just received for our Director of Aftercare. If you receive this same story later in a more "produced" format, consider yourself one of the insiders.

"Hi,

I am very happy to inform you that A. has finished her caregiver's course and yesterday it was announced that she passed the government qualifyng exams. She is now a professional caregiver and can be employed in care facilities for children, adults and elderly, as well as hspitals and schools locally and abroad.

She is our first graduate into an employable profession. This is a momentuous event for us after so many hurdles with her, including her giving up several times, her suicide attempts in the beginning, her wanting to go home to work again in the bar to help her starving family, her so many disciplne issues as a result of her past life, our dramas to remold her, our constant processing with her that would last until the wee hours of the morning, etc. But now, all this is behind because a new door is opened for her.

This is no mean feat for her considering a past of exploitation that started at 8 and hard core experiences of exploitation on the streets, different provinces, on the internet, name it. When she was rescued, she was transferred from institution to institution and she gave up hope of ever going back to school again so she went home to work in the bar and on the street again, another of [our rescue partner's] statistic of re-trafficking.

Eventually [our rescue partner] referred her to [us]. We lost no time in putting her in school, a home study program that allowed her to have her own pace. She started in grade 4, age 17. In one year, she finished the 6th grade and at the same time passed the Alternative Learning System that qualified her to pursue college without going to high school.

Initially, she took a 4-year nursing course, but the hurdles were proving the course too long, so many things were happening in her life that could prevent her from finishing. So she opted to shift to a much shorter caregiving course. It still proved to be a Herculean task for her and for us. She stopped a few times at the call of her family and went home against all advice. But our process with her was not over."

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