Television presenter Petra Bagust and actor Ido Drent are off to Thailand and Cambodia for just over a week, to get a first-hand understanding of the human-trafficking industry. They will be visiting Tearfund's local anti-trafficking partners who work to rescue and rehabilitate trafficking victims and prosecute offenders. They are sharing daily video diaries of their travels with the Herald.
Today is day four for Petra Bagust and Ido Drent as they travel through Southeast Asia experiencing first hand some of the realities for people working to fight the human-trafficking industry.
Their journey has taken them to Cambodia today, were they met with representatives of Hagar - a global whose mission is "to restore women and children who suffer extreme human rights abuse to life in all its fullness."
"They're taking up to a slum and what they're doing is rehabilitating," Bagust said
"So women who have experienced sexual trauma or who've been exploited go into their care and they have this amazing trauma counselling and they work with them for as long as it takes and then they don't put them into a shelter, they put them into a foster home in their community - the idea being that they will be able to stand whole and healthy on their own two feet."
Human trafficking is an organised criminal activity that uses deception, coercion and force to transport and harbour human beings for the purpose of exploitation.
According to Tearfund, 21 million people are trapped in slavery today, more than at any other time in history, 4.5m people are trapped in forced sexual exploitation and US$99 billion (NZ$136b) is earned through sex trafficking and exploitation.
The average age of victims trafficked into prostitution is 12 and people living below the international extreme poverty line (on $2.85 a day or less) are most vulnerable to being trafficked.
Drent and Bagust are sharing daily video diaries of their journey with the Herald, ahead of their participation in Tearfund's Live Below the Line campaign which will see them eating on $2.85 a day from September 19 to 23 and raising money to fight human trafficking.
Kiwis can join Bagust and Drent by signing up at www.livebelowtheline.org.nz