Students, faculty and staff packed into the Hawkins-Conard Student Center auditorium on Feb. 7 to see three people plainly dressed, and smiling wide standing in front of the crowd. The founder of Rememeber Nhu, Carl Ralston, was with his partners to show two videos and hold a discussion on the child sex trade.

The videos documented the journey of Remember Nhu, a non-profit organization to prevent children from entering the sex trade in third world countries such as Cambodia and Thailand. They told the story of a girl named Nhu, a Thai girl who had converted to Christianity at the age of nine. Three years later, she was sold to a bidder by her grandmother who needed to put food on the table and was out-of-work due to age.

Nhu was sold to the man twice and spent her days in misery, agony, hunger and sleep deprivation. She, according to Ralston, stayed strong in the face of these disgusting acts. Nhu convinced her grandmother to give some of the money she had earned and went to vocational school to become a beautician. Ralston, a successful businessman, had heard about her on a mission trip and was told that she was missing. He would make six trips to Thailand in order to search for Nhu whose story had touched his heart in 2003.

In the meantime, he quit his job and opened up the organization Remember Nhu, which has helped hundreds of girls and boys get an education and stay out of harm’s way.

“The average family income is 300 dollars a month,” Ralston said, grimly. Referring to family members that sold their children, he commented, “they are ordinary people like us…and they don’t think ‘I’m going to let my kid get raped,’ they think, ‘This is the only way they won’t starve.'”

The videos spoke more about the safe houses, applications and accommodations. Children vulnerable to the trade are first referred to Remember Nhu by teachers, attorneys, police and other children. When being looked at, the child must fill out an extensive application. However, Ralston and his team only look at one or two pages. It is a “smoke screen,” as Ralston put it. The company has to go under cover in other countries because, according to Ralston, over a third of the customers in child sex trafficking are government workers and police.

The children vulnerable to the sex trade start from two years old; Ralston’s organization will take them in as early as possible and keep them until they are “no longer vulnerable.” (One woman they are housing is twenty five.) When is a child really not vulnerable to the trade anymore? Ralston’s answer is education. If children have a decent education, they will grow up to get a job and can provide for themselves and their families that way. Until they can get jobs or their families can get back on their feet, the children are welcome and sheltered at Remember Nhu.

Ralston also addressed the chastisement his organization gets from those who want to see action in the United States. He responded eloquently, saying that the U.S. has hotlines, services, prevention programs and training that can help children. In other countries where the governments are corrupt and so poor they have no money to give to social programs, the children are left to fend for themselves.

He ended the presentation by giving hope for the future, saying that the sex trade can be destroyed as quickly as it has gotten started. He said that the sex trade has flared up because of financial burdens within the family, and that the children in Remember Nhu will be a start for brighter futures for starving families in third world countries.

Remember Nhu is a great cause and anyone can get involved. Whether it be by joining the human trafficking awareness group, starting an Ashland Remember Nhu chapter, becoming a missionary or even just buying a Remember Nhu bracelet, because the money will be donated to the organization. Please visit the website: www.remembernhu.com.