Daughters reaches victims of sex exploitation trapped in the sex industry in Cambodia, and offers them a way out.

Daughters approach recognizes the impact of sex exploitation as an abuse of human rights with detrimental effects on psychological and physical health. Daughters offers girls a new life of safety, freedom and dignity, where they can find wholeness. Daughters’ centre, in the heart of the brothels, provides programs on various levels, which empower girls in practical ways to set themselves free from enslavement. Provision of a job in Daughters’ Fair Trade business schemes is the first step in facilitating girl’s freedom, since most girls are trafficked because the families demand financial support from them. A wide range of services provide other resources, both external and internal, to equip them to implement life-style changes in many important areas of their lives. These include: medical and therapeutic daily clinics, safe community-based housing, a wide range of creative and fun activities for holistic recovery, and life skills educational programs. Daily childcare at the centre is also provided for the young children who live in the brothels.

The Daughters’ model is one of empowering girls to make their own healthy choices that they will be motivated to sustain for the future; one of community reintegration rather than institutionalization; where teaching girls responsibility for their lives, rather than NGO dependence, is fostered.

At Daughters, growing numbers of girls leave the sex industry every week to start a new life through the schemes offered. Girls experience emotional healing, restoration of self-esteem and dignity, and they learn healthy and functional living that is sustained because the life-style changes are internal, voluntary and holistic. During 2008, 100 girls left the sex industry to join full time. The majority are aged from 13 up to mid 20s.