Thaïlande

Histoires vécues

Training protects Thai women from exploitation

© UNICEF/2004/Dan Thomas

Pen Tawanrat welcomes visitors at the Pan Pacific hotel

By Dan Thomas

BANGKOK, 10 December 2004 - With a beautiful smile and traditional palms-together Thai greeting, 22-year-old Pen Tawanrat welcomes visitors to the lobby bar at Bangkok's luxury Pan Pacific hotel.

Pen is from a small village in northeast Thailand where traditional hospitality is very much a part of life. It is also an area where girls leaving school have few decent employment opportunities. All too many are lured, or sometimes sent by their parents, to work in Thailand's many massage parlours, karaoke lounges and brothels.

On leaving school three years ago, Pen was one of a hundred young women selected to take part in a training programme devised by the Pan Pacific Hotel Group and UNICEF to help protect young women from commercial sexual exploitation.

© UNICEF/2004/Dan Thomas

A Youth Career Development Programme graduate makes a guest's bed at the Pan Pacific hotel

"I wish other girls could have the same opportunity as me so they don't have to work in the sex industry," said Pen, who is not only able to send money home to her parents but also to pay for the Open University degree course she is taking in communications.

In a good month, she earns about 15,000 Baht per month, twice as much her teachers back at school.

"This programme has given me a chance to work and earn money to help my family and a chance to get an education," she added. "Instead of staying back home and farming with my parents, now I have a good job in Bangkok."

The Youth Career Development Programme is a remarkably successful effort in which the hotel industry, government ministries and UNICEF work together for the common good. Since it started 10 years ago it has grown every year and spread to other countries. Banks and hospitals, including Bangkok's Bumrungrad Hospital, are also beginning to recruit graduates of the training programme.

Every year, hotel and UNICEF staff travel to poor rural areas in the north of Thailand to interview students finishing school for places on a 20-week training course. About 100 girls are selected to come to Bangkok, where accommodation is provided by UNICEF. The girls attend daily classes in basic hotel services such as changing sheets, food and drink preparation, flower arranging and English. They also learn about child rights and HIV/AIDS in life skills classes provided by UNICEF.

The entire programme costs UNICEF about $450 per trainee, while the hotels invest $575 per person, a figure which includes all training, uniforms and shoes, meals and 100 Baht pocket money per day.

"It's a win-win situation," explained UNICEF Thailand's Child Protection Officer Dr. Kitiya Phornsadja, the driving force behind the programme.

The hospitality industry benefits from loyal and unspoiled staff, the young women get training and the chance to earn a good salary and UNICEF and its government partners are able to develop young women's potential and protect them from commercial sexual exploitation, she said.

A community activity that really pays off

"The greatest contribution of this programme is that it can pull adolescent girls out of the most vulnerable situations and it shows them and the community that being a girl and being poor doesn't mean they have to sell their bodies," Dr. Phornsadja added.

General Manager of the Pan Pacific Hotel Samir Wildeman is well aware that the graduates' natural gift for hospitality can give a five-star hotel like his a competitive edge over its rivals. 

"In a big city like Bangkok young people are getting so westernized, they lose the touch which makes Thailand so special," he said. "But the way these girls are brought up gives them a strong sense of hospitality which is so rooted in the culture."

"It has been a very positive experience. We are doing something for society, for underprivileged areas in Thailand and it is a community activity that really pays off and pays back," he added.

"It is so great to have young women from those areas join us and to be able to continue to do in Thailand what Thailand is renowned for - serving people and passing on their smiles."