The thousands

Every month, my staff collate data on the kids they have helped, and we produce a simple list of our results which gets added to our email signatures. It's just a nice way of letting people know what we're up to.

This month's figures are below, and there are a couple of really exciting developments...

To date, Blue Dragon has:
Sent 2,036 kids back to school and training
Provided accommodation to 109 girls and boys
Served 221,930 meals
Built or repaired 45 homes for families
Distributed 21,475 litres of milk
Handed out 24,714 kilos of rice
Reunited 85 runaway children with their families
Taken 753 kids to a doctor or hospital
Put 5 teens through drug rehab
Obtained legal registration papers for 567 children
Rescued 101 trafficked children
Placed 62 teens in jobs
Played 936 games of soccer!

First, we've now helped more than 2000 children go to school. Woo hoo! (And if we say that we help each child go to school for 4 years, on average, then that means we've helped Vietnam with 8,000 years of schooling... right??)

And second, as I mentioned a couple of months back, we are quite close to playing our 1000th game of soccer. Looks like "the big day" will be in late August, and already the kids are hassling us for details of how we'll celebrate!

Apart from telling our friends around the world about our progress, these numbers are also a good reminder to my team here in Vietnam that we really are getting somewhere and making a difference.

And speaking of making a difference, I have returned to Hanoi after 3 days in Hue of planning and strategising. In coming days I will post again about the direction we will take with our anti-trafficking work.

I am a bit excited about these plans, though I am not sure that they're going to make riveting blogging!