The look

We have some great news to start the weekend.

Blue Dragon staff have found a teenage girl who was kidnapped from southern Vietnam and sold to a brothel in China. Last night, the girl was in her father's arms in a Chinese police station, overcome not only with terror but also the relief of being suddenly free.

Three other girls were in the same brothel, and have also been released. The traffickers are in custody - well, some of them. That's a good start.

The girls will be back in Vietnam in coming days. Once they're safely home, I'll be able to write more about the story behind their abduction and rescue.

What I can say is that this is one case that we didn't hold out much hope of resolving. It sure is nice to be wrong.

Going in to it, we had all sorts of doubts. To begin with, the information was incredibly scarce. The girl had made some calls home to her family, but she didn't know where she was, other than 'somewhere in China'.

Compounding our doubt was the fact that there is some urgent work facing our team in Hanoi. The lease on our children's centre expires in the middle of 2012, and we've been searching for a new place for months, with no progress. Finally we have found a possibility - a vacant block of land in the right area - and we need to start negotiating with the owner to come up with a plan. If we don't secure a new location, our centre will be closed and so will the office. This is a significant problem.

Putting aside our long term needs aside to search for a kidnapped girl, having almost no information about her location, was no small decision.

A lot of charities in Vietnam talk about their anti-trafficking programs on their websites, but most - particularly the big ones with all the resources - don't get involved in "individual cases". They help police and government with training. This is more sustainable, they say.

Such training is important, no doubt, but when faced with a mother and father who are desperate to find their daughter and have put their house up for sale just to raise the money they need to travel to China and look for her... well, what could we say? "Sorry, but your daughter doesn't fit with our organisational priorities at the moment"?

In making our decision to go on the search, a staff member said to me: "If you could see the look in the father's eyes right now, you would see why we have to do this."

There's no arguing with that. So we made the decision, and the girl has her freedom back.