At a school on the Thai island of Koh Kred, around 250 girls and women are busy taking English-language lessons and other courses to prepare them for the new lives they will lead once they leave its premises.

But Baan Kredtrakar (Koh Kred's Beautiful Home) in Nonthaburi province, some 20km north of the capital city Bangkok, is no ordinary school.

It is a protection and occupational development centre for girls and women trafficked from various parts of Southeast Asia. The school has been a rehabilitation centre for sexually abused and exploited Thai women for 42 years.

Since 1999, the school, run by the Labour and Social Welfare Ministry, has taken in young women trafficked into the country from neighbouring Burma, Vietnam, Laos and Yunnan province, south-west China, to work as beggars, cheap labourers, or sex workers.

Traffickers' routes

''I like this place and I learn a lot here,'' says Dara (not her real name), a 22-year-old Burmese woman, who has been at the centre for seven months now.

But it was only about a year ago, she recalls, that she spent 14 hours a day, seven days a week, working without pay in a ballpen factory in a Bangkok suburb.

Dara says she and her friends were trafficked from Burma into Thailand through Mae Sai in Chiang Rai province, 830km north of Bangkok, the common entry point for majority of Burmese trafficked into this country.

''It was my own decision to come and work in Bangkok as the broker promised I would get very good pay,'' said Dara. Her family had to pay the broker 10,000 kyat (US&1,500) to find Dara work in Bangkok.

Thirteen-year-old Nam (not real name). was seven when she was trafficked to Poipet in Cambodia from her home in Hanoi, Vietnam, before arriving in Pattaya, a popular seaside tourist attraction 147km southeast of Bangkok.

''I was selling chewing gum on the street (in Pattaya) when the police arrested me, and I never saw my mother again,'' says Nam.

Difficult conditions

Dara's and Nam's stories are not uncommon at the centre, where many women have arrived after being rescued from violent or exploitative situations following police raids of illegal establishments.

Others walk into the centre looking for help, mostly to escape difficult living conditions. Some Thai girls are brought in by their parents who fear, for a variety of reasons, that they could fall prey to sexual exploitation, teachers at the school say.

Some 500 to 1,000 Cambodian children are now working as beggars in Thailand, according to figures of the International Labour Organisation's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (ILO-IPEC).

''Begging has become a way of living for some Cambodian families. They (Cambodians girls) are among the youngest at the centre, starting from about five years old,'' says social worker Monthip Kijyingsophon.

''We found some Cambodian young girls keep coming back to the centre after returning home."

Girls at risk

As victims of physical and sexual violence, many trafficked girls arrive traumatised by what are often slave-like experiences, and are in need of psychological counselling and vocational training to help them cope and reintegrate into society.

''Though there are less newcomers at the centre this year, compared with the year before, we all know that trafficking and exploitation has been on the increase,'' Monthip points out.

With growing rates of poverty and illiteracy providing the backdrop for the trade in trafficking women, it is becoming increasingly difficult to help these girls, she says.

Monthip says the idea of working in a big capital like Bangkok and escaping life in their villages, where the prospects for work are bleak, proves overly attractive for many girls who take the risk and place themselves in the hands of traffickers every year.

Magnet for migrants

Tens of thousands of women trafficked each year into and out of Thailand, a magnet for migrants and trafficked people in the region. ILO-IPEC estimates that 80,000 women and children have been trafficked into Thailand as part of the sex trade since 1990, the highest number coming from Burma, followed by China's Yunnan province and Laos.

''Trafficking is not a problem of morality. It is a problem of rights of a person as human,'' notes Jean D'Cunha of the UN Development Fund for Women (Unifem) regional programme on gender, globalisation and markets.

However, there are some wrong perceptions about how to solve the problem. As D'Cunha says, ''Many governments tend to implement restrictions on women's movement rather than working on prevention and empowerment of women.''

Apart from providing the girls with accommodation, the centre gives them legal assistance as well as non-formal education in beauty salon work, sewing and traditional massage, as well English-language lessons and computer skills.

Sharing of experiences

Baan Kredtrakarn also works closely with nearby schools, offering classes where youngsters are told about the risks of trafficking and exploitation. Girls from the centre share their experiences with the young audiences, says Monthip.

The administrators at Baan Kredtrakarn collaborate with NGOs in the Mekong countries to check on them and to monitor their reintegration. After that, a follow-up programme every three, six, and 12 months keeps track to make sure they do not return to a vicious cycle of need and exploitation.

''We are trying to encourage the neighbouring countries to establish similar schools so more girls and women will be helped and prevented from getting into trafficking,'' says Monthip.

After spending eight months at the centre learning about beauty salon work, Nam looks forward to returning to Poipet where her mother now lives. ''I am very happy and excited to see my mom again,'' she says.

As for Dara, with the centre's help she finally got the 10,431-baht salary (US$241) owed to her by the factory she worked in, and is preparing to return home

''We are only waiting for the Thai-Burmese border to be re-opened and I am heading home,'' she says.

''I think I can earn my living from what I learned in sewing class. I will also teach my mum how to sew. Though I like this centre very much, I don't think I want to come back here ever again.'' IPS