Starting in 2011, New Moon Foundation (NMF) partners with the Pacific Links Foundation (PALS) to provide scholarship awards to at-risk young girls in the Mekong Delta region and to teach them critical core values and life skills based on the GRACE principles to enable them to grow into centered and independent adults.
This scholarship program seeks to prevent the trafficking of at-risk young girls in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam by providing them with an education (until the 12th grade), and thus improving their future economic prospects. The scholarships provide each recipient with the following yearly benefits:
- School tuition fees, health insurance, and after-school tutoring
- Uniforms, books, school supplies
- Home visits by PALS staff
- Summer camp, and Parents’ Day where the NMF values GRACE are introduced to all participants
Pacific Links Foundation (PALS), founded in 2001, is a US-based 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to support the sustainable development of Vietnamese communities. In 2005, PALS launched the An giang/Dong thap Alliance for the Prevention of Trafficking (ADAPT) to combat the trafficking of young girls and women for the purposes of sexual and labor exploitation. ADAPT’s counter-trafficking efforts consist of (1) prevention activities which include a scholarship program and vocational training/job placement assistance, (2) protection services for survivors of trafficking, and (3) capacity-building and public awareness campaigns to strengthen local, national, and regional counter-trafficking efforts.
