Michael Brosowski: The Man Who Refused to Look Away | Sharing Stories Changing Lives
There are moments in life when you can walk past… or you can stop.
In this extraordinary conversation, Michael Brosowski shares what happened when he chose to stop — and how that single decision led to the rescue of thousands of trafficked and vulnerable children through the Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation.
Dive Deeper: The Full Conversation with Michael Brosowski
The Core Story
This episode takes you inside a world many of us never see… where children are trafficked, families are torn apart, and hope can feel impossible — and yet, where courage, persistence, and humanity are rewriting thousands of futures.
It’s a story about purpose…
about stepping forward when it would be easier not to…
and about the quiet, life-changing impact of simply choosing not to look away.
⚡ Warning: This conversation may change the way you see the world — and your place in
Full Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker 3: There are moments in life when you look around and realize someone has decided not to walk past, not to shake their head, not to say that's terrible, and not to scroll on, but to stay to kneel beside a child sleeping on concrete. To knock on a door when no one wants questions asked to walk into places, most of us would never go and bring someone out.
[00:00:31] Speaker 3: Today's guest is one of those rare humans from a childhood that began in suburban Sydney and shifted to caravans on a remote block of land in Northwest New South Wales to founding an organization in Vietnam. That has rescued thousands of trafficked children. This is the story of what happens when caring turns into action.
[00:00:58] Speaker 3: Michael Brosowski [00:01:00] is the founder and strategic director of Blue Dragon Children's Foundation, an organization working to end human trafficking and child exploitation in Vietnam. He's a graduate of University of New South Wales, Sydney, a CNN Hero, and a member of the Order of Australia. But more importantly, he is a man who chose not to look away.
[00:01:28] Speaker 3: Welcome Michael.
[00:01:30] Michael Brosowski: Thank you, Karen. It's so nice of you to invite me here.
[00:01:33] Karen S: We are really privileged and I know you are here tonight to be with us at a live event, but. Wow, you're living in Hanoi now. So take us back, first of all, to your childhood from suburban Sydney to the remote property in the northwest of New South Wales.
[00:01:51] Karen S: And what did living that self-sufficient build at yourself life teach you about hardship [00:02:00] and dignity?
[00:02:01] Michael Brosowski: , I remember leaving Sydney, I was nearly 12, when we left, so I'd gone to primary school here. I remember leaving, and it was all, a great adventure at first. We were moving to this property , that had nothing on it. Only the caravans that we took up there. There was no electricity. There was no running water, nothing like that. And it was like going camping. . Once you're in that situation for a little while, the novelty starts to wear off.
[00:02:26] Karen S: I can imagine
[00:02:26] Michael Brosowski: Things become difficult, you know, far from friends., It takes an hour each way to, to get to the nearest shop. , So in that, it becomes normal. It's not like every day is is terrible, but you learn, you learn to accept what you have. To be really happy with, with small things. , You learn what you can get by without. And I think that's the story of my childhood. Learning to just keep on going, no matter how hard it may seem, on the outside.
[00:02:59] Karen S: Yeah, many of us [00:03:00] would struggle with having an hour to get to the local shops or anything like that, and we're so used to those creature comforts of electricity, hot running water, uh, a rubbish service, transport, wherever we want to go. So your life was really quite different.
[00:03:17] Michael Brosowski: Right. And, one thing that that has taught me really is the power of gratitude. I often stop myself, , several times a day just to, to reflect on how thankful I am for, for what I have and, and whether that's the ability to get on a bus. The ability to turn on a tap, , and have a glass of water,, or to fly across the ocean , and go from Vietnam to Australia. I really, think my early days of, of having a bit of a tough life, have taught me how grateful I need to be for all of this.
[00:03:49] Karen S: Mm-hmm. You chose teaching as a pathway, out of poverty and a way to help others. What did you hope, , you could give [00:04:00] students when you first stepped into the classroom?
[00:04:04] Michael Brosowski: So I, I think that I, I went into teaching, uh, both to be able to give to others and also because I saw how much I personally gained , from teaching by connecting with others, by kind of making myself useful for, for want of a better expression. While I was at high school, in fact, in this country town, , the school had a group of, Vietnamese refugees who turned up, so this was the,, the early 1990s, and this group of Vietnamese kids turned up in this remote country town, barely speaking a word of English, and I volunteered at the school, , in my free periods or lunch to, to teach them a bit of English. And it was , so satisfying, to, to be able to help. And, I learned about myself in that time and by then, by the way, we had a house. Over a few years,, my father built, the house that we, lived in, but life was, still tough,, but I had something to give it, it [00:05:00] wasn't all hardship. There were people who had it harder than me. , And teaching opened my eyes to, to a world that I otherwise wouldn't have known. , But what I wanted to give to students in becoming a teacher was opportunity because, looking back on my whole life, I could see, not having much money, that's one thing, you can get by without much money, you'd be surprised how much money you can get by without, but opportunity is what makes the difference in your life. Do you have the chance to go to school? Do you have the chance to learn and grow? And I wanted to give opportunity to young people.
[00:05:40] Karen S: I was a teacher too. I studied up in Armidale.
[00:05:43] Michael Brosowski: Not far from where I was .
[00:05:46] Karen S: In the cold country.
[00:05:48] Michael Brosowski: Very, very cold. Yes. I remember some very frosty winters.
[00:05:53] Karen S: You said you didn't quite fit in to the boundaries, the narrow boundaries in your teaching role. What was sort of frustrating [00:06:00] you at the time?
[00:06:01] Michael Brosowski: So I ended up, , coming back to Sydney and studying at UNSW. And I was very fortunate to get a job in a fantastic school. I was an English and ESL teacher. The frustration for me was that I, I could see that what my students needed was so much more than what I could give them. My job was to prepare them for their exams , to help them to be able to read literature and write essays. , But many of them were living with trauma. Many had come from, other countries. I remember having students in my class from both Iraq and from Iran. They had stories of running,, with their family being shot at from behind. There were kids from Cambodia whose parents had survived , the massacres of the Khmer Rouge, , and my job each day was to go in there and say, books out. Now , that's what a teacher does, right? That's the job. But, I felt like I wanted, I needed to do more than [00:07:00] that. And it was really only when I got to Vietnam and was working there, that I was able to go beyond those traditional, , barriers, to be able to help kids with what they needed and not only with what I was paid to do.
[00:07:14] Karen S: Actually, Michael, you've reminded me of some of the things that happened in my teaching day too. I was in the North Ryde area. And I had children too who had experienced escaping from Pakistan, having to go across the river and one young child was headbutted in the mouth and lost all his teeth because the people taking him across the river wanted money. But as a teacher, they don't really teach you, in training that you may meet children like this who have had a traumatic beginning to life., Fortunately that family all ended up here. The father was a well-educated man in his country, but couldn't work in the roles he had worked in, Pakistan, so you know, [00:08:00] then there's so many stories escaping from Czechoslovakia back then. The Czech Republic.
[00:08:05] Michael Brosowski: Yeah, and so kids come to Australia with all these diverse experiences and backgrounds, things that we as teachers may have never experienced or even heard of, but they all land in our classrooms. Even though, I only lasted as a teacher for about four years, I, have eternal respect for the profession of teaching.
[00:08:26] Karen S: Well, I lasted with the department for eight years.
[00:08:31] Michael Brosowski: Double. Double my
[00:08:32] Karen S: students, double your experience. Then I did a lot of casual teaching for about 20 years in between, but that's another story. So let's go on to the Vietnam and can you describe when things shifted for you, what you saw, what you felt, and what you couldn't ignore?
[00:08:50] Michael Brosowski: I first went to Vietnam on holiday, and it was driven by my experiences here in Sydney of meeting, , people of Vietnamese heritage. , And including [00:09:00] Vietnamese migrants.
[00:09:01] Michael Brosowski: I was just so interested in their culture. Um, and it was so different to what I had grown up with, that the, first time I had an opportunity to travel, had to go to Vietnam. And I remember, my overwhelming. Impression of the country was that it was on the move. It was on the go. People were poor, but they were not gonna stay poor people wanted to work hard and they wanted an education. And so it was such a dynamic place, and it still is by the way, all these years later, Vietnam has not slowed down one step. And, so as a teacher, that's very exciting. People, people want an education. People want to improve their lives.
[00:09:44] Michael Brosowski: Amid that you have a lot of real hardship, even today, the country is developing tremendously quickly, but you still have a lot of people who, live and work on the streets. Children who haven't had a chance to go to school. Um, people who, because they are desperate [00:10:00] to get a job, become very vulnerable , to human traffickers. And so as a teacher, , I could see, there's something I can do here that I have something to contribute to this. Initially I was teaching in a university, I was teaching a master's program, , at the Economics University. But when I met street kids and could see how much they wanted to learn English because they knew it was a chance to improve their life, that became really interesting to both, to me and to my university students. You know, there were kids there. Basically saying to us, we want to change our life and you could help us get there. So with something like that in front of you, how can you walk away?
[00:10:44] Karen S: So this leap all took place in 2002. What did you have to let go of to say yes to actually going there, and, setting up your life there?
[00:10:58] Michael Brosowski: So in some ways I [00:11:00] consider myself very fortunate that I didn't have much to let go of, so be before I left Australia, because my family had, we'd moved away from Sydney. We're on that really isolated property. So my family ended up being quite scattered around, uh, the state. I was then teaching in southwestern Sydney, where I'd never lived before. And so I was far, from my friends and from my family. So it wasn't that hard to say, , I'm gonna go and live in Vietnam. That was the first thing. It was an adventure of course, and, and, and I was going there because I was excited by the country, but I didn't have that much, it didn't feel like I was saying goodbye to very much, it's , just an airplane right away. And then once I was in Vietnam, that that transition from working in a university to teaching street kids, that was really a, a jump into the unknown. What I was giving up, there was some certainty and stability. And, it was scary. , [00:12:00] The alternative was scarier to say to these kids, look, I could help you, but, I've got other plans. Going back to something you said earlier, Karen, I remember kind of thinking, that thing that we all, say at some point in our lives, someone should do something about this, who is, who is that someone and who is that something? And for a while, , I knew these street kids in Hanoi, I was teaching them along with my students from the university and I was saying, someone should do something about this. And, it was a, a kind of a process of dawning that I was someone. And I could figure out the something. So, it wasn't like a just one flash of revelation. It, was a buildup to realizing, what am I letting go of that, matters so much , when, for these kids and for their families,, it means everything.
[00:12:56] Karen S: So when you registered Blue Dragon, I want to come to the name [00:13:00] later in 2004. Tell us about that, did you imagine what it has become today, what it is today, and yeah, just more about it.
[00:13:11] Michael Brosowski: I had no idea what I was doing I wanna say that if I had my time all over again, I would do it the same way.
[00:13:19] Michael Brosowski: You know, , when you are an expert, you, you know what the rules are. You, you know, playbook, you follow the rules. I had no idea. So I didn't follow the rules. I invented the rules. And, even still today, by the way, I'll still have people say to me, no, you can't do that. That's not possible. There's no way you'll, you'll, you'll ever get permission for that, or you'll, you'll never get people to come alongside you with that, and I just see that as, okay, this is my signal to succeed. Not knowing what we were doing, you know, it was me and a bunch of economics students. So we just, looked at things in a very, what I would describe a very [00:14:00] human way. There were kids there who needed help. Well, what did they need? They needed an education. They needed somewhere to live. They needed people to care for them. So I didn't have all of the rules sort of in, in the back of my mind saying, you know, this has to fit in a theory of change. There has to be a clear objective. All of that sort of comes later. But what I found is the best way to start is just to get in there and do it and work it out, not, turn up with the fully developed plan. Nothing goes according to plan. Well, I, great news. I had no plan. There were just these kids. They needed help and I was there. That was all there was. I, I remember at one point, so it might've been like six months into this, uh, we'd been keeping notes on the kids who we were helping. So, you know, when we gave them money or paid their school fees or whatever, we'd keep notes. And I, one day I pulled all of the files [00:15:00] out of my cabinet and laid them out on the table and I counted them up and there were 30 files. So there were 30 kids who we were helping. And I remember thinking to myself, well, that's probably our limit. Like 30 kids is probably the most , that we can help. Well, last year we helped 50,000. But, never by intention. And how many will we help this year? I'm not sure. I'll, I'll tell you next year, we, we don't sit there planning. We're gonna help this many. We're gonna be this big. We look at the children, we look at their communities, we look at the issues and say, what can we do to help? And that may mean this year we grow, maybe next year we don't grow. Maybe we get smaller. That's okay. It it's not about us. It it's about the people we're helping.
[00:15:54] Karen S: Michael, you said something before and it was about a naysayer that said you, you can't get that.
[00:15:59] Karen S: I [00:16:00] have a little saying. Can I share it with you?
[00:16:02] Michael Brosowski: I'd love to hear this.
[00:16:04] Karen S: I can, I will watch me.
[00:16:10] Michael Brosowski: Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Watch me. And you know, part of that is don't get in my way. Yes. You, you can be the naysayer. You can say that's not possible and that's great. I need to hear why. Do you have a reason? Like is there something I can learn from you? But I'm not gonna let this stop me. Just don't make it hard for me.
[00:16:31] Karen S: And I love it that you haven't had a plan like that, you've just gone into it boots and all thrown yourself in. I think a lot of us that start something like with Story Room yeah, I had a plan, but the plan evolves day by day and you are doing something, you think, you know what, that's not working, how do we do it differently? And don't get frustrated with it. Just take that as a part of the learning curve. I think it's more fun when you don't have a plan [00:17:00] and you're learning on the way. Would you, do you think that?
[00:17:04] Michael Brosowski: Totally, totally. And look, in our work, I, I just said we're reaching about 50,000 people now.
[00:17:09] Michael Brosowski: Okay, we've got plans. Now it's, it's not as though every day is like, , let's find out what's gonna happen. But, , I like the word you've used there. The plans evolve. So now it's a bit more like we set a direction, we know where we're headed, we know what the destination is, we know what we're gonna do, today, and tomorrow and maybe for the next six months. But what, what comes after that? We have to iterate, which is a little bit of a different approach to planning. And it is, and it doesn't mean you're doing nothing. You're not just free flowing. Whatever will be, will be. We are too big to, to do that. , I have staff, I have kids and families who rely on us. We have partners, we, we can't just make it all up as we go, but part of it, we can, that's the iteration. [00:18:00] So if, yeah, if you lock yourself into a, into a five-year plan and you've got it all measured out, you're going to be very disappointed. Also very bored. The, excitement of life is that you don't know what's going to come next. You've just gotta be prepared for everything.
[00:18:16] Karen S: Does some of the kids that you've helped over the years, come back to help within the Blue Dragon Foundation?
[00:18:24] Michael Brosowski: Oh, yeah. In, in lots of different ways. Um, so you introduced me as the founder and strategic director. I used to be the CEO. We moved to a co CEO model, at this just before COVID, so 2019. So now we have two CEOs. One of them used to be a street kid in Hanoi, one of one of the first children who, who I met and assisted. We have, social workers who used to be street kids or people who've been trafficked, and also family members of people that we've [00:19:00] helped. And some of those people who are on staff or, or volunteers, some are very happy to be identified, like our CEO Vee, very happy to be identified. And he, he tells his story. Others, maybe even the people around them have no idea. Of their story. And so we respect their wishes, but we have people who come back in, in all kinds of capacities from leadership roles, social workers, helping out in the kitchen at our center. And that's really lovely. So that gives us a really, really good mix of lived experience alongside people following maybe a more conventional or, or traditional career path.
[00:19:41] Karen S: You actually took the words right out of my mouth then that they have lived experience, which I think is really important because no one understands what people are going through, that people who have been trafficked or who have been street children, the best ones to [00:20:00] understand them, other people that have been there,
[00:20:03] Michael Brosowski: yeah, they really add something to, to the organization and it reminds me that, 20 years ago, I was the main person in Blue Dragon., As well as looking after the accounts and working out where we got the money from and renting the building that we would work in. I was also the one deciding how do we help this child? Or where, where will we go to find another street kid to.
[00:20:28] Michael Brosowski: And now we have this incredible team in Blue Dragon who do this work so much better than I ever did. And especially, what inspires me, is looking at younger staff, , in their twenties and thirties who. I know their story, I know that they were street kids themselves and they're out there now. They're talking to kids out on the street or they're negotiating some deal, or talking with one of our donors and just doing it so brilliantly [00:21:00] because it, is a job for them. But it's also their passion. And, they're so good at it.
[00:21:07] Karen S: And, but no one comes to Blue Dragon because life's going well. You meet people in crisis, poverty, abuse, having been trafficked. How do you carry those stories with you without becoming overwhelmed?
[00:21:23] Michael Brosowski: That's, that's a good question. And the short answer is, uh, that I don't always do it very well. I'm getting better. It, it's something that I and all of us at Blue Dragon have, have had to become good at. You know, , when somebody donates to a charity, they send $20 off to, to a group like Blue Dragon, they want us to use that money for the children. And so we can't like set some of it aside. To look after ourselves, right? To pay for our own counseling or to, to arrange, therapy , or something for a staff member. But we've actually learned, no, we, we have to do that or we couldn't [00:22:00] survive. So , first of all, we look after each other very well. We, we've been through it all. You know, we, we've dealt with some of the worst things that we could ever deal with. So we, we know when someone is struggling, one of us is struggling and we, have to also take responsibility to speak up and say, I need help here. And, sometimes we can deal with that ourselves. Uh, within Blue Dragon, sometimes we need to go outside and get proper counseling, have someone to talk to, have we make for all of our staff. We make available the op the option for external counseling. Anyone who needs it, no questions asked. Because otherwise it's just too much to carry, on, on your, I'm very fortunate, my board, includes people from, therapy, therapeutic backgrounds. So I have people I can call on really any time, among, among our two co-CEOs. One, is from a a, an [00:23:00] Australian social work background. We have psychologists on staff, so there's a lot of internal resources, but we're not afraid to also look outside and say, we, we need help with this.
[00:23:12] Karen S: Are there times that you have, any times that you've found that, you've met someone or a family and you don't really know how to help?
[00:23:29] Michael Brosowski: There have been a few situations like that over the years, and they're the hardest, by the way, that's, where , you experience burnout and trauma, when, you face a situation that you can't resolve sometimes with, with kids, in the work that we do, it sometimes it may just be a matter of time, but you don't know. So we, we might get a call for help from, from the family of a girl who's been trafficked and sold to a brothel, and we may set out to, to look for her and work out where she is and we, [00:24:00] maybe we can't find her. And, there have been some cases I would, I would have to say there's never been a case that we could never find, but that's only because I believe, we still will. We, there's never a point where we say, well, we give up now. As long as that person is still alive, we are still looking. But , there are people we found it took years to, to find them and bring them home. There are kids who we might meet on the street who are so hardened by their experience that they, they don't believe that anyone would really, genuinely help them, or they might believe that they don't deserve, to receive help. So they may refuse it, and they may not just say no, they may do everything to make themselves unlovable. They may punch you, they may steal something from you, swear in your face. And, that's where you really have to understand trauma, that, that what that person is doing may be intended to hurt themselves, not to hurt [00:25:00] you. And you can't take that personally. So. I can think of some young people who, who I worked with on the streets, who, who it really took years. And, there were times when I thought we're never gonna succeed with this young person. And we did against the odds. You just can't ever give up.
[00:25:22] Karen S: You mentioned sometimes that it is hard to find. People that have been stolen are trafficked. You know, how does your team go about finding, is there a strategic plan? Is it word of, you know, on the streets?
[00:25:41] Michael Brosowski: So this is something that we, we learned ourselves. And going back to what I said earlier about we, we didn't know what the rules are. So those first few times, you know, 20 years ago when we first encountered people who had been trafficked. , We've got this call for help, what do we do? Let's just, let's just get in there and [00:26:00] help, and, we worked out sort of piece by piece. We've become very good as an organization at, at investigating. So when we know that somebody is in a certain area, we'll send a team to, to go and look for clues and of course I have to be a little bit careful what I say in public about that process. But it's about listening to local people, identifying, clues. Just, just as an example, there was a period of time when we were looking for children who had been trafficked into sweatshops, and what the best way we learned to find them was if we kind of knew roughly the suburb that they were in and then as close to midnight or 1:00 AM as as we could do, just quietly ride by motorbike or taxi through the streets, just looking for, houses that had the lights on late at night and just [00:27:00] pause, stop, and if you could hear machines running, you knew that, that that home was actually, a factory. And there were probably going to be kids there, but at nighttime everything would be locked up so you couldn't see. So you would just make a note of the location and keep going, and look for the next house that had lights on and listen. Then come back tomorrow. When the doors are open, but you knew exactly where to come and look and just stick your head in the front door and see if there were kids in there. Kind of a brute force method of, of this search, search, search. It's very low tech, but very effective. Um, one time also, we were looking for, for some children, again, in a, factory, and my staff had to pretend that they were human traffickers themselves, and the staff actually went, house to house saying, Hey, my nieces and nephews are interested in working if you've got a job here. And finally they [00:28:00] came to one house where, the owner said, get outta here, i'm not interested in exploiting children. And by the way. Whatever you do, don't take your nieces and nephews to that house across the street because they treat children really badly over there. Oh, okay. We found that, we found the place we were looking for. So, over the years we've, we've built up networks and techniques that let us go looking, for people. There's nothing in there that's really a rocket science. It's, it's just a matter of developing a skill. Just like any skill, like teaching, like surgery, you learn, you become good at it, you develop an intuition, and that's how we do it.
[00:28:39] Karen S: If you find a sweatshop, how then do you get the children out?
[00:28:44] Michael Brosowski: So it, depends on a lot of different circumstances. I can tell you what we don't do, , we don't behave confrontationally, so we don't go in and act violent or anything like that. We also don't pay the traffickers off. So if we can, we'll [00:29:00] call the police. So if, if we know that the police around in the area can be trusted, and in Vietnam that's, that's always the case. If you know someone in trafficking, you can call the police and they'll come. When we rescue people who are not in Vietnam, so people who've been trafficked to neighboring countries, for example, we, we don't always know if the police force will be able to help. For example, in Myanmar, there is kind of no active police force in, in the, the Civil War zone. So what we do there is we, we engineer an escape. We, help people work out how they can slip out and we are just waiting for them. And then we run. Now all of this sounds very, very rough, not very scientific at all. We rescued about 2000 people using these simple human techniques that I've just described. 2000 people,
[00:29:57] Karen S: Sometimes from one of your [00:30:00] colleagues. Kim Miller, who I absolutely adore, and a brilliant storyteller, Michael. Brilliant. She's talked about, young girls being trafficked for, for marriage, can you share with us, you know, the ages that they're being trafficked to be a, a wife, where are they trafficked to? Is that to another country or within your own country of Vietnam?
[00:30:26] Michael Brosowski: So one great thing about Vietnam is that the country really cares about children and women. And, we have dealt with human trafficking within Vietnam. But our experience has been that when we bring it to the attention of the authorities, that they will take action, once they know, once they can see what's happening, they'll take action. So most of the trafficking we deal with now is to nearby countries, Cambodia in particular, Myanmar. In, in the past, China. But, that's not such an issue now because the Chinese authorities are also [00:31:00] quite, strict about human trafficking. So we are seeing kids, girls being trafficked to, to Cambodia, Myanmar sometimes to Laos . Being sold often into, brothels, or, or different kinds of forced labor. And the way it always happens, , is that they're lured by the promise of a job.
[00:31:20] Karen S: Mm-hmm.
[00:31:21] Michael Brosowski: You remember what I said? , The thing that attracted me to Vietnam was the dynamism. Everyone wants to improve their situation. Everyone wants to work well. If you are really poor. If you are from a very marginalized community, like an ethnic community, living way up in the mountains, that that hunger for work means that, traffickers can put you in their sights. It, actually makes you vulnerable. And, , they'll make it very realistic. This is not just something where, the girls, the kids should know better. People advertise jobs online. You, can apply for jobs. You may be asked to [00:32:00] submit references. Everything seems real and you go, you turn up and it turns out you are actually about to be sold into a brothel. So what we've learned in these 2000 rescues, we've also learned what makes people most vulnerable to being trafficked. And knowing that allows us first to identify which communities are at greatest risk, where a traffickers most likely to turn their attention. And then once we know that we can then go to those communities and address those vulnerabilities. So is it the lack of jobs? Okay. Well, can we offer training programs? Can we help families to start farms and businesses now the traffickers have no power anymore because people don't need to leave home and get a job? Or is the problem that, that kids are dropping out of school early? Why are they doing that?, What can we do that will keep the kids [00:33:00] in school? And again, I'm talking about things here. I want to use the word simple, but what I mean is it's like human. This isn't a technical response. These are things that , you would do for your own children. And for your own family. That's what we are doing, and, when we keep people safe from, traffickers they can go on and lead fantastic lives as they wish
[00:33:27] Karen S: In these remote communities, obviously I've talked to Kim and I've listened to her story. She talks about some of the things you do within the villages so that you can identify, when someone may be falling into the, you know, the shiny object I call it, you know, dangling the carrot even. What do you do within these small communities to help you then, be aware that someone may [00:34:00] be, falling, you know, the carrot's being dangled and they may be about to be trafficked.
[00:34:06] Michael Brosowski: So the, context of it, of course, is that we've rescued 2000 people and that means that around Vietnam, Blue Dragon has credibility. People know we are there to help. So we can go to a community and say, we'd love to have a conversation with you about this if you are concerned about trafficking. No one ever says no to that. In, in fact, we, we get calls from, from communities asking us, would you please and see what you. Our approach is not for Blue Dragon to go in and start an office and hire a bunch of staff and set up in every community. We can't do that even if we wanted to. But in the community, we can see who is already here. What are the strengths of this community? Are there some school teachers? Is there a local police officer who are the leaders of the women's [00:35:00] union, which is kind of like a, a voluntary association of women that's all around Vietnam. Let's get them together, and, let's see what they can do. So we bring them together, we train them, in things like how to identify risks, what to do when you suspect human trafficking or what to do when, when there's a report of human trafficking. We build up the people who are already in that community and it's quite structured. We give people really clear jobs to do. One of the jobs will be educating the community. So, and that, that could involve going door to door, having conversations with people, or it could involve having a, a monthly drama show for, for community members to come and see and learn about human trafficking. Then there are really practical things like identifying families that are going through some financial crisis or where somebody's sick and they can't afford hospital fees and just offering help. Often in these communities there are [00:36:00] resources available, but people might not know about it. For example, there might be one government official who has access to funding, , that the other government officials didn't realize , was there. So you kind of get everyone in a room together. They talk about. The cases that they're dealing with, there's a woman down the road having trouble and someone will put up their hand and say, oh, I know how to help her. And if there's no other option, if there's no way to help, they can always call Blue Dragon, and , we, maybe we can offer some seed funding to get something going. So it's all about building up what's there in the community and letting the local people , run the show for themselves. Mm-hmm. It's incredibly powerful, very effective, very cost effective. And what we are hoping is that over the long term, this is going to mean that people are safe from being trafficked.
[00:36:52] Karen S: Actually, you mentioned earlier that China, was at one-time, a place that, women were often [00:37:00] trafficked to, there's what people listening to this may not realize, but, I was in Sapa not so long ago, but parts of the border there are right on, a river that just goes across to China. It's not that far away.
[00:37:14] Michael Brosowski: No. And we are so fortunate in Australia to have our island barrier. , Getting to Australia, is really difficult right , from other countries. Most of the world doesn't live like that. The continent of Africa, Africa, Asia, the Americas, boundaries are just, invisible lines in the sand or, or a river. So it's very easy to, to traffic somebody, by luring them. And one of, one of the tricks that the traffickers use, of course, is they make their victim think that they're going willingly. So, for example, you might be crossing from Vietnam to China or Vietnam to Cambodia. But you don't have to have someone tied up and stopped in the back of the car because they think they're going for a job. [00:38:00] They're going willingly. And that makes it really hard for police, for border guards to identify, if you're just looking at someone, well, they, they're going of their own volition. Now, of course with a bit of training, and a few more steps, you can actually do a little bit, do something about that. But, it is difficult. Whereas here in Australia, you've gotta come in through the airport. You know, we we're so much safer in Australia, but even here, human trafficking happens. So imagine in places like Sapa as you just described.
[00:38:37] Karen S: Mm. Yeah, and I mean, it horrifies people in Australia when they hear that there is human trafficking here. , We sometimes see it on TV or I know a few people that are involved in it and how, workers are lured here and their passports are removed and so they're working , in businesses where they're forced to [00:39:00] work for next to nothing and share houses with lots of other people and they can't leave because they don't have a passport.
[00:39:07] Michael Brosowski: There are some parallels there to domestic violence, for example, where the victim is made to feel that they are responsible. And, that really adds to the trauma that victims of trafficking experience. So that girl who went willingly with the man across the border, she's made to feel, this was your decision. You decided to do this you're, not a victim. You know, the traffickers will convince people of their own complicity. They may fear going to the police. So right at the moment, for example, in Cambodia, there are hundreds of thousands of people in slavery, enforced online scamming operations. So they're kind of locked into compounds. But even when they can leave, if they go to the local police and say, help me. The police will say, well, show me your work [00:40:00] visa. Show me your passport. You don't have one. You are here illegally. You are now under arrest. So the traffic is sometimes they don't need to lock people up. They don't need to tie them up. And as I said earlier, that's one, one reason that Blue Dragon, is able to help people get out of slavery without having to be confrontational. Sometimes people can actually walk out the door, but they need someone to be there to, to help them immediately, be, because otherwise they, they may continue to be a victim of, of the crime.
[00:40:37] Karen S: Why the name Blue Dragon?
[00:40:41] Michael Brosowski: So, You make me smile with that question. Oh, , I think back to our early days when, , we had no idea what we were doing and we were trying to think of a name and all of our ideas were just terrible. And finally a whole lot of symbolism came together. So the dragon, first of all, in, in Southeast Asia, dragons [00:41:00] are fortunate, powerful creatures. You want to be born in the year of the dragon. It, it's a symbol of really good luck. And, and Vietnam as a country is kind of shaped as a dragon, if, you move the country, from, being, vertical to horizontal, , you kind of have a, the, the shape of a dragon there, the blue, it's for the blue sky and the blue ocean especially that we have in Australia. You, you don't get a lot of it in Hanoi. But, to me they're symbols of freedom , and openness. So we've combined Vietnamese and Australian symbolism, and they're all images of hope and good fortune. So there's a lot packed into our little blue dragon. And the dragon itself, by the way, was drawn by one of the street kids, a, a boy named Zung. It was touched up by a volunteer, a graphic designer, of course, but the original dragon was the work of, of a 14 or 15-year-old shoe shine [00:42:00] boy in, in Hanoi.
[00:42:03] Karen S: I love always the names behind some businesses, and it's a great story in itself.
[00:42:10] Karen S: You obviously, well, I'm presuming you speak fluent Vietnamese.
[00:42:17] Michael Brosowski: I get by. I, I'd like to be fluent. It, I can get by.
[00:42:22] Karen S: You live mostly in Hanoi now.
[00:42:27] Michael Brosowski: Yeah, so I travel, I travel a fair bit to meet partners around the world, but my home is Hanoi.
[00:42:33] Karen S: So I just wanna tell you a little bit. So last year, a, or two years ago, 18 months ago, we were, we went to Hanoi to do a swim trek up in, LAN Har Bay Cat Bar.
[00:42:46] Michael Brosowski: Yeah.
[00:42:47] Karen S: It was just after the big. Typhoon had gone through, and we caught up with Kim in Hanoi, and I was meant to come to your office, but, , time just ran out. We landed in Hanoi and [00:43:00] we were going to Sapa the next day or that night. So we caught up with Kim. She, she's told us a lot more about the organization but, sometime I'd love to come and visit you there. But how do people, how do we help you? How do people help Blue Dragon?
[00:43:19] Michael Brosowski: Well, we're all over the internet, of course. We've got our website, bluedragon.org. Plus all of our socials , we're quite easy to find. We are really driven by donations. So, everything that we do happens because people like you donate money. We, we get some grants, from, from different agencies here and there. We have schools that support us, companies that get behind us. We've got people who donate, their $10 or $20 a month, or make a gift once a year. And our job is to put all of that together and use it to help as many kids as possible. So we really are reliant , on support and what [00:44:00] we have found is that people, generally, people want to do good. People want to make a difference in the world. And, one way they can do that is, through supporting Blue Dragon. So we, we are really happy to get support from, from more people.
[00:44:15] Karen S: Also, so you've said that you were the least likely person to have ended up doing this work. When you look back at your younger self, what would you tell him about purpose?
[00:44:34] Michael Brosowski: I would tell him that purpose reveals itself., You don't have to go looking so hard. In fact, sometimes looking too hard obscures our purpose. It's there. It's just waiting to be listened to. Problem is that we, we may be thinking, well, purpose means leaving my home in [00:45:00] Australia and traveling to Vietnam and starting a charity and helping 50,000 children, and I can't do that. In the end, that has been my path. It was never the intention. Purpose is something a lot more humble and simple. It's picking up the phone and calling someone who, who needs help today or, volunteering at your local shelter or, or learning about an issue like human trafficking. It, doesn't have to mean a massive sacrifice and your whole life must change direction. But, sometimes we think that we're led to believe that, especially by, by the movies that we see and the, and the books that we read. We think that purpose is something out there difficult to find. Like climbing a mountain. And purpose is only when you get to the top. Actually, every step is filled with purpose. Don't look past that. Look at what you can be doing right here, right now, today, to make the world a better [00:46:00] place for somebody. That's what I would love to tell myself, from 20, 30 years ago.
[00:46:07] Karen S: Well, Michael, your team with Vee, the other CEO, Kim that I know and many more. How many more?
[00:46:16] Michael Brosowski: About 150 or so?
[00:46:18] Karen S: Well, I won't name all 150 because I know I'd struggle because they've probably got Vietnamese names.
[00:46:25] Michael Brosowski: They all have Vietnamese names. There's only a handful of Western names in there. And by the way, I struggle with some of the names as well, so don't be embarrassed.
[00:46:35] Karen S: I thank you so much for sharing this story.
[00:46:37] Karen S: Could you just tell us the website please? Sure.
[00:46:40] Michael Brosowski: Blue dragon.org. We're very easy to find though. If you just punch in Blue Dragon Children's Foundation, Vietnam, you'll find us. We, try to have a pretty strong social media presence because we want to tell these stories to the world. We think they're important. And so we put a lot of effort into that storytelling.
[00:46:59] Karen S: You [00:47:00] hold, things here in Australia, like walks. You've got some coming up, and people can find out about those on your website. Michael, I thank you because I have a little saying here in the name of the podcast, sharing Stories, changing Lives because it is stories that help to change people's lives. And if people don't know about the work you are doing, what's happening in Vietnam,, and other countries and where people are being trafficked to. We sit in our little bubble here in Australia, surrounded by our island, as you said, and we just don't know what we don't know. So this is a little education for them.
[00:47:44] Michael Brosowski: Yeah. Yeah. And stories is the best way through stories is the best way to learn about the world because it's not just about facts or events, but it's going into people's lives and seeing things through other people's eyes. It, it can change your life. [00:48:00]
[00:48:01] Karen S: So thank you, Michael.
[00:48:04] Michael Brosowski: Thank you, Karen.
[00:48:07] Speaker 4: . Somewhere tonight in Vietnam, a door will open, A child will step out, A future will begin, and it will not happen because of a headline or an award or a title after a name, it will happen because someone chose not to look away.
[00:48:25] Speaker 4: Michael. Thank you for staying and to everyone listening. Caring is never small. Sometimes it's the beginning of everything. This is Karen, sharing stories, changing lives. Thank you.
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