The Golden Triangle is one of Asia's two main illicit opium-producing areas. It is an area of around 350,000 square kilometres that overlaps the mountains of four countries of Southeast Asia: Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. (Other interpretations of the Golden Triangle also include a section of Yunnan Province, China.) Along with Afghanistan in the Golden Crescent (together with Iran and Pakistan), it has been one of the most extensive opium-producing areas of Asia and of the world since the 1950s. The Golden Triangle also designates the confluence of the Ruak River and the Mekong river, since the term has been appropriated by the Thai tourist industry to describe the nearby junction of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar.*

Many of the children living in this area are gravely affected by poverty and social problems such as human trafficking, violence, rape, domestic abuse, illiteracy, unemployment, alcoholism, drug abuse and exploitation. Many of these children live in Burma where they are often controlled and brutalized by the Burmese soldiers.  Hunger, fear, instability and human rights abuses in Burma and in the surrounding countries force many of the children into Thailand. Without official papers, many children have no permanent home, often living on what they can forage from the jungle or moving around from rice and rubber plantations and factory land trying to make a living from wages often amounting to less than 2 U.S. dollars a day. They cannot afford medical care and are denied a basic education. Also, the threat of deportation hangs over their heads everyday.  Children in this area are often abandoned or sold by their drug addicted parents.  Some children are lured into prostitution and/or drug muling with the promise of money to support their families.  These abandoned and ophaned children remain unclaimed by the countries in which they live as none will take responsibility for them.  There only hope is the charity and kindness of others.  We work with numerous organizations in the area to help these children, but also to raise awareness of this problem around the world.