Win

He became a lawyer to help people in Thailand navigate the immigration system.

This is Win. He grew up in a rural part of Northern Thailand as an undocumented immigrant. In high school, he applied for a law school scholarship from The Freedom Story, an organization dedicated to using education to prevent child exploitation.

His dream was to help people like him — undocumented and without citizenship — to know their legal rights. Six years later, Win graduated with a law degree and with citizenship! He now works with The Freedom Story as a mentor and legal advisor for undocumented students in the program, educating them on their rights, and beginning to carve the road towards citizenship for them.

When asked how his experience will help him help others, he shares:

“I hope that the example of my own life can provide a good role model for the younger students and inspire others to fight to improve their lives. And I will try my best to help them as much as I can.”

“I really want to center my efforts on helping students and parents communicate with government officials about their citizenship rights and requirements. I want to try to find out who has citizenship and who doesn’t. And I want to get more training and study the law more deeply, especially around citizenship issues, to find ways to help them get citizenship.”

His job, however, is not easy:

“The hardest part about this job is that I’m the first one here to do it. I have no model to follow and no advisor to ask for help.”

Win is committed to his job despite its challenges:

“I just think to myself, ‘If we don’t do anything, nothing will change. If you don’t try, everything will be the same. But if you try to move even just a little bit, even if you don’t know the result, that means you are changing something.’ That gives me hope that I can make things better.”

Donate to The Freedom Story to support more advocates like Win.

This is a story from GlobalGiving’s “Voices from the Crowd” series.