Women in Agriculture raise money for project to teach Thai sex workers to farm
December 10, 2013 | 06:06 PM
Melissa Kessler, Dana Peterson, Sally Donner, Tara Smith, Dana Brooks and Laura Phelps were among the Women in Agriculture who held a fundraiser at The Monocle for Cori Wittman, center front, who runs Breakthrough Thailand. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)
An informal Washington group known as Women in Agriculture or the “Waggies” held a fundraiser Monday to support Breakthrough Thailand, a project to help Thai sex workers change their lives by learning how to farm.
The project, part of the Servantworks humanitarian nonprofit group, is run by Cori Wittmann, who moved to Thailand three years ago after working for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Wheat Growers, the U.S. Grains Council and former Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho.
Wittman, who grew up in Idaho, said many of the young women are “farm girls like we were” who move to the city looking for opportunities, but that in Thailand they end up working in the sex tourism industry.
She said Breakthrough Thailand takes the young women out of Bangkok to a farm where they are taught to raise rice and sugar cane and “to be confident about what they do.”
Dana Brooks, the director of government affairs at Elanco, who helped organize the fundraiser, noted that “A little goes a long way in Cori’s world.” Brooks also said she believes there should be opportunities for the women to raise livestock.
The Waggies include lobbyists, government officials such as Agriculture Secretary Krysta Harden, who attended the event, and congressional staff. None of the House and Senate staffers attended the event Monday evening, however, because they were busy on farm bill negotiations.
“We are working like little elves at the North Pole!”, one woman congressional aide emailed The Hagstrom Report.
