Walking the Red Road: woman builds safe homes in Cambodia for victims of child trafficking

At age 15, Rachel Riggio lost one of her best friends. She found herself adrift and was sent to a rehabilitation school in Utah.

Living alongside other troubled teens, Riggio began to feel her own healing intuition, and started to feel that strong sense of human compassion to help others. She went on to become an addiction counselor, and now her journey has led her to Cambodia, where she is working to create safe homes for young victims of child trafficking.

Riggio, who lives in Rollins, created the Red Road Foundation to help establish her first safe home in Kohkong, Cambodia. She was there this spring and will return in November to open the home to its first occupants, who will be given a new start in life after living in brothels.

Riggio remembers her own experience of being lost in the wilderness of life, and how human love and caring were awakened in her. Now she wants to spread that love and caring to others in the world. “I knew I wanted to travel and work in a healing profession,” Riggio, 26, said. “I just felt called to help orphans.”

“The Red Road” is a term that represents someone who is “walking in balance,” Riggio said. It is a behavior, attitude and a way of living with reverence – of walking strong yet softly, so as not to harm or disturb other life.

The Red Road Foundation’s Project Phoenix focuses on a community in Cambodia characterized by young victims of sex trade trafficking.

Riggio and her brother, Garrett, are working together overseas to build the safe home for orphans. Their goal is to create a safe home community primarily run by the native Khmer people, supported by long-term Red Road volunteers.

Their goal is to build a safe home, farm and a school. They have recently signed a lease on three acres of land in Koh Kong for their project. Rachel will return to Koh Kong this fall and live there for a year to get the project up and running. The first home will provide a safe haven for 15 children, and school should serve about 40 children.

A fundraiser June 30 at The Barn at Finley Point will help support the Red Road Foundation’s efforts in Cambodia. Riggio said the outpouring of local support through donations has been astounding. “The way the community has come together for this is so amazing,” Riggio said.

She is passionate about her mission to help others in a faraway country. The people in Cambodia are loving, kind people who are very family centered, she said. But for the children who are abused and taken from homes and sold into brothels, her homes will help restore their spirits.

“I’m getting so much back in my heart. This is my soul mission,” she said. “It’s what I’m supposed to be doing.” Riggio has a longterm goal of creating other safe homes, farms and schools around the world through the Red Road Foundation. But the ultimate goal is create a bridge to America, which she says is adrift in a culture of entitlement, with the kind, generous people of Third World countries. She hopes to create a “safe ship” where troubled youths can travel to Third World countries to work and learn about the healing power of helping others. This work is an experience that can heal a troubled soul, she said. “When I’m giving of myself I don’t worry if I’m going to be taken care of,” Riggio said. “I feel like I’m taking care of the universe, and it’s taking care of me.”

Cambodia, though, is the start. “This is the first place,” she said. “Who knows where we’ll go after that? It’s a big, beautiful world out there. But if I can build the ship, I will have completed everything I wanted to do.”

Riggio has seen firsthand how the children of Cambodia welcome the love, help and faith of others. And in doing so, she’s learned much about herself. “I have so much faith in the divine plan,” she said. “You take care of the world and it takes care of you. The more love you give away the more you have in your heart.”

The July 30 fundraiser is 4 to 8:30 p.m. There is live music, food and beverages. A $20 donation is suggested. For information, see theredroadfoundation.org.