When I first launched 'The Human, Earth Project', I really couldn't imagine what I was getting myself into. What was originally planned as a six-month project has evolved into something far larger and much more involved. I'll soon be entering the fifth year of the...

After three very intense months of work on our amazingly successful fundraising campaign, November has been a quieter month spent tying up loose ends and preparing for the long edit of our feature-length documentary, 'Sisters For Sale'. Those of you who chose to...

We're only just beginning to emerge from the organised chaos of our amazingly successful crowdfunding campaign. After years of struggling to get 'The Human, Earth Project' the attention and funding it needs, the outpouring of support over the past two months, and...

Countless thousands of girls and young women are kidnapped and trafficked into China every year - not only from Vietnam, but also Laos, Myanmar, and other neighbouring countries.  Many of these girls are sold into lives of perpetual rape in Chinese brothels, from...

Countless Hmong girls are stolen from Vietnam each year, betrayed by people they trust and perhaps even love. Trafficked into China, many are sold into lives of brutality and horror in Chinese brothels - but what becomes of the rest? Sadly, these girls are being taken...

Something incredible just happened. Since my friends were kidnapped from their homes in Vietnam, I've given everything to raise awareness of the global human trafficking crisis. For years, I've struggled to get this work the attention and funding it needs. Sometimes...

Teenaged Hmong girls - most of them still children - are being forcibly taken in their thousands from the mountains of northern Vietnam, to be sold as brides and prostitutes in China. Deception is a major element of these abductions. The girls are betrayed by...

Many of us look forward to marriage, to finding that special someone we can share our lives with. The Hmong girls of northern Vietnam share the same dream: only for these girls, courtship can be a game of life or death - or worse. Over the past weeks, I've...

In the West, we're raised with the idea that we can be anything we want to be, and do anything we want to do with our lives. For the Hmong girls of Vietnam, this is an alien concept: the options facing them in life are generally few and miserable. Hundreds and...

For the inexperienced, crowdfunding looks like free money. It's really not. Our current campaign to complete 'Sisters For Sale' and combat human trafficking crisis in Vietnam has taken months of work. It's been a physically and emotionally draining time. With...

Last week I wrote about the Hmong custom of marriage by abduction, which features in our forthcoming feature documentary, 'Sisters For Sale'. Marriage by abduction is a violent tradition which permits a Hmong man to kidnap a girl or young woman of his desire from the...

I've spent the past 3.5 years working on 'Sisters For Sale', our powerful feature documentary to raise awareness of the global human trafficking crisis.  'Sisters For Sale' focuses on some teenaged Hmong friends from Vietnam, who are amongst countless thousands of...

Today's a big day, for two reasons: 1. For the very first time, I'm giving the world a sneak peek at 'Sisters For Sale', the film I've been working towards for the past 3.5 years. 2. We've just launched our final, make-or-break fundraising campaign to...

I have two very special surprises for you today. This Wednesday - in two days' time - we'll be launching a final fundraising campaign to complete Sisters For Sale, our feature documentary to raise awareness of human trafficking. For the first time, you'll have a...

Sisters For Sale has been my life for the past 3.5 years. It's a powerful and very personal feature documentary about the search for my missing friends.Kidnapped from their homes in Vietnam, they were trafficked into China and sold as teenaged brides to strangers. By...

I have some very exciting news for you this week. Over the coming months, The Human, Earth Project will be going further than ever before. Sisters For Sale, our feature-length documentary exploring the complex realities of human trafficking, will be an...

The Human, Earth Project is growing. It grows slowly at times, almost imperceptibly, yet has never stopped spreading across the globe. Sometimes it circles all the way around to find me again. Recently, I was wading through a muddy jungle on a tiny island in the...

Two weeks ago, I announced a unique, once-in-a-lifetime volunteering opportunity in the mountains of northern Vietnam. I'd like to thank everyone who helped spread the message, and those of you who came forward with the many excellent applications. The position has...

Updated 22nd and 31st JulyA lot of ventures fail after their first three years. After three years, it seems, many of them run out of funding, out of favours, and out of friends. It's all the more difficult when your work was never designed to make a profit, just a...

It hasn't been the best of times. In mid-May I fell ill for a month - and just as I was recovering, I fell ill again. It's been physically exhausting, and left me sapped of strength. Even when I'm sick, even when I'm tired, I work. I push myself to meet the monthly...

Laura Poitras does not make beautiful documentaries. She doesn't use slick titles, clever little animations or gorgeous music. Poitras doesn't appeal to your heart: she goes straight for the brain. She won't win you over with a convincing narration or stacks of...

Each week, I'm sharing one of my all-time favourite documentaries here with you. This week's documentary is Laura Poitras' The Oath. In 2013, Edward Snowden - NSA whistleblower and one of my personal heroes -  selected Laura Poitras as the documentary...

I watch a lot of documentaries. Last year, I began recommending some of my favourites here on my blog, and it's time I got back in the habit. Each week, I'll be sharing one of my all-time favourite documentaries with you. This week's documentary is Laura Poitras' My...

Each year for the past three years, the anti-trafficking organisation Walk Free has released a Global Slavery Index - that is, an estimate of women, men and children around the world living as victims of modern slavery and human trafficking. Their latest figure was...

The Human, Earth Project has been a very personal undertaking for me, and it has taken on many of my own strengths and weaknesses. I've never been a very patient person, and I rushed into the search for my kidnapped friends without arranging many of the practicalities...

The Human, Earth Project was not born from a single source of inspiration, but from a number of coinciding factors in my life. The first, and by far the most important, was my teenaged friend M who was abducted from Vietnam, and believed trafficked into China. Another...

In recent years, we've seen the rise of a new Internet-based form of political activism: it's been dubbed slacktivism. Slacktivism is when we show our support for something online, without actually doing anything in the real world. It includes all those countless...

I received an email last night from my aunt, about a program that CNN is screening this week. It's a documentary on young women being trafficked from Vietnam, to be sold as brides to Chinese men. The basic premise sounded very similar to Sisters For Sale, the...

Six months ago, I found myself surrounded by people who took a great interest in my work against human trafficking. With my investigation into the abductions of my friends in Vietnam, my surprisingly successful search for them in China, and my struggles to help them...

Over the past year, Sisters For Sale has been taking shape, and taking on a life of its own. Giving birth would be the obvious analogy - but even from the womb this baby has begun dictating its needs and wants. Which shot is missing, and where. Where to add a piece of...

The latest batch of Academy Awards were distributed in Hollywood on Sunday.Their recipients ranged from intelligent, thought-provoking films on very worthy subjects to... well, Fury Road, two hours of senseless, relentless overstimulation, with a popularity even more...

I never met Chris Tenz, despite the fact that we both lived on the same street in the same tiny hamlet, and knew dozens of people in common. When I first launched The Human, Earth Project, I was working in the Canadian Rockies. I stayed there for ten months, saving...

It has now been three years since The Human, Earth Project was born, and what a ride it has been. The first year took me back to Asia to begin the search for my trafficked friends M and P. The second year was a phenomenal success, as I located both M and P...

I've spent years of my life living and travelling around the globe, to get a better understanding of the world in which we live. I watch documentaries for the same reason. One part of the world I've found the most difficult to understand is the Middle East,...

On my journey to complete our feature-length anti-trafficking documentary Sisters For Sale, I've been absorbing some of the world's finest documentaries. Late last year I presented a series of blog posts introducing you to a few of my favourites. Several of you have...

I took a two-week break over the new year, and spent Christmas Day on the beach of a small developing nation. After the sun had set, my friends and I went in search of a taxi to take us back to the city nearby. We chose the wrong taxi. The driver, who identified...

It's been a really long year.Whereas many of last year's struggles were public and very dramatic, this year they have been comparatively dull battles behind closed doors.  When Sisters For Sale was crowdfunded in early 2014, it was to be a modest film about my...

Yesterday was Thanksgiving here in the United States.I spent the day with new friends in the mountains of southern California, while the first snows tumbled down through the pines outside. It's been one year since I stepped away from the disadvantaged communities of...

It's been almost a month since I last wrote.  It's been a long, strange month in which the pieces of my life were kicked up and scattered, and have only just begun to resettle in unexpected new ways.  Last month, I wrote about the incredible emotional strength of...

As an audience member, it is easy to watch a completed documentary - particularly a well-made documentary - and believe the story has unfolded in the only possible way. The film seems to build organically, following a logical path from a clearly-defined beginning to...

On Tuesday I mentioned that acclaimed crime writer Belinda Bauer had been shortlisted amongst fierce competition for the prestigious Gold Dagger, an award given to the best crime novel of the year.  Belinda's novel,

In January I first wrote about Belinda Bauer, the author of six acclaimed crime novels, and a longtime supporter of The Human, Earth Project. Belinda cites the Project as an inspiration for her latest work, The Shut Eye, which revolves around the mysterious...

Sculpture can be either an additive or subtractive process. A sculptor might build his work from scratch, or else chip away at a block of stone to discover his creation within. For the past six months, I have dedicated myself to the post-production of our...

For the first time since her abduction almost four years earlier, my trafficked Hmong friend M had the freedom to return home to her family in Vietnam. After finally reaching the border, however, M turned back at the urgings of her Chinese "husband". She did so to...

My trafficked Hmong friend M never made it home to her family in Vietnam. After having risked a bus journey of some 3,000 kilometres (1,800 miles) across China without identification, M had almost reached the Vietnamese border. M first hesitated on hearing rumours of...

Almost four years after being abducted from her home in Vietnam and sold as a bride in China, my trafficked friend M was nearly home. M's Chinese "husband" had, unexpectedly, given his permission for M to visit her family in Vietnam.As an illegal resident, M had...

M's story had been a horrific one - yet how was she to prove it?When she'd been abducted as a teenager from her home in Vietnam and trafficked into China, my young Hmong friend had been stripped of her clothes, her Vietnamese phone, and her identity. When she'd been...

There are many similarities in the stories of my trafficked Hmong friends M and P. Both were abducted at the age of sixteen from their home in northern Vietnam. Both were deceived, drugged and spirited across the border by young Vietnamese Hmong men. Both were held...

The past month has, for me, been spent deep in the edit of Sisters For Sale, our feature-length documentary to raise awareness of human trafficking. The film focuses on the stories of my teenaged Hmong friends who were abducted from northern Vietnam and trafficked to...

In 2010, while living in the mountains of northern Vietnam, I became friends with a teenaged Hmong girl named M. The following year M was abducted, and was believed trafficked to China for sale as a bride or prostitute. Last year, I finally succeeded in contacting,...

It has now been one month since the 7.8-magnitude earthquake which rocked Nepal, and the impoverished nation is still reeling. Many of the hundreds of aftershocks, with magnitudes as high as 7.3, might be considered major earthquakes in their own rights, and have left...

What was planned as a short break from The Human, Earth Project has been a busy time for me here in Australia. At one point I caught myself working on three computers synchronously, juggling eight terrabytes of external hard drives to get everything in order for the...

It has now been one week since the colossal 7.8-magnitude earthquake that rocked Nepal and the surrounding region. As the damage is assessed and the death toll soars, it seems likely to surpass Nepal's 1934 earthquake to become the most devastating quake in Nepali...

In 2011, I spent a monsoon season living in a village in the Himalayan foothills of central Nepal.  Ten months ago, I returned to that village to reconnect with Amma and Laksman, a local couple there that had taken me into their family.  I also reconnected with Saroj,...

Since finishing the first draft of the Sisters For Sale documentary script six weeks ago, I've been working with the script and footage synchronously, to understand how the story works in practice. I've been searching for the best way to condense a complex and...

My primary motivation for returning to Asia 19 months ago was to search for M, a teenaged Hmong friend who had been abducted and presumed trafficked to China for sale as a bride or prostitute. Many people believed that search to be impossible, and I'll freely admit...

Recently I've been receiving more attention for my work with The Human, Earth Project. It was thrilling to see last night's premiere of the documentary Bargain Brides, on Vietnamese women being sold as brides in China. A large portion of the documentary focuses on P's...

Last year I celebrated Christmas in the village home of my friend P, a recent survivor of human trafficking.P, her family and I were also joined by an international film crew producing a 50-minute television documentary on the countless young women being trafficked...

I'll admit it - I'm an addict. For too long now I've been slave to an addiction which has cost me vast sums of money and separated me from my family, friends, and the life I once loved. I'm talking about travelling. Am I joking? Yes and no. I had my mid-life crisis...

I was given a one-month visa when I entered Cambodia, and I set myself the goal to complete the first draft of the Sisters For Sale documentary script before that visa expired on 10th March. (That's today). It was an immense job that involved sifting through and...

Thanks to all of you who showed your support in January, I'm excited to announce that The Human, Earth Project is now one of 5 worldwide finalists for the 2015 best topical weblog award! The Human, Earth Project blog records the life-changing experiences of my...

This week marks another birthday for both myself and The Human, Earth Project, and a perfect opportunity for a spot of navel-gazing. It's incredible to think it's now been more than ten years since I began travelling the globe. My adventures then, although they seemed...

In 2010, I was living in a small mountain town in northern Vietnam. In that town I became friends with M and P, two teenaged Hmong girls from a neighbouring village who were later abducted and sold across the Chinese border. Last year, I spent three months in that...

I'm generally a very tolerant person who prefers to avoid physical confrontation, and Laotians tend to be extremely calm and easy-going people. That's why it came as a surprise when three largely-uneventful weeks in Laos ended with a team of Laotian border guards...

I apologise for not having written earlier; I was too busy writing. The last time I wrote to you all was on my final day in Vietnam, and today - three weeks later - is my final day in Laos. They've been three highly rewarding weeks. I've finally...

The Human, Earth Project, as you all know, is an ongoing campaign to raise awareness of human trafficking. Having achieved more with the Project in 2014 than anyone dared hope for, and finding myself with a little more time to breathe, I am now seeking to raise the...

P has successfully reconstructed her life, M's situation remains unchanged, and my work here in Vietnam is finished... Which is fortunate, as I'm being forced to leave the country. This time, it's nothing personal. Yesterday I discovered that, for reasons known only...

What has, for you, been the most fascinating moment of The Human, Earth Project? Was it amongst those moments when at last I succeeded in contacting, locating and meeting with my trafficked Hmong friends P and M in China? Was it the moment when, after three years and...

For those of you who haven't been following the adventures of The Human, Earth Project through 2014, it's been an incredible year. Here are a few of the most memorable moments: The year began with Hmong friends in Laos. Days later, my trafficked Hmong friend M...

On Christmas Eve, just as many of you were beginning your holidays, I was going back to work in the mountains of northern Vietnam. Although Vietnam lies within the tropics, winter here in the mountains can be bitterly cold, as I experienced during my initial...

Kim neung con bo sep. That's a Laotian phrase I encountered recently, which was translated for me as: When you eat alone, it's not delicious. For the past five months I've been working alone. I've had zero face-to-face contact with my collaborators on The Human, Earth...

One month ago, I was concerned I'd become too deeply entangled in the life of my Hmong friend P, a recent survivor of human trafficking. I couldn't see how to step away. After we'd returned from our road trip, and the violent stalker Lucky Charm had made his unwelcome...

After five long and frustrating months spent trying to arrange her rescue, I was told my trafficked Hmong friend M had fallen pregnant to her Chinese "husband" for a second time. If the rumour was true, it could very well be our last chance to bring her home. I was...

On Monday 6th October, after four long and frustrating months, my friend Charlie and I finally had an opportunity to organise the rescue of my trafficked Hmong friend M, who would then be returned to Vietnam under the auspices of the Hanoi-based NGO Blue Dragon.M,...

It had been two months since I'd spoken to my trafficked Hmong friend M. M's planned rescue had been cancelled after the Chinese "husband" who'd bought her had been alerted to her intentions. I had stopped calling M in the hopes that his suspicions would subside. The...

At the last possible moment, I'd cancelled the rescue of my trafficked Hmong friend M from the "husband" who had bought her in China. I'd given M hope, and it had proved to be a very dangerous thing. M's "husband" had been alerted to her intention to leave and,...

Late last year, I spoke with a friend about climbing mountains and running marathons. A parallel was drawn with The Human, Earth Project - in a sense, the Project has been a way of testing myself, and discovering where my limits lie. How far was I willing to go before...

For the first time in almost three years, my friend M - trafficked from Vietnam and sold as a wife in China - had been given the power to determine her own fate. The decision that confronted her, however, was a decision no mother should ever have to make - a choice...

Is human trafficking necessarily an evil? Is there any situation in which trafficking could help, rather than harm, its victims? What if, for example, the only way to give my trafficked friend M her freedom was to help bring home her Chinese-born child - which would...

The Hmong people here in northern Vietnam have been raised in mountain villages of extreme gender bias, alcoholism and abuse. For many of the young Hmong women who have come to town, almost anything is preferable to marrying a local Hmong man and returning to life in...

Over the past year, there have been countless antagonists in our story - human traffickers, paedophiles, and those who would rent or buy women. Now, however, P and I have a more immediate menace. He has a weapon, a gang, and a lust for violence. He knows our names,...

It is a strange moment in history for the Hmong people of our little valley, and this is quite likely The Human, Earth Project's most bizarre episode ever. One of the reasons that the women here are so vulnerable to human trafficking is that their options here at home...

P is no longer a victim of human trafficking - she is a survivor, and I'm here to ensure she does more than merely survive. It's not just a matter of helping her find a job and a place to stay - P needs to find the confidence, self-esteem and sense of self that have...

Today I have a surprise for you all. First, however, I'd like to reveal something of the inner workings of The Human, Earth Project.Over the past eighteen months, The Human, Earth Project has entailed all the demands of managing a business, with none of the returns....

It's now the second week since P's return home, and we've been busy putting her life back together. P was to come home with the assistance of Blue Dragon, a Hanoi-based NGO which offers a thorough range of services to assist survivors of human trafficking, including...

It can be difficult not to impose our own standards and values upon societies and cultures to which they simply do not apply. Here in the mountains of Vietnam, life is an entirely different game, with an entirely different set of rules. Behind the bright facade...

My Hmong friend P - trafficked from Vietnam, sold into China, and escaped from the man who bought her - had vanished entirely.  After three years and eight months held against her will, P had fled more than 1,500 km (almost a thousand miles) frightened and alone...

I first launched The Human, Earth Project after learning that my friend M had been abducted from her home, a town where I had lived in northern Vietnam. On my return to Vietnam this January, however, I learned M was not the only friend of mine who had fallen victim to...

Life goes on in our little mountain town, always changing and ever the same. The six months since I was last here have seen numerous radical transformations. A new highway has halved the travel time from Hanoi, and the town is now indundated with weekend traffic from...

In 2010, I met two Hmong girls, M and P, in a small town in the mountains of far northern Vietnam. The following year both girls were abducted and trafficked to China, where they were sold as wives. Six months ago, on my last visit to that mountain town, I told M and...

The Human, Earth Project has long been a balancing act between drawing attention to raise awareness of human trafficking, and keeping a very low profile in the presence of traffickers and governments known to be hostile to foreign media. I've long been aware of the...

Many people have come together to create The Human, Earth Project and this week, tragically, the world has lost one of them.You've all heard Mike Taylor's music. Mike was one of the very first people involved in the Project, whose early enthusiasm helped give me the...

It's been fifty weeks since my return to Asia, and I've now spent more than fifty months here in total. What began as a six-month journey has become something much bigger than I'd ever imagined, and I'm only just beginning to understand with what a monumental task...

Yesterday I experienced my first earthquake. I'd been walking in the mountains with a friend, and as we turned for home a sudden shock went through us both. We were on a narrow path on the face of a mountain, and it felt as though a giant fist had slammed into the...

As many of you know, the Sisters For Sale documentary isn't the only thing I'm working on at the moment. For the past three months, I've also been working towards something I consider more important. Though I'd prefer not to be so cryptic, if you understand what it is...

It can be difficult, at times, not to lose faith in humanity. Late last year, an Australian friend came to join Marinho and I in our search. He was looking forward to being a part of The Human, Earth Project, he said, because he'd lost his faith in humanity, and hoped...

This week, I was hoping to have some wonderful news for you. Instead, everything I've been working towards has fallen through, and I've cancelled my return to China. I can't tell you how incredibly frustrating it feels to have worked towards this for so...

My return to China has been delayed, and I've spent the past ten days in stasis in northern India. Most of that time has been spent with a nasty bout of stomach illness - the notorious Delhi belly - though I'm gradually recovering and catching up on a few...

At the very beginning of our journey together - almost ten months and over 40,000 kilometres ago - Marinho and I each tried to guess how many of the 100 portrait subjects we'd find.  I said 90; Marinho said 80. He joked that we'd never reach 90, because he'd simply...

Day: 293 Distance covered: 40,552 kilometres (25,198 miles) Subjects found: 80 I've been in the habit of making predictions about each of the people Marinho and I search for - which ones will be easy, and which ones more challenging. When it came to Daoud, the...

Day: 282Distance covered: 36,968 km (22,971 miles)Subjects found: 79The road snaked up from the valley floor to the village I once called home, sprawling atop a broad green ridge in central Nepal.  It had been three years since my return, and the dusk light couldn't...

Day: 279 Distance covered: 36,796 km (22,864 miles)Subjects found: 78In 2011, I spent five months living in a small village in the hills of central Nepal, and came to know many of the locals there. One of them was a fourteen-year-old boy named Saroj. The second of...

Day: 276Distance covered: 37,399 km (23,239 miles)Subjects found: 77After having succeeded spectacularly in our search over the past nine months, Marinho and I now find ourselves defeated by the caterpillar fungus. The "world's most expensive fungus" attacks and...

Day: 273Distance covered: 36,796 km (22,864 miles)Subjects found: 77Yesterday, we were told she'd passed away. We found her today, very much alive. It was a bitterly cold morning, with ice still on the ground from last night's hailstorm, as Marinho and I went hunting...

Day: 271Distance covered: 36,706 km (22,808 miles)Subjects found: 75M is now alone more than ever. Her "husband" won't let her leave the house, she says, while he himself returns only out of necessity. M suspects he is seeing someone else - he no longer comes home for...

Day: 270Distance covered: 36,421 km (22,631 miles)Subjects found: 75We've had some wonderful news today. I mentioned last week that two of M's traffickers - a Chinese Hmong couple - were still involved in her life. Claiming to have spent a year in their home before...

Day: 268Distance covered: 34,227 km (21,268 miles)Subjects found: 75Saturday's meeting was brief, and bittersweet for M. It was her first contact in three years with a world she thought had forgotten her, a world she still remembers but can no longer reach. Only later...

Day: 264 Distance covered: 34,173 km (24,234 miles) Subjects found: 75! In 2010, I was living in a misty mountain town in far northern Vietnam. Many young Hmong girls would come to town from the surrounding villages to sell handicrafts and guided treks to tourists.  A...

Day: 262Distance covered: 34,119 km (21,201 miles)Subjects found: 74 At last, Marinho and I have the name of M's village. Today we went on a reconnaissance mission to the town nearest the village, with an outside hope of arranging a meeting. The town centres around a...

Day: 261Distance covered: 34,073 km (21,172 miles)Subjects found: 74  I've spoken to M five times in the past two days. It has been extremely difficult to determine her precise location, as M herself seems to have little understanding of where she is. There are no...

Day: 259Distance covered: 34,063 km (21,166 miles)Subjects found: 74 Using what tools we have and the information that she herself has been able to provide, Marinho and I have located the area of China in which M now lives. It's a very small area by Chinese...

Day: 254Distance covered: 31,883 km (19,811 miles)Subjects found: 74Marinho and I were searching for fourteen people in China's Yunnan province; we found eleven. The other three we've struck from our list - our single biggest disappointment since the very beginning of...

Day: 245Distance covered: 28,976 km (18,005 miles)Subjects found: 74It had been almost six months since the last time Marinho and I came into direct opposition with the authorities - the police, the army and the immigration office, all at once, in fact. This time our...

Day: 244Distance covered: 28,874 km (17,941 miles)Subjects found: 71Our search for locals I'd photographed at a town market in southern China four years ago led Marinho and I out amongst the surrounding villages, and into the homes of three delightful grandfathers. At...

Day: 243Distance covered: 28,859 km (17,932 miles)Subjects found: 68I found Zhong Ming at the town market, just where I'd found him four years earlier, and recognised him instantly. Zhong Ming, however, recognised neither himself or his grandson Yu in the photograph I...

Day: 242Distance covered: 28,857 km (17,931 miles)Subjects found: 66There is a beautiful little town in southern China whose Friday market draws people from many minority villages scattered across the surrounding valley and mountains. One Friday, four years ago, I...

Day: 241Distance covered: 28,856 km (17,930 miles)Subjects found: 65I would never have taken his portrait at all, but for his own insistence. Today I returned to find Yulu, and the elephant in the room. Yulu is 36 years old, the eldest of seven children. He was born...

Day: 239Distance covered: 28,733 km (17,854 miles)Subjects found: 63Our journey through China was scheduled to last six weeks, with two trafficked girls and 24 photographic subjects to locate, and over 8,000 kilometres to cover by bus and train. Our first two weeks...

Day: 231Distance covered: 26,877 km (16,701 miles)Subjects found: 63 P was never one of our 100 subjects. P is a friend of M and myself from Vietnam, a Hmong girl who was also trafficked as a child into China. Three years ago, P was taken across the border, held...

Day: 227Distance covered: 26,232 km (16,299 miles)Subjects found: 63In 2010, I spent two weeks volunteering as an English teacher in southern China. One morning, some local students offered to take another teacher and myself to a little place they knew hidden away in...

I've started receiving messages from people wondering if I'm still alive. It's true that it's been a long time since I last wrote - not because nothing's been happening, but because so much has been happening there's been no time to write about it all! We've...

Marinho and I have spent the past week entangled with embassies, banks and equipment failure, and waiting on things that have failed to materialise - not to mention having completed an exhausting 47-hour overland journey from one end of Vietnam to the other. Our big...

In the past sixty days, more than 200 friends and strangers from 23 countries have launched us all the way to our $12,000 fundraising target!  My gratitude goes out around the globe to each and every one of you (in order of appearance!):  Carola Irvine, Daan and Trix...

There are less than 24 hours remaining of The Human, Earth Project fundraising campaign. Over the past nine months, the Project has cost $18,087, the vast majority of which has come out of my own savings. Production and post-production of our Sisters For Sale...

Marinho and I have just returned to Vietnam for a final month of filming before we cross to China. Yesterday we conducted a great interview with one of the leading figures in the anti-trafficking movement in Indochina, and have more key interviews scheduled for the...

We're now in the final days of the campaign to fund Sisters For Sale, our feature-length documentary to raise awareness of human trafficking. Already we've raised US$9,263 from 172 amazing people around the world. I'm deeply grateful to everyone who's been involved...

Day: 193Distance covered: 21,296 km (13,232 miles)Subjects found: 62As many of you know, Marinho and I are not only looking for M here in Asia. To help draw attention to her story, we've been searching for 99 other people across nine countries, including many poor and...

I'm very excited to announce that Marta Farina, a highly talented artist and good friend of mine, will be illustrating the title sequence for our feature-length documentary. Specialising in children's illustrations, frescoes and murals, Marta studied at the Academy of...

Over the past three months in Vietnam and northern Thailand, Marinho and I have interviewed dozens of people, both on and off camera, to learn all we can about human trafficking in general, and the trafficking of Hmong girls from Vietnam to China in particular. We've...

I'd like to share some news about M. Two months ago, M called home from China for the first time since she was abducted. Within days, Marinho and I arrived in Vietnam to gather all the information we could. We obtained her Chinese number and passed it to people who,...

There are times I feel like I'm beating my head against a wall.  In the past month, I've sent out more than a thousand personal messages to friends and acquaintances, trying to raise support for the countless young girls being stolen and sold here in Asia.  Most of...

The Human, Earth Project crowdfunding campaign was scheduled to end today - and, generally, campaign deadlines cannot be extended. This week I was approached by Indiegogo - our crowdfunding hosts - and invited to extend the campaign. Saturday 8th March is...

Last Friday was my birthday. I spent the day speaking with my abducted friend M's parents, and at the village funeral of a young local man. Friday was also, in a sense, our birthday. It marked exactly one year since this thing between us - The Human, Earth Project -...

Here in Vietnam this morning, Marinho and I conducted a touching and beautiful interview and received the best information we've yet heard about M and her sister. Today in Australia, The Human, Earth Project was featured on ABC radio, and the front page of my local...

I've been speaking a lot recently about our crowdfunding campaign; I've been very quiet about our investigations here in Vietnam, and the production of our documentary. Though I can't give you too many details at this stage, both are going very well. Marinho and I...

Today I spoke with a mother of seven who fears for her children. Phinh lives in a village of five hundred people. About five girls are taken each year, she says, and have been for the past ten years or more. You do the maths. Phinh's eleven-year-old daughter Pang was...

When was the last time you really cared about something? When was the last time you put your foot down, and stood up against something you knew was wrong? I'm writing this from the mountains of northern Vietnam, where I'm filming a feature-length documentary on human...

This is the moment we've been working towards for months. Today is the day we'll find out if our crowdfunding campaign has been worth all the sweat and blood, if the world even wants to know about the plague of human trafficking, if anyone wants to see a film exposing...

The Human, Earth Project has been a process of rapid evolution. The Project was born from my desire to find my abducted friend M, and to tell her story to as many people as possible. At the time, I had no means to do so. When the Project first launched ten months ago,...

I'm going to send you a message exactly seven days from now.  It's going tell you about the search for my friend M, who was kidnapped two and a half years ago, and hasn't been seen since. I'll also talk about the feature-length documentary we're filming about M's...

We all have our moments of doubt, and there are times when I wonder what I'm doing here in Asia at all. Surely there's nothing I can hope to achieve against the Goliath that is human trafficking; surely I'll never find one kidnapped girl in the world's most populous...

Day: 114Distance covered: 13,558 km (8,426 miles)Subjects found: 51It can be extraordinarily difficult to condense such a prolonged, intense experience into a concise, easily-digested message for you all. Where should I begin? How to slice it into bite-sized...

Boxing Day was the day we'd intended to launch our crowdfunding campaign.Thanks to the incredible team assembled here in Chiang Mai, the network of people involved in the launch grew to some forty or fifty people around the globe, and it proved impossible to...

Marinho and I have been shooting an incredible amount of gorgeous footage here in Asia. The last time I wrote, I told you all I'd be sharing the very first glimpse of that footage on Boxing Day.I couldn't wait that long.On 26th December, I'll be sharing over five...

I have some big news for you all. Marinho and I have just come from Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, where we met a brilliant group of men and women from all over the world who are very excited about The Human, Earth Project, and want to help us take it to the next...

Day: 76Distance covered: 9,464 km (5,881 miles)Subjects found: 44Nothing in that village made any sense at all - it was like a journey down the rabbit hole, or up the river to find Kurtz. We were searching for three people I'd photographed there almost five years...

Day: 74Distance covered: 9,387 km (5,833 miles)Subjects found: 43The man was trying to convince us that all three of us would fit on his tiny motor scooter, backpacks and all. Marinho and I had hitch-hiked a hundred kilometres already that morning. We'd caught two...

Day: 72Distance covered: 9,286 km (5,770 miles)Subjects found: 40Today I have a story from Myanmar, and a little surprise for you. For almost three weeks, Marinho and I made our base in a small market town in Shan State, Myanmar. The surrounding hills were peppered...

Day: 72Distance covered: 9,290km (5,773 miles)Subjects found: 43I've always taken my portraits using natural light - daylight. Each time that Marinho and I go searching for the people I photographed five years ago, it's a race against time: I need to find and...

Day: 68Distance covered: 9,085 km (5,645 miles)Subjects found: 37At the core of our epic search for subjects amongst the hills of Myanmar's Shan State was a marathon trek through fourteen minority villages. The final four subjects of the trek had been photographed in...

Day: 65Distance covered: 9,040 km (5,617 miles)Subjects found: 31In the hills of Myanmar's Shan State, Marinho and I continued the hunt for guests from a village wedding which took place almost five years earlier, and discovered an unexpected connection between...

Day: 65Distance covered: 9,045 km (5,620 miles)Subjects found: 33Our search for this boy, photographed at a village wedding almost five years ago, led us to a monastery an hour's walk to the south. Pho Htay is his name. He's eleven years old, a nephew of the groom,...

Day: 64Distance covered: 9,032 km (5,612 miles)Subjects found: 28Almost five years ago, my brother and I passed through a small Danu minority village in Myanmar's Shan State where preparations for a Buddhist wedding were taking place. The village had only two hundred...

Day: 63 Distance covered: 9,029 km (5,610 miles) Subjects found: 24 We're back to break the silence, and we have so much to tell you.  Marinho and I have spent the past two weeks trekking between minority villages in search of our final subjects here in Myanmar. We've...

Day: 60Distance covered: 8,745 km (5,434 miles)Subjects found: 23It was a day of false expectations.Until now, my memories of Asia have been remarkably accurate, and I remembered nothing good about this place. In fact, I’d scrawled WORST TOWN IN MYANMAR beside its...

Day: 58Distance covered: 8,708 km (5,411 miles)Subjects found: 21In Myanmar, as in other Buddhist areas of Southeast Asia, young boys (and less commonly, girls) spend a week or more living in a monastery as part of their education. The time is spent studying,...

Day: 57Distance covered: 8,691 km (5,400 miles)Subjects found: 16The hundred portraits of The Human, Earth Project dictate all we do. They control where we go, how we spend our days, and what we discover along the way. Marinho and I can travel thousands of kilometres...

Day: 56Distance covered: 8,669 km (5,387 miles)Subjects found: 15Almost five years ago, I played peek-a-boo around a tree with a young boy in a small rural village in central Myanmar. His  name is That Py Soe, and he's now eight years old. We found him at home with...

Day: 55Distance covered: 8,654 km (5,377 miles)Subjects found: 14Our search has led Marinho and I back to a small community attached to a major pilgrimage destination in central Myanmar.The two children I photographed here almost five years ago are no longer children....

Day: 51Distance covered: 8,272 km (5,140 miles)Subjects found: 12Sometimes we search for days, and come up empty-handed. Today, though, our subject found us, before we'd even begun. Almost five years ago, my brother and I visited a small village in central Myanmar. We...

Day: 47 Distance covered: 7,602 km (4,724 miles) Subjects found: 11 I'm writing this from Myanmar (formerly Burma), one of the poorest countries we'll be visiting, and one that affects me deeply. For the first time in decades, it's possible for foreigners to reach the...

Day: 43  Distance covered: 6,665 km (4,141 miles)  Subjects found: 10 It's been two long weeks since we've found any of our subjects, yet I could write volumes on all we've seen and done. Today I have a more personal story I'd like to share with you. In the past...

Day: 37 Distance covered: 5,831 km (3,623 miles)  Subjects found: 10 At last, after a relentless first month on the road, Marinho and I have a chance to breathe here in Phuket, Thailand. Rather than the beach relaxation we'd hoped for, we've found illness, injury, and...

Day: 35 Distance covered: 5,831 km (3,623 miles)  Subjects found: 10 It's easy to think of a human trafficking organisation as some monstrous vile octopus stretching its tentacles out from the shadows, or a network of crime lords hidden away in their mansions. In...

Day: 27 Distance covered: 4,549 km (2,827 miles) Subjects found: 10 Time is running short.  Marinho and I have spent 54 of the past 65 hours on buses, bouncing through the Sumatra jungle where many of the roads are hardly deserving of the name. We've been racing the...

Day: 23 Distance covered: 2,748 km (1,707 miles) Subjects found: 9 They told us it was impossible.  All the locals here in Indonesia who saw my photograph of the man with the bicycle assured us he was homeless, a drifter. Of all our one hundred subjects, apart from M...

Day: 21 Distance covered: 2,729 km (1,696 miles) Subjects found: 7 We're three weeks deep, and have been putting a lot of road behind us in the past few days. Gone are the lush forests and broad sandy beaches of Bali and Lombok; in their place, the madness of Java,...

Day: 18 Distance covered: 2,134 km (1,326 miles) Subjects found: 6 When Marinho and I began this journey two weeks ago, we stepped into darkness. We didn't know who we'd find, or what they'd tell us. We merely hoped our stories and theirs would be interesting enough...

Day: 15 Distance covered: 1,182 km (734 miles)  Subjects found: 6 (Amazing things have happened in the past twenty-four hours; I'll be writing about them as soon as I can. In the meantime, here's a piece I didn't have a chance to post yesterday...) Marinho and I have...

Day: 12 Distance covered: 959 km (596 miles) Subjects found: 5 The Human, Earth Project is a journey to discover one hundred human stories from across southern Asia; some of those stories are more touching than others.  We're currently on the slopes of Mount Rinjani,...

Day: 10 Distance covered: 827 km (513 miles) Subjects found: 5 (and a half!) In the past ten days we've had to deal with sickness, injury, lost and damaged equipment, language barriers, inflated prices (with the inevitable white man's "skin tax"), and even the threat...

Day: 9 Distance covered: 815 km (506 miles) Subjects found: 3 Yesterday we located Mangku Gede Wayan Artha, the third of our subjects, and the easiest of all to find. Mangku Gede is a Hindu priest and, as it turns out, a very highly esteemed figure on that part of the...

Day: 7 Distance covered: 591 km (367 miles) Subjects found: 2 When I first launched The Human, Earth Project in March, I identified ten people that I expected to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find. Six of those people were photographed here on the...

Day: 5 Distance covered: 502 km (312 miles) Subjects found: 1 Today was the second day of the search for the five young men in this photograph. The day was spent chasing suspicions and rumours through the lost villages of rural Lombok, the island east of Bali. It...

Day: 1 Distance covered: 127 km (79 miles) Subjects found: 1 No amount of planning was able to prepare me for the reality of finally finding the boy that we were looking for.  This one will be easy, we told ourselves. We'll find the well, and the boy won't be far...

Day: 0 Distance covered: 40 km (25 miles) Subjects found: 0 We build a barrier of fear around these unfamiliar places. We’re told to beware of the seafood, the salad, the water, the ice, local transport, thieves and hustlers. We prepare ourselves with vaccines,...

This is the end of the first phase of The Human, Earth Project.  In the past year, it's grown from a simple idea to a complex network of people all over the planet. I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone who has made it possible - those who contributed their...

The adventure is about to begin, and things are happening quickly... Last week I was invited to present a TED talk at Burning Man, a week-long festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. I gave a ten-minute presentation entitled 'The Art of Giving', about the ideas and...

We all know how busy life can be, and how easily our days are filled with a thousand little things. Before any journey, time becomes shorter than ever, as you wrap up one life and prepare for the new. Organising a six-month search for one hundred people across the...

Last week I went rockclimbing with a friend on the cliffs behind Lake Louise. At the base of one of the more difficult pitches was a slender Asian man standing atop a small stone slab. He wasn't even looking at the wall of rock before him; he didn't have to. He...

We native English-speakers are lucky people. Despite constituting only four percent of the global population, thanks to the spread of the British empire, the success of the American post-war economy and the global popularity of English-language films and music, more...

After almost three months of late-night Skype conversations and messages sent back and forth across the globe discussing logistics, it's wonderful to be able to announce that The Human, Earth Project is no longer a 'me', but an 'us'. My background is primarily in...

I was going to wait until I had some biographies and portfolios to share with you, but this news is simply too good to keep secret... I've just received confirmation that two cameramen, both European, will be accompanying me on my adventures through Asia, and filming...

Earlier this month, a news crew from CBC (Canada's national network) made the two-hour trek up from Calgary to shoot a news segment on The Human, Earth Project. They interviewed both myself and my brother Nick, who helped me put together the project website. As it was...

The Human, Earth Project fundraising campaign is now over and, although we didn't reach the target, over three thousand dollars were raised, and I'm very thankful to all of you who contributed. Never having done anything like this before, I found it a fascinating...

Last night I received a message from a schoolmate, who wasn't sure if this was "a humanitarian project, a commercial project, or a travel project". I can understand his confusion: it's a little of each, and yet something entirely different.Finding M was the...

It's incredible to see how something like The Human, Earth Project brings people together. This project was born from two unrelated concepts, to use a collection of portraits to try and help a friend in trouble. It has since been expanding in all directions, as people...

In the past few days I've heard some very interesting news, including the best information I've yet received on M's disappearance.I've been in touch with an English girl who was living in Vietnam when M was taken, and conducted some investigations of her own. This is...

A few of you have looked at the logistics of The Human, Earth Project, and have been curious to know how it's even possible.I've given myself 180 days to find one hundred people - that is, I have an average of 1.8 days to find each one, which really isn't a lot of...

As you might imagine, I've been receiving a lot of messages over the past week. Many of them have been extraordinary, but none of them have affected me like one I received two days ago. It was sent by a stranger, out of the blue, and simply said that M has been safely...

It's been less than a week since I launched The Human, Earth Project. I was a little nervous in the beginning, because I've never done anything like this before, and didn't know what would happen, but over the past six days I've had a huge outpouring of support via...

Wow...It's been less than twenty-four hours since I let people know about The Human, Earth Project, and it's been amazing to see so many positive messages from all over the world, and so many people getting excited about the idea. I hope you've all had a chance to...