There’s a reason why: After years of ballet study Galle worked up to senior dancer with the Susan Hayward School of Dancing in Montara.
The blouse is another story.
 Coastsider Zoe Galle is taking a year between graduation at Half Moon Bay High School and college to travel to Thailand to assist the "Not For Sale" project. |
At 18, Galle is joining that effort, a goal about which she is “passionate.” On Monday, she departed for 11 weeks in the northern, rural Thailand city of Chiang Rai.
In tandem with a Not For Sale partner, the nonprofit Mirror Foundation, she will “give the 411 about human trafficking,” and educate about the rights of those pulled into it. “My goal, personally, is to educate people so they do know their rights,” she said. “Even if they’re illegal … there are steps law enforcement can take to keep them from being deported to their country where they’re put back into the same cycle.”
“She has a heart that goes beyond her own well-being,” said Batstone. “Her compassion for the world is unusual in someone so young.”
The trip is sponsored by Not For Sale, the Mirror Foundation, which works with northern Thai tribal people to preserve their culture and economy and educate them against traffickers, and Buddies Along the Roadside, which shelters youth, age 3 to 17, who were exploited by the sex trade or used as drug “mules,” Batstone said.
While Galle’s work in Thailand is still being clarified, Batstone said that, given her love for children, she will probably work with kids and help educate locals about victims’ rights or organize data to “map” exploitation sites.
The education begins at the beginning, not just in Thailand.
“It’s not just, ‘Oh, another person who’s immigrated to the United States,’ which I think a lot of people are jaded at,” she said. “A lot of people don’t know the difference between prostitution and trafficking” — generally, one involves choice and the other springs from coercion — “some people don’t know there is a difference.”
She will not go into places with exterior cameras, shuttered windows and names that frequently change, but help with mapping data to be posted at notforsalecampaign.org.
“She will be working with people where there are relationships we trust,” said Batstone. “This placement will be ideal for her.”
That’s a tall order for Galle. Thailand is her first trip to Asia, where she does not speak the language and the modest Buddhist culture and dress contrast with her youthful American style.
But passion drives her. “I realized I can’t go on living the life I do, knowing there are people who don’t get the opportunities I have,” she said.
She admits to naïveté but credits Not For Sale for plenty of preparation. The nonprofit came about when Batstone and his wife discovered the staff of their favorite Bay Area East Indian restaurant were modern-day slaves. Horrified, he tapped technology, intellectual capital and volunteer abolitionists to end slavery, as chronicled in his 2007 book: “Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade and How We Can Fight It.”
“Many people bristle to hear the word ‘slave’ used to describe the modern practice of exploitation,” he wrote. “Deeply engrained in the collective psyche of the Western culture is the notion that slavery ended in the 19th century … In our own day, however, a thriving black market in human beings has emerged once again.”
While he was writing, Zoe Galle was growing up, taking ballet lessons with Batstone’s daughter, Jade, and learning compassion from parents Greg and Darcie Galle.
“She absorbed it,” Batstone said. “She picked up, that’s the way you live.”
The Galles lived in London and Zimbabwe, where the girls saw new cultures and family farms run by the rural women.
“She was moved by that kind of exposure,” said Greg Galle. “She always wanted to find a way to help.”
While a sophomore at Half Moon Bay High School, Zoe Galle was invited by maternal grandmother Millie Golder of the Half Moon Bay Rotary Club, to Mazatlan, Mexico. The purpose was not vacation but bringing wheelchairs to the needy through Interact, a teen service group under Rotary auspices, led by Golder.
When Galle went to Mexico, the die was cast. “The Mazatlan experience, in my opinion, changed her life and opened up her passion for humanitarian work,” Golder said. In time Galle made two more trips there: “It was really cool to be with kids who were interested in the stuff I was interested in, who really cared about changing people’s lives.”
The Galle-Batstone bond grew when Greg Galle offered office space in his Princeton warehouse to Not For Sale.
Graduating from Half Moon Bay High in June, Galle opted for a “gap year” to help the less fortunate. She was working at Café Classique in El Granada when Batstone stopped in for coffee, and told him her plans. He suggested she look into Not For Sale’s Abolitionist Academy. A new training was about to start.
“Why not?” Galle said.
In the one-week training, she learned all about trafficking.
“I got really angry,” she said. “I saw such a big problem and didn’t understand why nothing was being done.”
But she turned anger to action. “I could see a group grow, gain momentum, passion to fight this. You can’t recruit activists until they know what they’re fighting for.”
She said ballet gives her a framework for this new passion. Dancing “has given me a lot of structure in life, kept me grounded,” she said. “The way I approach that passion is the way I approach helping people.”
After this trip, she may make a follow-up visit, or go to another country where Not For Sale is active, like Ghana.
“I am extremely proud of her,” said Golder. “I have no qualms that she’ll be safe and do incredible work there.”
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