By Abigail Aguilar —
He designs layouts for medical equipment in hospitals. She’s an architect. They make enough money to afford a high-end vacation.
Instead, Sysouk and Nancy Vongphasouk have taken their down time to build playgrounds for poor children in Thailand, some of them victims of sex trafficking. Why do they spend their holiday breaks in this way?
“The reaction of the kids is priceless. It’s hard to describe the feeling you get when you see these kids who don’t have a home, don’t have a family, and they’re trying to find some love in the world, when they are able to see a playground that’s big for them brings them great joy,” says Sysouk, who was born in Laos and immigrated when he was young.
“You get a little tired from building, but seeing the kids so excited gives you back 10 times. When they finally get to play on it, they have just pure joy.”
For Sysouk the most rewarding aspect of his life is not financial success or a more comfortable lifestyle. It’s been the look on the faces of those underprivileged kids.
“We don’t have kids. But we love and enjoy kids,” Sysouk says. “The opportunity was presented to help kids. It sounded interesting. Building a playground sounded intriguing.”
Last November, they built a playground in Thailand school near the Thai/Burma border that has taken in child refugees from their civil war. The previous year, they helped female victims of sex trafficking in Thailand.
Shockingly, Sysouk says, most of the sex trafficked were sold by their own family members. They were not kidnapped. One case was a pair of daughters whose parents died; their uncle was heartless and sold them.
One of the organizations that mounts such short-term mission trips is Kids Around the World, which acquires old playground equipment in the U.S., refurbishes it, and ships it to some of the poorest countries in the world. So far, it has set up more than 1,000 playgrounds.
Kids Around the World has gotten 20,000 people involved in their projects. They have raised $45M and rescued over 1,000 trafficking victims, their website says.
But none of this would have been possible had it not been for Sysouk’s boss. Not only does Criterion allow its employees to take time off to help on short term missions around the world, they sponsor their employees.
They are a corporation with a big heart.
Behind Criterion’s push to encourage employees to give back is the CEO, Suzanne Kowarsch, a Christian who went on a life-changing short-term mission trip to Rwanda in 2008, shortly after the tribal genocide.
“It rocked my world,” Suzanne says. “I felt a complete and deep sense of love and belonged to this church (in Rwanda). I couldn’t explain why except that it was implanted in me.”
Suzanne got saved when a friend invited her to church. She showed up.
“She was surprised to see me,” Suzanne remembers. “She said, ‘Wait, what?’”
Her friend “walked with her” through life. She helped her with her struggling marriage, hooking her up with counseling. Jesus was committed to Suzanne, so Suzanne committed to Jesus.
Jesus saved her; the Rwanda trip gave her a focus beyond the materialistic side of the American dream. “As the sole shareholder of the company it’s easy for me to not answer to anybody but the Big Man upstairs,” she says. “I choose lower profits and to spread the money around.”
Criterion is based in Capistrano Beach, CA.
Suzanne says the trip to Thailand to build a playground for formerly trafficked girls cut her heart.
“All of us on the team were deeply hurt by the knowledge” of how sex trafficking works, she says. “You can’t unlearn it.”
She is planning a trip to see the girls’ progress in early 2026.
To learn more about a personal relationship with Jesus, click here.
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About these writer: Michael Ashcraft reported from Los Angeles where he pastors a church in the San Fernando Valley.
