Patty Loew:
We begin this week with two idealistic students who believe one by one they can change the world. If success is measured by the size of the dream, Joseph Quinnell and Susan Perri would be at the top of the heap. They're both undergrads on a quest to help two women from a faraway land get a college education. But as Liz Koerner discovered, success comes with a price in Stevens Point.  

Liz Koerner:
The scents of ingredients like lemongrass and hot peppers fill the air of this campus gathering. These women have prepared food from their homeland, Thailand. They're attending UW Stevens Point because two fellow undergrads fought a battle that most said was impossible to win.

Jeff Morin:
I describe them as either a force to be reckoned with or a juggernaut, something that is on some level unstoppable.

Liz Koerner:
Joseph Quinnell and Susan Perri took on impossible odds to bring these two women to Wisconsin to get a college education. Odds were stacked against the women because even though they were born in Thailand, the Thai government wouldn't grant them citizenship. Their parents immigrated from Myanmar.

Srinuan Saokumnuan Aor:
My mom in Thailand, but I cannot get Thai citizenship.

Liz Koerner:
Without citizenship, they have very few rights. A college education and good jobs are out of the question and travel is extremely limited. They're considered stateless.

Joseph Quinnell:
But in Thailand, a statelessness, is the highest risk to being trafficked. Human trafficking is a nice word for what it is, you know. It's modern day slavery.  

Liz Koerner:
Quinnell and Perri are both arts students. Quinnell is studying photography. In 2005, he decided to shed light on the problem of human trafficking by putting his photography skills to work in Thailand.  

Joseph Quinnell:
My first week in Thailand I was offered a 12-year-old girl, and, I mean, you can read about that all you want or watch documentaries or do the research, but you can't understand how awful it is until you're looking into the eyes of a 12-year-old girl, you know, who's smiling up at you, a genuine child smile, as her price is being quoted.

Liz Koerner:
Quinnell's quest is personal.

Joseph Quinnell:
I'm really open about my past, my childhood. I was physically abused for over ten years, and I started to use art to actually talk about some of these stories.  

Liz Koerner:
Quinnell's past made him want to help other kids at risk for abuse. He met hundreds of them at a school for stateless children in northern Thailand. The school is run by a man who's been nominated twice for the Nobel peace price. The Thai women are graduates of this school but couldn’t go to college without citizenship. Quinnell came up with what most consider an impossible dream.

Joseph Quinnell:
The one person who believed, you know, from the get-go, was the leader of the school.

Liz Koerner:
What he got home, Quinnell convinced Perri to work with him to do what's never been done before. They petitioned the Thai government to allow these young women to travel to Wisconsin to attend the university. It took three years and the assistance of the state department and many other people in the US and Thailand. But Quinnell and Perri's persistence made this impossible dream come true.

Joseph Quinnell:
The day that we had that travel document in hand, the day that the Thai government allowed a stateless person to travel to that extent, I took it and I went off by myself for a little while and it was just so emotional, to hold this thing in my hand, something that we had worked for for more than three years.

Liz Koerner:
It's called the Thailand project.

Fongtip Boonsri:
Thailand make me have a good dream and I can do it. Yeah.

Liz Koerner:
Even before securing the travel documents, Perri and Quinnell took on another seemingly impossible task. They began to raise money for Fongtip and Aor's first year of classes and living expenses. To raise awareness, Quinnell put up a campus-wide photography exhibit contrasting the smiles of children at the school with images of the red light district in Thailand.  

Joseph Quinnell:
And I really believe that a photograph, you know, can change things.

Liz Koerner:
Perri designed a fund-raising campaign urging students to see red. They raised more than $14,000 in one week. With additional funds from a local church, dental office and other individuals, they met their first-year goal.

Susan Perri:
And I loved, you know, working on different like problem-solving through different issues like the fund-raising issues.

Liz Koerner:
But the battle to fund the rest of Fongtip and Aor's college education has yet to be won. Quinnell and Perri have only a few months to raise $28,000 for the coming year.

Joseph Quinnell:
We both have a full schedule this semester, so, I mean, we're starting to break a little bit. We've come so far. And if they have to get on a plane in August, if it ends now, that would be tragic.  

Patty Loew:
In recent months, Thailand has been rocked by violence, but in the process of working with the Thai government during the past few years, Quinnell and Perri achieved something very significant. Fongtip, one of the women featured in our report, has been granted Thai citizenship. If you'd like to know more about the Thailand project, just go to our website, wpt.org/inWisconsin. UW Stevens Point officials say the Thailand project has been funded entirely by private donations.