The girl in the red dress is beautiful. She’s has engaging, dark, laughing eyes. She is shy. Her smile sneaks up and rushes across her face and makes everyone around her smile, too. She brightens a room without trying.

The girl in the red dress hasn’t had it easy. She’s been through some of the worst the world could throw at her, in some of the world’s worst places. She still faces challenges every day. She still fears. She shares a room with five, ten people and a chicken. She has no assets and no money for college. Her family is mostly gone, except for an aunt on the other side of the world and her brother. He smiles, too, and supports Man United.

We want to tell her story. We think we can make her better. If we share her story, others might come. They might listen. They might help her. She is a victim.

She is uncomfortable. She doesn’t like the camera. She leans out of the picture. She doesn’t want to talk. She keeps looking towards her phone, which she left with her friend.

The girl in the red dress, the second-hand red dress that looks so good on her dark skin, the girl with the smiling eyes and the captivating laugh. The girl in the red dress is just another teenager. What if that’s true? What if our care, our sympathy is not the answer? An ordinary teenager who lives her life and giggles and laughs, like any other person. What if she’s just ordinary; not a victim, not a survivor? What if she’s just a girl, in a red dress, in a city, in a country? Not a sufferer, not a statistic, not a reason to build a story. Not a life we lived, not a wealthy life, but a life like thousands of others.

What if our help, our pity, serve no purpose other than to turn her ordinary, everyday experiences into something sad and heart-breaking and to be pitied? What if our well-intentioned interventions rob her of something – the ordinary, everyday of being a teenager? Vilifying what is normal and happy and ordinary for her. What if all she wants to be, just like anyone else – nothing special, nothing different – is a pretty young girl in a bright red dress?