Latest Updates
November 2010/February 2011
Heart Surgery for kids
We paid for heart surgery for two children.
Phuong after surgery
Danh Hua Ky Phuong, a one and a half year old girl with ventricular and atrial septal defects, was referred to us by Miss Yen, our heart surgery coordinator. Phuong's dad, 27, is a trash picker who earns about $2.00 per day. Her mom, 25, stays home to take of her. Surgery was on December 9th, and although she spent a little longer than usual in hospital due to infection, she is now home with happy parents.
Phap after surgery with his mom and dad
Dinh Viet Phap, now four and a half years old, is an old hand at heart surgery. He has Tetralogy of Fallot, a condition that usually requires two surgeries. We first met him in December, 2009 and paid for his first surgery. Second surgery was January, 2011, and he is now doing well.
Our cost for life saving surgery, including hospital costs: $3,000 per child.
Individual Family Assistance
Mr. Trang at home
Trang $5.00 per month for 2011
Trang, our newest addition to this group, is a 68 year old man who is blind and has only one leg due to war injuries. He lives alone, but his sister lives nearby and cooks for him. The government gives him about $8.00 a month for medicine, but he needs money for rice.
Quy $7.00 per month for 2011
Our objective when we started helping Quy, a seventeen year old girl, was to get her to agree to stay in school. She has done so and is now in grade 11. Her grandmother, in her 70's, still supports them by selling lottery tickets.
Cam Tu $94 for 2011
Cam Tu's dad died last year and he is now living with his mom and her new husband. Despite setback after setback, he is still in school thanks to the support he gets from us and the attention and care he gets from Miss Yen.
Thanh Thanh $94 for 2011
Thanh Thanh, now 12 years old and in grade 4, is doing well. She still goes to Saigon to see Dr. Phan every three months for heart checkups. Last year Miss Yen bought her a new bicycle. She sent us a very nice letter thanking us for our help and promising to study well.
Cuong $94 for 2011
Cuong had to quit school for a while last year to help her mom who was sick, but is now back in school and continuing grade 12. She is taking extra classes at night to prepare for her university entrance exams. Cuong is a candidate for a university scholarship from us.
Pham Thi Bay $7.00/month
Her situation is the same as before, and Mr. Tri, the hamlet president, will give her $7.00 a month to buy rice for her daughter.
Nguyen Thi Kim Nam $7.00/month
Kim Nam's situation remains the same. Because she is blind, Miss Lan, a retired school teacher and one of our helpers, buys and delivers rice to her each month.
Nguyen Van Tri $9.00/month.
Tri, disabled, continues to work for very little money under difficult circumstances with a great attitude. He cares for his two boys alone and always has a ready smile.
For those families getting monthly assistance, we left money for 2011 with our volunteer assistants.
Education
Scholarships
We've fired up our scholarship program again. Eight grade 12 students who are living in very difficult circumstances were introduced to us by school social workers. Our recent appeal for sponsors for university scholarships for one of these students was met with heartwarming results, and it looks like we will be able to send several of them to university this fall. In the meanwhile, we are giving each of them about $10 a month from January to June to help them get through their last year of high school, and we bought a bicycle for one of them who was walking a long distance to school. Miss Hong, our bookseller, shared the cost of the bicycle with us.
Happy with new books
These kids are too cute
Phuong met each of these students and we received detailed information about them from the school principal. Here are the principal's comments about three of them.
- Orphan. There are three siblings who live together and take care of each other.
- Family is poor. Father died from liver cancer in 2008. Mother died from lung cancer in 2010. Lives with grandmother who is old and weak. Neighbors help when they can.
- Lives with grandparents who are old. Family poor. Father has serious heart disease and can't work. House does not have electricity.
For each of these kids that we can send to university, we can bring an entire family out of poverty.
Exercise books
Exercise books are always the number one request from school principals. Each book has 96 lined pages and the kids use one for each subject. We gave sets of 10 exercise books to 1,793 students in 21 schools in 11 towns. The students are recommended by the teachers and principals, and our bookseller gift wraps each set at no cost to us. It's always fun to hand these to the kids, especially the little ones.
Our cost: $3,816, about $2.13 per student
School clothes
We've taken a new approach to school clothes. Instead of getting lists from the schools, Phuong and our three regular helpers look at how the kids are dressed when we give them exercise books and pick the kids that need clothes the most. We gave a set of school clothes – white shirt or blouse, dark blue pants – to 312 students.
Our cost: $1,172, about $3.75 per student
Sitting on the rice waiting for a ride
Food
We gave 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of rice to 564 people. 464 of them were referred to us by the Peoples Committees in six towns. 100 of them were blind or severely visually disabled from various towns in Mo Cay Bac district.
Early in December the price of rice was edging up almost daily, so we bought about nine tons and stored it in borrowed space. We then transferred it to 15 kilogram sacks as we made arrangements to distribute it in the various towns.
Our cost: $4,515.
Houses
Mom and the four girls in their old house
We had planned to build four houses on this trip, but after we had spent or committed all of our money, Phuong found two more families in desperate need of adequate shelter, so we asked the board of directors to send us enough money to build the two additional houses.
We've made a few design changes this year. One of the families is a family of six and we realized that our standard 4 x 8 meter (345 square feet) house just wasn't big enough, so we built our first larger house – 4 x 12 meters (517 square feet). We are also using new roofing material. We've changed from corrugated metal to fiberglass panels. The fiberglass is a little more expensive, and because it is heavier we need a few additional roof beams, so it increases our cost per house by about thirty dollars. However, we expect this roof to be good for 20 – 30 years, while the metal roofs need replacement in less than 10 years.
First day in the new house
The family of six is a dad and mom, 37 and 35, and four girls ages 15, 6, 4 and 2. Tien, the 15 year old, quit school a couple of years ago to care for her younger sisters so her mom could work. The dad does small deliveries by motorbike, and the mom does whatever work becomes available. Because they already had some building supplies, and because all of them helped with the labor (even the two year old carried a couple of bricks), our cost was only a little more than our standard house even though it is 50% larger.
One of the houses was for our long time rice dealer, Thanh. She, her husband and six and eight year old boys had been living in a house of about 100 square feet and which doubled as her store. The boys were literally jumping with joy when they learned about the new house.
Thanh's old house and store
Thanh's new house under construction
Another house was for a 41 year old single mom, Thuy, and her eight year old daughter, Luyen Ai. Their old house consisted of posts and a leaky roof – no walls.
Thuy and her daughter
Thuy's old house
Our average cost per house: $1,038.
Business Start-up
Coir spinning machines
We are going full speed ahead with this very popular program, which allows recipients to earn an income immediately. In addition, this work supports a local builder and his employees who make the machines for us.
Coir spinning machines ready for distribution
Delivering coir bundles by boat
Taking the spun coir to sell
Each recipient – most referred by the local Peoples Committees, some found by us – gets a coir (coconut husk fiber) spinning machine with an electric motor and 154 pounds of raw material to get them started. Why 154 pounds? Our new coir supplier packs it in 70 kilogram (154 pounds) bundles which makes for easy distribution.
We gave machines to 178 people, and already have requests for 200 more for our next trip.
Our cost: $9,514, a little over $50 to give a family a way to earn an income.
On the way to a new home
Cows
We bought cows for four families. Our cost per cow was $281, slightly less than we paid last year.
Follow up: Last year we gave a cow to a couple who were both chronically ill. He has died, and she was unable to take care of the cow alone, so she returned it to the Peoples Committee who gave it to another poor family.
Assistance to the Blind
We had planned to give them $3,000 to help start building a center in A Loui district. However, although they have land there, they are not yet ready to build. They asked if they could use the money to improve their center in Phu Vang district. We took a drive out there with them, took a look, and agreed.
