Education

The Challenge

Inequality is on a sharp incline and poverty is endemic

The past decade has seen towering skyscrapers and glittering metropoleis spring up across Vietnam’s urban centers. These are the signs of a country growing in prosperity. But Vietnam’s newfound wealth is far from being evenly distributed. Growth has been slow to come to Vietnam’s rural and mountainous areas. Inequality is on a sharp incline, and poverty is endemic. While paved roads and posh shopping districts are becoming the norm in some cities, other areas lack even the most basic of infrastructure, including schools. 43% of the country, or roughly 34 million people, most of whom are based in rural zones, still live on less than $2 a day. While the cities grow, the people see their opportunities shrinking.

The Solution

Creating a warm safe environment where students can thrive

Education is a proven factor in improving quality of life. Education uplifts, inspires, and motivates. Education provides the knowledge and skills needed to advance in life, and education forms the foundation of understanding one needs to effectively engage with the world. VNHELP’s education programs are guided by two beliefs: start them young and help them through the end. We’ve developed our school construction, scholarship and vocational programs to carry out these beliefs.

A school for my village

It’s hard to obtain an education when there’s no school in sight. While Vietnam now boasts a 95% enrollment rate for primary education, 5%of children out of school is still too an uncomfortable a number to bear. Many rural and mountain villages have no school within walking distance. Where there are schools, facilities tend to be dilapidated and distracting to the learning environment.

To get the classroom to the kids, our on-going school construction project builds primary and kindergarten schools in impoverished communities. We work with locals to make sure that they can maintain the schools after our construction crews leave.

In an initiative to continually improve our programs, we’ve also adopted new measures to incentivize beneficiary communities to maintain the schools grounds for years to come. We keep in contact with the communities, and if they can prove to us that they’ve kept the school and students’ best interest in mind, we help them with further funding needs, like book purchases and prizes for the students.

The Nguyen Truong Scholarship Program

According to AusAid, just one-quarter of Vietnamese students go on to pursue higher education. While many young Vietnamese students recognize the need to obtain a tertiary degree, many lack the financial means to do so. We believe that the ability to get a college education should not be dependent on one’s ability to pay, so we provide one-year and four-year scholarships to university students from impoverished backgrounds. We work directly with several Vietnamese universities to screen scholarship candidates and follow their success.

Vocational Training

Over 100,000 people develop cataracts in Vietnam each year. Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in Vietnam and many who develop cataracts are affected in both their eyes. Although treatable, cataract surgeries can cost around $350 – $400 per procedure, a price too high for many poor patients. To help people restore their site, our Vision for the Poor program teams up with well-qualified foreign and Vietnamese doctors to perform free surgeries and post-op care for cataract patients. If patients are close enough to a provincial hospital to receive surgery, we transport them for free to the hospital. If not, we bring our mobile clinic to them.