In 2015, 209 women in Hop Hoa Village, Tam Duong District, Vinh Phuc Province took out small loans from VNHELP’s micro-finance program. Check out some successful case stories and please join us to make a change for poor women in Vietnam.

A restaurant sponsored by VNHELP was opened at the Kien Giang Vocational College in 03/2014 to serve students from low-income family. The restaurant opens 5 days a week. Each day it serves 300 meals and students pay only 2,000 VND (about 10 cents) for a meal. See photos here.

Last week, we reported on the wrap-up of our second cycle of vocational training. As we await the final results of the students’ job placements, we took time to review how the program is going and how we can improve it.

During these discussions, our volunteer project coordinators shared a story about one very special student named Truong Van Ni.

We’d like to share his inspiring story with you today too.

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During the course of participating in our Sponsor a Child program, many sponsors form a special bond to the children they support. Many even ask us if they can adopt the child, to give him or her a new life and formally make the child part of the family. VNHELP is not an adoption agency, so we can’t advise on the matter, but in recent years, we’ve often had to play the bearer of bad news. Since 2008, U.S.-Vietnam adoption has been banned due to allegations of baby-selling and kidnapping for profit following  U.S. investigations.

Yes, it pained us to think that there were people who could engage in a form of child trafficking for their own monetary gain. And it also pained us to see the crestfallen faces on sponsors when their hopes of forming or adding to their family was immediately quashed.

But now there may be some silver lining. According to the Associated Press, “Vietnam and the United States are close to an agreement allowing Americans to adopt Vietnamese children again.”

US Senators and adoption lobby groups have been urging the Vietnamese government to develop tighter regulations and monitoring of adoptions to avoid profiteering. Speaking from Hanoi, U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana, said, “The government of Vietnam seems to be willing to restart, and there are just some final details to be worked out with the government of the United States…We hope that it will be in the near future.”

It’s impossible to tell what “near future” actually means; it could be six months from now, a year, three years or later. But we will do our best to keep you updated.

Meanwhile, an agreement to resume adoptions between Vietnam and Ireland was signed in September last year, ending the adoption ban enacted in 2009.

Source: Associated Press (via ABC News)

To date, VNHELP has finished 6 motorbike training courses. More than 200 youths have completed our  training and are able to make a living by providing the motorbike repair service. View the project highlights on our blog! Part I | Part II