Clinging to hope

“She’s been to school with me every day for nearly three years,” says Quynh. “And she always reminds me to work hard to deserve my parents’ support.”

Like a ship, the 12-year-old’s bicycle is female and has been her loyal companion to and from school ever since her father sold a litter of piglets to buy it as a reward for her outstanding results in grade three.

Quynh was born to a poor farming family in the mountains of Van Yen district in northern Vietnam. Her younger sister, Lan, is four and in kindergarten. Their father, 39-year-old Trong, left school in grade nine, as did their mother, Ngoc.

The 32-year-old mother says: “My parents could only afford school up to that point. From then on, I stayed at home to help in the fields before starting a family of my own five years later.”

World Vision began working with Quynh’s community nine years ago, when she was three years old. Farming was her parents’ only livelihood, but the couple’s 1,000-square-metre field failed to produce enough rice for the then three-strong family.

Facing hunger in the long months between harvests, her parents had to work as day labourers loading acacia trees onto trucks or stripping the bark from cinnamon trees to afford rice to eat.

“Quynh was old enough to go to kindergarten like other children,” Ngoc recalls, “but instead she just clung to me all day.”

Change came when the parents joined their village’s World Vision-established livelihood group, allowing them to learn about raising animals to boost their household income. Trong also signed up for the local veterinary group to access care for his future livestock.

From the one piglet World Vision gave the family four years ago, the couple can now make a living by rearing pigs, earning around 15 million dong (700 US dollars) a year.

Quynh’s mother has also joined the local nutrition club, which hosts monthly meetings and provides home visits for mothers and other caregivers to learn and share information about nutrition and child care.

As a member of the club, Ngoc has received chickens to improve her children’s nutrition and provide another source of income by selling eggs and the birds. The mother now has 15 egg-laying hens.

Through the livelihood group, the parents have received support to grow maize to feed their pigs and chickens, with their once unproductive land now producing an average of one metric ton of maize and 1.5 metric tons of rice each year.

Thanks to their savings from raising livestock and growing acacia trees for paper production, Quynh’s parents rebuilt their rickety wooden shack two years ago, replacing it with a concrete-walled house boasting a designated study corner for Quynh.

A decade ago, the wooden home relied on a leaky roof of palm leaves, meaning the family were drenched in their beds whenever it rained heavily at night.

Promised a new desk when her mother sells a brood of chickens, the pupil says: “I like my old wooden desk anyway because I’ve done my homework on it since grade one.”

“I still have a drawing I drew to thank my Japanese sponsor,” she adds. “My village, family and friends have all changed because of such support.”

The drawing is of a bright morning in her village, with two rows of red-tiled houses, green trees and a golden stack of straw, while farmers hurry to the fields with a buffalo and two birds fly overhead. No children appear.

“There aren’t any children in my picture because they’re all in school,” Quynh explains. “I love school because I can make friends and learn there. I want to be a teacher in my village.”

“My parents told me every pig or hen is a piggy bank for us and my education,” she continues. “World Vision gave them a start and then they worked hard to afford food, clothes and school fees for us.”

The girl who clung to her mother nine years ago is now the monitor of her class, as she was for the last three years of primary school before moving to middle school. The sixth grader has also been chosen for the core team at her school’s children’s club, set up by World Vision.

Smiling, she says: “I never want to break the promise I made to myself when I first took my bike from my dad’s hands.”

More about Quynh:

Quynh and her classmates are with their school vegetables garden, where they can practice their farming skills weekly for the subject of Biology and plant vegetables for meals.

Quynh enjoys helping her mother, Ngoc, to cook lunch at their kitchen. The cooker runs with biogas from the biogas system which her father built next to their pigsty. From rearing pigs, her parents are able not only to earn more family income, but also to take full advantage of available firing source.

Quynh and her sister help their mother to prepare food for their pigs and chickens. Her mother is chopping a banana trunk to cook mash for the pigs while Quynh is pitting maize.