The Gift of Sponsorship is Life-Changing

“I dream to become a nurse in my community to provide care to children and people in my community so they may have good health and enjoy life,” says twenty-year-old Hang. She has just completed her first year of the three-year nursing studies program. “My father died of brain cancer at 43 years old. At that time, I started to move to Grade 10, the first year of high school. Nobody in my family, even him, knew about his fatal disease before we rushed him to the district hospital for emergency aid. My father’s death at home with improper care has fostered all the more my dream,” she reveals. Hang was the last child in a poor farming family with three children in Phu Cu district, Hung Yen province, Vietnam. “My family lived from hand to mouth when I was a small child. I grew up in a hut with thatched roof and earthen walls near a river. It was just enough space for an about-one-square-meter dining-table and two bamboo beds, one for my parents and one for me and my two siblings. After dinner, we used to scramble to the dining-table for the best seat to do some homework. Our kitchen was a wind-shaken shack. And our latrine was just two slippery logs perched on an opened pit with flies,” the second-year nursing student recalls. “By that time, my parents planted some wet-rice and fished the river with their small boat to earn a livelihood. My father sometimes trapped birds and caught frogs in rice-fields and sold them for more rice and food for the whole family,” she continues. “Our farmland was almost all low-lying fields, flooded in rainy season. My elder sister, brother and I used to help my parents to tend ducks along a river in our village. Rain or shine, we splashed through the marshy fields- more often than going to school. Whenever the wet-rice harvest was over, we often drove the ducks into those fields so they could glean the remained paddy rice,” she says, pulling her collar high as if the cold in the old days still sneaks into her clothing. “I still remember we sometimes woke-up with rare breakfasts of cold rice. Though cold, it was better than nothing. Otherwise, hunger kept us away from school. So, my parents put aside for us some rice with fish sauce and boiled sweet-potato leaves from their yesterday dinner before going to their farmland at cock-crow. I often wondered how they were able to start a long farming day with an empty stomach,” she adds. Hang’s family changed the day World Vision came to their community. At that time she was six and studied at Grade 1. “Since then, my siblings and I made our pace stronger and eager to school, but not to marshy fields with tenacious and hungry leeches. I still remember how glad we were when we went to school, properly dressed with school uniforms and school bags like other friends. Village teachers and community collaborators as World Vision’s volunteers visited my parents more often to talk about my siblings’ education and our family’s livelihood,” the student relates. “Now we have enough rice to eat with three meals for the whole family,” Hang beams, not forgetting the former dearth particularly between two crops when she was young. “Our life is better than before, quite different like night and day. My parents accumulated what they have from their farming land and animal husbandry to build our new and spacious house with three rooms, a decent kitchen and a proper latrine.” Today the family’s 1,000-square-meter field is able to produce 1,800 kgs of rice with two crops per year. Hang’s parents participated in farmers’ groups and learnt how to improve rice cultivation to ensure their main food. Lacking of cultivation land, they received training on planting fruit trees, rearing pigs and tortoises for meat to raise their additional income. Simultaneously, other community members get access to a self-managed credit and saving scheme for their household economic improvement. Currently, Hang’s mother is a member of the village development board in her community. She heads a farmers’ club rearing tortoises as a non-farm business in her community. “On an average, my mother is now able to earn a year about 10 million dongs (usd470) from rearing pigs, 12 million dong (usd570) from her litchi orchard and 42 million dong (usd2,000) from her tortoise ponds. Such income she did not dare to dream more than twelve years ago, before World Vision worked in our community,” the student reveals. “If World Vision did not come to our community, it would be hard for my family to have what we have today. My parents would not be able to afford schooling for me and my siblings. The agricultural training they received allowed them to improve their livelihood with stable income. As for me, I am now nearing my dream. I have one more year to graduate from the provincial health college as a nurse like my Australian sponsor,” the twenty-year-old nursing student says. “To encourage someone who sponsors a child, I would say World Vision’s Sponsorship put a life change into our hands. And it is always a great joy to help a needy child and family to reach a dream as my sponsor wrote to me and my parents,” she shares.