My sponsors’ love and care fertilised my hope

Twenty-two-year-old Ating Ai graduated from a forestry programme from Quang Nam Forestry College in central Vietnam. With the graduation from this post-secondary institution, he hopes to find a job in his homeland where mountains and hills cover the whole area.

“I would have become illiterate if my parents were not encouraged by teachers to send me to school when World Vision came to my village,” he says. “At that point, I was nine. Only then I entered Grade 1. I started my first steps to school while other children of the same age were already at Grade 4. They were nearly finished their five years of primary education.”

Ai was one of the first World Vision sponsored children through the Hien Area Development Programme (ADP) back in 1999. He was born as the last child into a poor family from the Co-tu ethnic minority in Dong Giang district, in the central province of Quang Nam. He has three older sisters. None of them finished Grade 2.

“Hunger urged my parents to put food before their children’s education. We faced exhaustedly three or four hungry months a year. So they often took me along with them to their farm plots on hills from dawn till dusk,” he recalls. “They planted mostly cassava. Cassava and salt were common for our two meals a day. They cut trees in deep forests and burned them to plant more upland rice. All hit-or-miss crops depend on rainfall. Unintentionally, they destroyed their forests and caused soil erosion. My family was caught again in a vicious cycle of poverty for years.”

“During harvest, my father set a makeshift tent with some nylon sheets right at our family’s mountain field. The field is about ‘several bush-hook throws’ [as my father often said] that means about one-hour walk from our home,” he adds. “Then the whole family stayed there for one or two weeks to gather the possible food crop that grew barely there. We had meat for our meals only when some wild animal fell into my father’s trap.”

Ai still remembers how his family’s life changed for the better when World Vision came to his village.

“My parents were then equipped with skills and knowledge to improve their living conditions. They started to receive trainings on planting wet-rice and animal husbandry,” he says. “After trainings, they were provided with fertilisers, wet-rice seeds and fruit-tree seedlings so they were able to yield more food. Raising cows and planting acacia trees for paper chips have brought more income for my parents’ bigger expenditures and my schooling.”

World Vision also supported villagers in Ai’s community to set up a traditional community house so they could conduct community meetings and traditional festivals after every harvest.

“Our traditional communal house is just some steps from my home. It has more space for children to play group games,” he says. “When villagers were finishing the house, I helped to carve and colour designs on its wooden beams. My favourite subject at school was arts, so it helped me a lot to give a helping hand in decorating the house.”

Playing with marbles was his favourite game when he was a child. “My parents were so poor that they could not buy me some marbles. I still remember I kept the little balls of colourful glass, which I won from my friends, in a small tin can then hid it on my family’s ancestral altar. None of children would dare to reach [them] there.”

However, his most vivid memory is of being rewarded a certificate of merit for his school results in Grade One.

“I run home fast to show to my parents my first year-end achievement. I was proud of that I was able to do well in school like other children in my village. The school was just a five-minute run from my home. But it took my parents three years late to send me there,” he says. “I still remember how joyful I was when I first came to my first class although most of my classmates were several years younger than I. Joy of going to school helped us to consider ourselves equals.”

The former sponsored child still keeps the first letter he received from his sponsor and her family.

“It was a greeting card for my birthday. The greeting card has been along with me since the day I received it,” he says. “I still remember the strange joy when, for the first time in my life, I held in my hands such a beautiful greeting card with my full name and the names of my sponsor, her husband and her two sons. My Australian sponsor’s family remembered and wished me a happy birthday, which I have never celebrated.”

“I hadn’t received any letters before. My sponsor often asked me about my family and education. I often wrote them about our family, village, friends and school,” he adds.

Ai’s mother died of liver cancer when he was 14 and in Grade 6. Three years after, his father died of the same disease while he was at Grade 9. He, however, did not want to leave his education halfway. His eldest sister, who is 20 years older than he, replaced his parents to support him to keep on his higher education.

“When I was a young child, I only dreamed to become a soldier as the ones keeping guard on high hills. Sometimes, they also came to help our villagers to harvest rice or rebuild their thatched-roof houses collapsed by storms. I still keep those caring images in my heart,” he shares.

“Now I am a graduate from the Forestry College. I hope to find a job soon as a forest ranger to protect forestry and the natural environment in the place where I was born and grew up with significant changes. Without World Vision’s support to my family and myself, I could hardly complete my higher education,” he says.

“I wish many sponsors will join World Vision to support needy children so they are able to change their lives for the better, then, become helpful persons for their own communities. I learned from my parents’ farm land that plants grow strong from fertile soil. I experienced through my life that my sponsors’ love and care fertilised my hope to shoot up for brighter future,” Ai says.