By Nguyen Van Hanh, General Manager, Dariu Foundation
Summer 2021 Newsletter

Yen Nhi, 15 years old, was born into a poor family. Nhi is the eldest of 5 children in the Mekong Delta province of Vinh Long, 180 km west of Ho Chi Minh city. Her mother has some serious health problems and she has been using a wheel-chair for a long time. The family’s income has largely depended on the noodle-for-breakfast business with monthly income of around $170. This could hardly help the family make both ends meet.

When Nhi was in 7th grade, she told her parents that she had no longer wanted to go to school because she thought that they could not afford her secondary and high-school education. Her parents had been undecided between paying her school fees or letting her leave school. Luckily, they finally decided that she had to continue her education, hoping that she could have a better future.

As compared to her peers, Nhi is a strong girl at her age. Every morning, she supported her father with simple tasks at the noodle-for-breakfast business from 6:00 am to around 10:00 am. Then her father rushed to his other jobs or to buy materials at the local market for the next day’s business. She helped prepare lunch for the family and then left for school at about noon, since her classes started at 12:30 and it took her about 20–25 minutes to walk there. Nhi had several good friends, so they often picked her up with their bicycles. But when they could not come, Nhi had to walk. It was a hard walk for her, especially during sunny and rainy days.

In 2020, Nhi was referred by her teacher who knew about Dariu’s bicycle-granting program. She was granted with a bicycle from Pedals for Progress and a little financial support from The Dariu Foundation. Thanks to P4P’s bicycle, Nhi could go to school much more easily. As a result, her GPA increased from 7.5 (before being granted a bicycle) to 9.2 and she was nominated as the best student of the school year 2020–2021 at her school. Nhi graduated from secondary school in May 2021, and will start high school in this September. Although the new high school is further from home than the secondary school, Nhi is determined to complete her high school education and expects to enter university as an IT student.

Yen Nhi is among the more than 2,000 beneficiaries who, since 2012, have been granted P4P used bikes by The Dariu Foundation. The cooperation between the two organizations has enabled hundreds of poor kids in Vietnam and Thailand to continue their education with ease and prepare for a better future.

By Hanh Nguyen
Spring 2020 Newsletter

Vy Nguyen, 15 years old, was born into a poor family of four children in Vinh Long province, 120 miles west of Ho Chi Minh city. The family had only one dilapidated bicycle, which Vy rode to school, 3 miles from home, with her younger brother every morning. The couple came back home at about 11 a.m. Then Vy took her two sisters to school in the afternoon, and rode them back after school. Vy took care of the four of them while her parents were working.

Vy’s mother, Nga, worked as a lottery ticket seller. Every day she walked to sell the tickets from dawn to dusk, hardly making ends meet. The family’s income depended largely on her daily sale of tickets because they had no land for agriculture. The family faced a financial crunch due to her father’s unstable employment. The pressure of household and educational expenses of four children was continuously increasing. Sometimes they had to borrow money from relatives or friends to meet their daily household needs.

In 2015, when she was selling lottery tickets at a coffee shop, Vy’s mother met the local loan officer of The Dariu Foundation, P4P’s partner in Vietnam. The loan officer suggested that she join our microfinance program for loans and savings. In 2015, Nga took her first loan of 250 Swiss francs (about $250 U.S.) to invest in raising chickens and pigs. She continued her job selling tickets until 2016, which enabled her to repay the loan in weekly installments. In 2016, as part of a Dariu Foundation program, Vy’s mother got a P4P/SP sewing machine. She started a part-time job with the sewing machine instead of selling lottery tickets full time, and her income improved slightly.

In 2018, Vy was granted a bicycle donated by P4P via The Dariu Foundation. She used the bike in the morning and her sisters used it in the afternoon. In the afternoon, she also helped her mother with sewing jobs. This September, she will move to high school, which is 5 miles from home. The bike will be a great help to her and her family.

Over the past five years, the used bikes and sewing machines donated by P4P via The Dariu Foundation have enabled hundreds of families to overcome their difficulties, improve their mobility, incomes, and quality of life. This year, the foundation continues its partnership with P4P to extend its services to our friends and partner in Thailand. “I am sincerely grateful to P4P for your generous support,” said Hanh Nguyen, General Manager of The Dariu Foundation in Vietnam.

Fall 2019 Newsletter

Chau Thi Huynh Huong was born in 2008 into a poor family in a remote rural village in the Mekong Delta, 200 km west of Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. With no land and no high school education, her parents are day-workers with no stable jobs or income.  The two old coconut trees by their dilapidated house are the only charming sights nearby. Her parents go to work from dusk to dawn to make ends meet. But at low season they cannot afford to pay all the living expenses of the family. Understanding her family’s circumstances, Huong often told her parents that she wanted to leave school to help them to earn income and to save the cost of her education, but they never agreed. Her parents told her that they had not had enough money to afford higher education for themselves, and that’s why they are so poor today.  

One day in 2017, when Huong was at school, she was told by her teacher that she needed to leave school immediately to go to the hospital because her mother had a serious motorcycle accident. After six months in the hospital, her mother was sent home but she needed a wheelchair to get around.

Recently, Huong has been doing all of the housework and taking care of her mother: changing her clothes, bathing her, and preparing her daily meals. Her father was offered a job as a security guard at a school nearby, earning a better income than before. 

Huong was on Dariu’s waiting list for a bicycle. The Dariu Foundation is the P4P partner agency in Vietnam. When the container of bikes arrived from Pedals for Progress in 2017, she was among the first girls to get a bike. Since the day she got her bike she got to school faster, saving time to help her family and attending class with better spirit. Her teacher has seen obvious changes in her attitude and feels happy about it. Besides, with the new bike, she can also run errands, such as buying poultry-feed, without waiting for her father to get home. 

The bicycle has played an important role in Huong’s and her family’s daily life, and also brought her more joy and motivation for going to school.

By Hanh Nguyen (General Manager of The Dariu Foundation, Vietnam)

The Dariu Foundation (TDF) was established in 2002 in Switzerland with its mission to empower low-income families with microfinance and education. Over the past 15 years, we have advanced the mission objectives by providing access to affordable and readily available microfinance services to thousands of rural low-income women, who are considered as unbankable, in Vietnam and Myanmar. Since 2007, we have provided more than 14,000 scholarships, as well as notebooks, school books, pens, uniforms, rice and bicycles to the disadvantaged and neediest students among the poorest families in the rural areas to prevent them from dropping out of schools at an early age.

We have had fruitful cooperation with international partners, of which Pedals for Progress (P4P) is the organization that has shipped us the most bikes. So far, three containers of bikes and sewing machines have been donated, benefiting around 1,500 families in the rural areas.

We are looking forward to a strong partnership so TDF and P4P can go further with comprehensive social projects in Vietnam.

Case Study in Vietnam

Binh Nguyen was born into a poor family in the mountainous district of Dong Nai province. He is now a secondary-school student, grade 6. One year ago, because of a kidney problem, his mom’s health went bad, and all housework was put on his shoulders and his dad’s. Besides doing all the housework, he got a part-time job as a fruit deliverer to earn some income for the family.

Every morning, Binh had to wake up early, preparing breakfast for his mom and two sisters before he took a four kilometer (2.5 mile) walk to school. When the kids were small, the dad took them to school, but now they have to walk. The family is too poor to afford a bicycle, so two kids had to walk by themselves. After school, Binh again walks home to help his dad harvest fruit, and to do the cooking and other housework. “I was sick and unable to do any job, even a little housework. So Binh has to do all the housework. He is a hard-working and good son. This year he was awarded the best-student prize. I am so proud of him,” said his mom.

In June 2018, he is among 500 students to receive scholarships of bikes donated by P4P via The Dariu Foundation in Vietnam. “I am very happy with my first bike. Now I can take my sister to school with me. And we no longer have to walk to school,” said Binh.

Working with the Dariu Foundation of Switzerland, Pedals for Progress shipped two containers to Vietnam in 2011 and 2012, totaling 1135 bicycles. The bicycles were distributed by the Vinh Long Union of Friendship Organization in the upper Mekong Delta. Vietnam has very strict import laws and we had not been able to get permission to bring in bikes since 2012.

We were recently contacted by the Dariu Foundation and were very happy to hear that the situation with the import of our bicycles has changed. The Dariu Foundation has been granted an import permit to bring four containers of bicycles into Vietnam in the next two years.

Spring 2013 InGear

Tran Thi Cam Nhung is a farmer living with her family in the Vinh Long province of southern Vietnam. Nhung and her husband, Nguyen Van Can, have two children, a five-year-old son and a thirteen-year-old daughter. Having little money, Nhung and her family have always had to work hard to make ends meet.

In 2009, Nhung joined the microfinance program of the Dariu Foundation, a partner with Pedals for Progress. The Dariu Foundation provides low-income families such as Nhung’s with microloans to assist them in the process of generating savings. The group also offers financial services poorer families would normally not have access to, such as help with fostering basic savings skills, investment advice, and guidance toward making sure money does not go wasted.

Nhung took out several loans for the purpose of investing in her farm, on which she grows rice and various vegetables and raises animals such as pigs and chickens. Her daughter, currently in seventh grade, spends half her days at school and half at home, helping her mother on the farm by tending the crops, feeding the animals, and collecting eggs.

Although Nhung and her family work hard to grow and maintain their farm, they do not have much to work with, only owning a small plot of land. As such, Nhung and her husband Can must work whatever other jobs they are able to find to support the family.

Can works as a mason, taking construction-site positions and working at brick manufacturing plants. Nhung, too, works various labor-intensive positions, some days spending long hours harvesting in rice fields, other days gutting and cleaning fish at local fish processing operations. With the two parents working so much, their daughter must take time off from school to—in addition to working on the farm—help with house chores and pick up and look after her younger brother once he is done with kindergarten for the day.

Unfortunately, a lack of transportation limited Nhung and Can’s ability to find work. They were only able to take jobs at nearby villages within walking distance and found the amount of work available in these places to be sparse. Though the entire family was pitching in, being able to travel no further than their immediately surrounding areas severely hindered whatever potential there might have been for them to create a stable income.

However, in September of 2012, out of hundreds of disadvantaged women, Tran Thi Cam Nhung was chosen to receive a used bicycle jointly donated by Pedals for Progress and the Dariu Foundation. Having the bicycle has since proven to be a great boon to the family’s livelihood, helping them in every facet of their daily routine.

Now Nhung is able to make more money from her farm by transporting eggs, vegetables, chickens, and pork to the local market for sale early every morning. Afterward, her husband will ride the bike to villages farther off where more masonry work is available. The couple’s income has doubled, raising their earnings from $5 to $10 per day on average—a considerable difference for a family of humble means in rural Vietnam. Furthermore, now that the couple can use their bicycle to find work more easily and make money more readily, they can gradually spend less time searching for employment and more time with their children.

This is just one story. Since 2011, the Dariu Foundation has been assisting numerous families throughout Vietnam, thus far distributing over one-thousand used bicycles, all donated by Pedals for Progress.

Partner: Dariu Foundation

Articles

Opening up a new program—the potential of making some substantial change for the good—is always very exciting.  Last May we loaded our first container to the Vinh Long Union of Friendship. ViUFO has three branches in the rural delta and other rural areas of south west Vietnam, Vung Liem and Tra On which are in Vinh Long province and Tan Phu which is in Dong Nai province. The program met with great success.

While opening a new program in a new country is exciting, having been successful and now loading the 2nd container is exhilarating.  On June 2, 2012, with the  financial backing of the Dariu Foundation, based in Switzerland,  we are loading our 2nd container for Vietnam. Although Vietnam is almost exactly on the other side of the world,  it actually happens to have the least expensive shipping costs of any of our overseas programs.

The successful entry into Vietnam of our container of bicycles is the accomplishment of the dedicated work of Nguyen Van Hanh of the Dariu Foundation. Hanh waded through a myriad of red tape and regulation to secure the import permits.  And now we are about to do it again!

A giant thank you to all of the donors of bicycles in late May,  your bikes will soon make a long journey to their new home. A similar thank you to all of the collectors,  who took the time to take off the pedals and turn the handle bars so that we have the bikes ready to go.

Dave