By Nguyen Hanh
Fall 2018 InGear
Nhi Cao, 10 years old, was born into a poor family with five children in a village in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The family lives in a dilapidated house that was built in 2008 with the help of generous donors. Her father, 48 years old, has been working in construction for more than ten years, and can make only irregular visits home from his far-away construction sites. Her mother, 42 years old, earns income for the family with all kinds of work, including selling lottery tickets. Though she is the youngest child, Nhi helps her mother with the house work, and earns a little income by knitting, feeding chickens, and harvesting vegetables after school.
Two of Nhi’s sisters are already out of school after they completed their secondary education, but are still struggling with finding vocational training programs. Most of the time, Nhi and her sister and brother walked more than 2 miles to school while her mother also walked around 25 miles per day selling lottery tickets, earning $10–$15. Nhi’s mom usually works from dawn to dusk but is still unable to meet the family’s expenses. In early 2018 the mother was provided with a micro-loan from The Dariu Foundation (TDF) to invest in raising 100 chickens with the hope of earning some profit and enabling her to afford a new bike by the end of the year.
In June 2018, The Dariu Foundation received a container of bikes from Pedals for Progress (P4P) and Nhi was among the eligible recipients. After TDF refurbished the bike, they sold it to Nhi in June 2018. TDF also used some spare parts from the P4P container to fix Nhi’s old bike.
Nhi and her brother share the P4P bike to ride to school in the morning. The third child uses the repaired bike to ride to school in the afternoon. Nhi’s mother uses the old bike in the morning and the P4P bike in the afternoon, and as a result has nearly doubled her income from her lottery ticket sales.
At the end of August, her mother got a second loan of $400 from Dariu, which, together with the profit of $230 from selling the chickens, she invested in raising a cow. She expects that she could earn $800 from this business by end of 2019, along with an annual profit of around $2,400 from selling lottery tickets. This money should help her repair the house and invest in her children’s education.
In July 2018, Nhi joined Dariu’s coding skill training program (Scratch) for secondary students. She completed a project at the end of the training course, and entered her project in Dariu’s competition among primary students. Unexpectedly, Nhi was among the top ten project winners of Dariu Scratch Summer Camp 2018.
Nhi studies hard and is one of the best students in the class. “Thank you Dariu for giving me such a beautiful and good bicycle. It not only helps me to ride to school but also my mom in her business,” said Nhi. Her mother explained, “I don’t have to use the broken old bike all the time. I am very grateful. I hope in the future my children can continue their education and that Nhi can achieve her dream of becoming a doctor”.