Nguyen Thi Duyen


18-year-old Nguyen Thi Duyen has two sisters, Nguyen Thi Ouyen, 20 and Nguyen Thi Hien, 15, all three of them are seriously contemplating dropping out of school and getting a job to help with the family expenses even though they have excellent grades in school.

Both parents are farmers but recently their 39-year-old mother has become too ill to work, she is suffering from heart disease, and has problems with her kidneys and liver. The family spends about $50 a month on medical bills for their mother. Desperate to make ends meet, they have sold everything they own in the house and even borrowed about $2200 to foot the medical bills.

The family’s income based on rice crops is nowhere near enough to sustain the mother’s heavy medical bills, even though the Duyen and Hien are both on the Humanitarian Services for Children of Vietnam (HSCV) educational scholarship.

The family has been receiving assistance from HSCV for the past 4 years, it is because of the educational scholarships that the girls are able to continue studying and it is also because of the Rice Distribution programme that the family can devote all their family income to paying the mother’s medical bills.

Duyen is waiting for a sponsor so that she can continue her education through the Educational Post High School Scholarship while her sister Hien will continue benefit from the educational scholarship to finish her high school education. But without sponsorship the family will be unable to be a part of the Rice Distribution programme.

• The cost to sponsor a child for an Educational Post High School Scholarship is $400 per year.
• The cost to sponsor a family for a year’s worth of Rice Distribution is $320.
• The cost to sponsor a child for an educational scholarship is $80 per year.