May 23rd, 2007
Dear friends and supporters of The Vietnam Project,
Every now and then a special opportunity presents itself to us, and one of them came up on the March/April trip.
One of the families for whom we built a house consists of a father, mother, 27 year old son and 15 and 16 year old daughters. They've been barely supporting themselves with occasional work that any of them could find. Unusually for Vietnam, all of them are illiterate. At first we heard that the youngest daughter was 8 years old and we arranged for Mr. Minh, the elementary school principal, to invite her to start school. Then we found out she was actually 15 and when we talked it over with her she said she was just too embarrassed to go to school with 6 year olds.
A couple of weeks later we got the idea of getting her a tutor. The local Womens Union representative was aware of the situation as she had originally referred the family to us. Her son, a recent university graduate, had not yet found work and was at home. He agreed to teach both the 15 and 16 year old girls to read and write, and they agreed to have him as their teacher. For $150,000 Viet Nam Dong (about $9 USD) per month, he will spend two hours a day with them five days a week. We gave him $90 for ten months and an additional $10 to buy a blackboard, books and writing material. Our total cost: $100. We will visit these girls on our next trip to see how they are doing.
Best wishes to all,
Marv
August 25th, 2006
Dear friends and supporters of The Vietnam Project,
Our work for this trip is completed and we will be returning to the U.S. in a few days.
We have had particular success with our business start-up program. For several years we have been looking for new ways to help people in rural areas start income producing ventures. The problem has been that unless someone lives on a well traveled road or trail, there is little commerce to be done other than growing things and raising animals.
This time we struck pay dirt. Ben Tre province is known for coconut trees and products, and one of these products is twine spun from the fiber in the husk. The twine is then sold to factories that make floor mats and other products for domestic use and for export.
The head of one of the hamlets in Tan Phu Tay town approached us with the idea of giving machines to spin coconut husk fiber into twine to 22 poor women. We immediately liked the idea because it is something that is done at home, produces immediate income, there is ample supply of material and a ready market for the twine.
Builder of spinning machines demonstrates his prototype
After doing some research, we hired a local metal smith to custom make 22 machines. Each has an electric motor and two sides which can be engaged separately or together, so it can be operated by one person or by two at the same time.
Each machine cost about $47.00 and additionally we bought 100 kilograms of fiber for each person to get them started. The fiber costs about 22 cents a kilo and the finished rolls of twine can be taken to town by bicycle and sold for about 37 cents a kilo. We have found a woman who has a motorized cart who will pick up the rolls of twine from each persons house, deliver it in quantity to an agent in a larger town, and get about 44 to 50 cents a kilo for it. She will charge about three cents a kilo and this arrangement will both provide work for her and get more profit for the women spinning the twine.
We don't yet know how much money can be earned doing this - it will depend mostly on how much each person produces - but we will check on our next trip. We are optimistic as the machines were eagerly received.
Our web site should be updated by early October with complete information and photos about this and the rest of our work on this trip, including successful open heart surgery on a four year old girl. Check it out at www.vietnamproject.org.
Warm regards to each of you,
Marv and Phuong
February 22, 2006
Dear Friends and supporters of The Vietnam Project,
Another trip is coming to a close and we have started a new project – providing clean and safe water for drinking and cooking.
Much of our work is done in the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre, which is bordered by the South China Sea. Most of the province is laced with canals, sometimes just a few meters apart, which are used for irrigation and transportation. The canals fill and empty twice a day with the tides. In the rainy season the water quality is poor, and in the dry season with nothing to wash it out it is even worse. This is the only source of water for some people, so during the dry season they don’t have clean water available. This results in a high incidence of sickness, mostly intestinal disorders, that keep kids out of school and parents away from work. Some people collect rainwater in earthenware jars during the monsoon season, but they cost about $5 so poor families might have only one or two small ones, or none at all.
Because of the low elevation and the salty and dirty water in the canals, wells either can’t be dug or they have to be so deep that they are prohibitively expensive. After considering all the alternatives, we decided to build 2500 liter concrete tanks to collect rain water during the monsoon. Each tank will provide clean water for a small family during the dry season. We are building them for eight families recommended to us by the Peoples Committees in the towns of Tan Phu Tay and Thanh An. The Peoples Committees in both towns expressed their appreciation to us for addressing this serious problem. Each tank costs about $53.
Our “heart kid” for this trip is five year old Pham Tan Loc. Surgery was successfully done on February 12th and Loc is recovering well in hospital. Phuong and I met Loc and his parents in Saigon when they were on the way to the hospital. The parents were both happy and scared, and expressed their deep gratitude to each of you for giving their son a chance to live.
Warm regards to all,
Marv
September 18, 2005
Dear friends and supporters of The Vietnam Project,
Vietnam is an exporter of labor, mostly to wealthier Asian countries. Vietnamese workers are valued for their hard work and the quality goods they produce. The idea is that a foreign company can get labor cheaper than it would have to pay its own workers, and the Vietnamese worker can earn more money than working at home.
It works like this. A Vietnamese person, usually young, contracts with a labor exporter to work in another country for two or three years. The labor exporter contracts with a foreign company to provide workers. A deposit is made by the worker to the labor exporter, visas and transportation are arranged, and training is arranged if the worker does not have the required skills. The worker then goes to the other country to work and sends most of the income home to help the family.
This brings us to our present story – about Miss Thuy’s family. Many of you are already familiar with her because her story is in our brochure and on our web site. In March of 2000, we gave her a grant of $140 to start a food stall, and she ran this business successfully until last year. We visit her from time to time to see how her family is doing, and there have been a lot of changes in the last year and a half. Her older daughter, now 21, is married and has a 10 month old boy. Her daughter works in a restaurant and her son-in-law makes paper houses, furnishings, cars, clothing and so on to be burned at funerals and death anniversaries to meet the needs of the ancestors. Her son, Vu, has just finished grade 11, and her youngest daughter finished grade nine, dropped out of school and is working in a restaurant for about a dollar a day to help with the family income. All six of them sleep in one room. The house is just a room for living and sleeping, and a kitchen, but is in better condition than when we last visited. The floor in the main room, formerly dirt, has been tiled. There is a television and DVD player, brought by the new son-in-law, and a fan.
We found that Vu was planning to quit school and go to Malaysia on a labor contract. We advised him to continue school for the next year, graduate from high school, and we would then help him with some vocational training. Additionally, there have been abuses in the labor contracting business that concerned us. Living conditions have not always been as good as promised and pay has sometimes been lower than promised.
The next day, Phuong and I realized that our job is to give people the means to achieve their goals, not to tell them what their goals should be. We went back to their house to talk this over with them and found that in fact the decision had already been made and they were just trying to figure out how to get the money for the deposit. They needed $17,000,000 Viet Nam Dong, about $1,072 US. Because they are officially classified as poor, and having a family member work in a foreign country for a few years is a way out of poverty, the government lent them $10,000,000 VND at no interest to be paid back from Vu’s income. They had managed to borrow another $2,000,000 VND. This left a shortage of $5,000,000 VND, about $315 US, which we gave them.
If everything works out, Vu will go to Malaysia and work in a clothing factory for three years. Housing will be provided, probably a dormitory, and he will be paid $200 per month, a substantial amount for someone coming from a country where the per capita income is about $400 per year. He will have to buy his own food, and he thinks he will be able to send his family about $125 per month. The money will be used to enlarge their house and improve their living conditions.
We will visit them again on our next trip in January/February 2006 to see how they are doing.
Thank you all for your support which makes it possible for us to help families like this one.
Marv
July 4, 2004
Dear friends and supporters of The Vietnam Project,
Another successful and gratifying trip is coming to an end and $6000 of your contributions has been used to buy school supplies and textbooks for primary and secondary school students, to provide vocational training to young adults, to help poor families to earn an income, to provide housing and to buy rice for people who barely have enough to eat. As always, this has been done with no expense to The Vietnam Project.
Do Hong Duc, our board member in Saigon, made the arrangements to help seven poor students from throughout the country attend attend vocational training courses at a well known vocational training school in Saigon. He obtained referrals to ten students from a newspaper reporter. He then interviewed the students' teachers and then the students themselves and selected seven of them. In a small ceremony at the school, we gave each of them $1,000,000 Viet Nam Dong ($64), about half the annual tuition. One of the students, a young woman on the edge of tears, gave a brief speech thanking us for helping her with her education so she could have a better life for herself and her parents. These students are attending two and three year courses in electronics or informatics and all graduates of this school find work. If we are able to continue this program next year, we will pay tuition directly to the school.
In the Mekong Delta, we've continued our business start-up program by buying cows for nine families to raise, breed and sell for profit. One of these families consists of a father, mother and unusually, only one child, a daughter.
When we entered their house to meet them and check on their cirCumstances, the girl jumped off the table she was playing on, ran over to Phuong, jumped on her lap and started hugging and kissing her with grunts and squeals of delight. She has all the attributes of the Cutest, friendliest, most delightful and affectionate three year old we've ever seen, except for one thing. She is fourteen and will be like this for the rest of her life. She will never go to school or be able to take care of herself in any way. This is the main reason this family is in diffiCult cirCumstances. The mom and dad earn a small income by doing casual labor when available, but only one of them can work at a time because their daughter requires full time care. In those instances when both parents must be out, the daughter is tied to a leash in the house so she won't go out and injure herself or drown in the canal where she likes to play. Our donation of a cow will allow one parent to be home full time.
We have heard lots of "thank yous," but it is not said as often here as in our society. Traditional Vietnamese wonder why we thank people who are lucky enough to have the circumstances and opportunity to help others, and they often accept our help with a gentle acknowledgement. We are very fortunate to be able to do this work, and a share of our pleasure belongs to each of you.
Thank you for your interest and support.
Marv
February 15, 2004
Dear Friends of The Vietnam Project,
Phuong and I have just returned from two months in Vietnam. Thanks to your generosity we were able to expand our educational assistance and business startup programs in the Mekong Delta, continue assistance to four families in Hue, provide direct food aid to 35 people who don't have enough to eat, and build our first compassion house. We provided $5,954 in aid and in all cases we or our volunteer assistants in Vietnam directly purchased and distributed the goods to our recipients with no third party intermediaries.
While it is you, our supporters, who make this all possible, Phuong and I get to see these kids smile when we give them a gift wrapped package of books. We get the thanks of adults when we give them a way to produce some income and we get lunch prepared for us by grateful teachers whose students we have helped. I really don't know how to give you a sense of how much we can do with what to us seems very little other than to tell you about some of the people we helped on this trip and show you some pictures.
Educational Assistance
We added four new schools this trip and are now helping students in two middle schools and four elementary schools in four towns in Ben Tre province. These kids want to be in school but in many cases drop out simply because they can't afford to buy pens and paper, much less textbooks. We ask the principal of each school to give us a list of their neediest students and to tell us what their most urgent needs are. We then buy exercise books, pens, textbooks and in some cases school clothes and give them to each student individually. In some cases, we have had students who quit school come back because of our assistance.
Business Startup
We assisted sixteen families in three towns in starting income producing small businesses. As most of our recipients live in rural areas we usually buy animals, a cow or pigs, for them to raise and sell. Our cost is less than $200 per family. One of our recipients this time was Miss Bui Thi Be, in the town of Khanh Thanh Tan. She is 52, abandoned by her husband and her adult children do not help her. She was barely earning enough to buy food. We gave her $96 to expand and buy inventory for her small store. While we waited, she bought a new display case as well as food, candy, cigarettes and other sundries for resale. Phuong and I had the pleasure of being the first Customers of her expanded business.
Misfortune has again struck one of our recipient families. We previously bought two pigs for Miss Be Tu to raise and when we arrived this time she had a sow and seven piglets. In December, while we were there, her 22 year old son was killed in a motorbike accident. The seven piglets were immediately sold to pay hospital expenses. In addition to emotional loss, this is economic disaster for a rural Vietnamese family. Miss Be Tu is in her 50's. She had one son and has one daughter. Her son was helping support her and could have brought a daughter-in-law into the family. Her daughter, now in high school, will likely go to her husband's family if she marries. Miss Be Tu still has the sow and we deposited $90 with the animal food distributor so she can continue to raise pigs for income.
Direct Food Aid
We purchased and distributed 20 kilograms of rice to each of 35 people in three towns. All recipients are recommended by the local Peoples Committee. They are mostly women, usually old, and usually live alone or with school age nieces, nephews or grandchildren in their care. They are all extremely poor, barely have enough to eat, and are grateful for our help.
Compassion House
Our first venture into helping those who have inadequate housing has been successfully completed. This is known as a Compassion House in Vietnam and is a popular program at various levels of government when they they have money for it. However, Vietnamese government agencies usually build these houses for war heroes, heroic mothers (those who have lost a child in war), disabled veterans and widows of veterans. This leaves an unserved population and gives us an opportunity to fill our committment to help those who have no other resources available to them.
Our recipient family was referred by the Peoples Committee in Phuoc My Trung. Mr. Tran Van Cuong, 36, is head of the family. His wife died from illness. He supports his mother, 73, and his two children ages 9 and 12 who are both in school. His main source of income is field labor which is not always available. He is learning to do construction, but as he is just an apprentice earns less than $1.50 a day, again only when work is available.
Phuong's brother volunteered to manage the project. He arranged the labor ($64) and directly purchased or obtained receipts for all the material. First, the existing house was disassembled. A new 32 square meter house was built with concrete stem walls, tile floors (previously dirt), a brick front wall with door and 
window, and concrete posts with wood framing and coconut wood planks for the other three walls. The inside was "wallpapered" in the local fashion with newspaper and calendars. Material from the old house was reassembled as an attachment to the new house. Our total cost for this house was $385 and we already have one picked out for our next trip.
I've said this before but I want to tell you again. Because of you, our friends and supporters, the quality of life for our recipients is being significantly changed for the better. On behalf of the Board of Directors, our heartfelt thanks for making it possible for us to do this work.
Marv
May 26, 2003
Hi everyone,
Some of you will remember that when we started The Vietnam Project I wanted to have an endowment fund. I liked the community foundation model where contributions were invested and earnings were used to fund programs. I was quickly convinced that we were too small to do this and needed all of our contributions for Current programs.
I've now realized that we do have an endowment of sorts - our educational assistance program. Because of our help, many of these children will stay in school, will get better jobs, and they and their families will have significantly better lives.
This year we have been very fortunate to be able to expand our program.
Mr. Minh, the principal at the Phuoc My Trung elementary school, had prepared a list of 164 poor students attending school from grades K - 5. We bought exercise books, pens and a complete set of textbooks for the next school year for all of them. This means that all the poor elementary school students, grades 1 - 5, as well as those starting grade 6, the first year of middle school, will have adequate school supplies and books for next year. Like last time, the books and supplies were delivered to each student individually in a ceremony at the school, including speeches by Mr. Minhand Phuong. The youngest children had their parents there to carry their new books home and some of the parents cried. They said that no one had ever done anything like this for their children. Most of the books will be recycled for the next few years so we should be able to address additional needs.
Phuong and I also met with Mr. Huu, principal of the middle school. Thirty five students have dropped out this year because they can't afford school supplies and don't have books. We have purchased notebooks and pens for them, as well as for 100 additional students who Mr. Huu says are in danger of dropping out, and Mr. Huu and the teachers will personally invite each of those who has dropped out to return to school. Next year perhaps we can buy textbooks for grades 7, 8 and 9, the rest of the middle school, or at least start with grade 7.
Mr. Minh and Mr. Huu, as well as Miss Hong, the principal of the preschool, invited Phuong and I for lunch at the school on Sunday, and when we arrived we were surprised to find that it was a sit down lunch for about twenty people. Along with the principals were some of the teachers and admin staff and the director of the local peoples' committee. Many thanks were offered and the food was delicious. Vietnamese have a great sense of humor and there was a lot of joking around, including hoping that they will thank us many times again. They are dedicated educators and teachers working with almost nothing, and our help is very, very appreciated.
Warm regards to all,
Marv
