The day began with us picking up the folks at the Children of Vietnam organization and heading to the Hoa Vang district. Stopping at a community center, we were met with eager children awaiting new bikes and calculators (a total of 20 each). A representative with DOLISA, who serves as a representative for the children in the district, and the vice chairman in the district, were present to greet ROW and the Children of Vietnam (COV) representatives.
The executive director of COV told the students, “The new calculators will help improve your studies and the new bikes will shorten your transportation to school and help you be able to take your grandmothers to the market.”
In the Hoa Vang district, there are an estimated 10,000 poor children. Simple tools such as a bike and a calculator can set up a child to go a long way in their studies.
Next stop was at a rural home in the Hoa Vang district where ROW will soon build a new home for a struggling family. The family, which used to consist of five members, is now down to just a young mother and her 10-year-old son living in a tiny house that consists of a hard packed dirt floor, one make-shift bed, table, an outside covered area for doing dishes and clothes and a small area out back to cook. This family will soon receive a new home, a bike for the mother’s son and a chair to make the boy’s studying a bit easier as he sits at the table.
A highlight of today was stopping at a kindergarten that COV constructed in 2007. ROW will use this building as an model when it executes plans for construction of a kindergarten in central Vietnam. Special cakes and noise makers were handed out to the children in preparation for celebrating the annual Tet Trung Thu, or mid-Autumn Moon Festival, which takes places the 15th day of the eighth Lunar Month.
After a stop for lunch at a traditional Vietnamese cafe, surrounded by water and lily pads, we headed back to Da Nang. Several members of the team took a stroll through the huge marketplace, which is situated in a large warehouse type building but sprawls out onto the sidewalks. You can buy everything from T-shirts, shoes, an assortment of fruits to pork, fish and everything imaginable!
Until next time, this is ROW’s rowving reporter, Karin M. Clack
