A brighter future for the most underpriviledged

This is the story of Hang Nguyen, Youth Career Initiative Coordinator at REACH.

During 2 years working at REACH, I have visited many students’ families. They all have different difficult circumstances, creating a long-lasting impression in my mind. What I remember the most would be the time when I carried out student mobilization event at a slum area in An Xa commune, near Long Bien Bridge.

The place locates by Red River.  This is the habitat of many migrants.  People here live in sentry-boxes, small boats, or temporary houses. In rainy season, when the water level goes up, those houses are flooded.  In those houses, there is mostly no furniture. People living by the river use the water for their daily life activities such as taking a bath or washing clothes.

To reach the area, I had to walk through a corn field. I felt unsafe because the area was built on by alluvia soil from the river. Therefore, the ground was soft and I would get stuck in the sand.  Here and there were garbage dumps, creating stingy smell during summer time.

I met Ms.Ngot, the president of club for migrants in the area. She says that many kids here do not have a birth certificates or ID cards. They grow up like wide grass and have never attended schools. This area is also a hot spot of social evils such as drug addicts or violence.

Ms. Ngot helped me gather people to attend communication session on REACH’s free vocational training program. We expected that there would be some youth, our targeted group, showing up. However, there were only small children and elderly people. Because it was day time, all of the young people here were away to earn a living.

They worked in junction markets, being sellers or porters. Their earning is small, which is just enough to live by the day. For those youth, their life is a continuous reel of work. As soon as they stop it, they would have to skip meals for the next day. Therefore, asking  those youth to invest three months to join a vocational training program like REACH’s is a challenging job, even if the program is free and will give them much better job opportunities.

The visit was a long time ago. Until now, thinking about it still gives me goose bumps.  I have visited many places and met many people, who are living in poverty. But it is hard to believe that there are still people struggling with surviving through day in a place as Long Bien slum area, which is just 2 kilometers away from the center of Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.