100 Bikes for 100 Girls

Hay is a 16-year-old student in the Vietnamese village of Suoi Cát. A few years ago, Hay was the recipient of a bicycle from Rock-Paper-Scissors Children’s Fund. Once a bright pink, now dusty, tired and pale, her two-seater bike still gets the job done. “Most girls use the bikes to get further than just school. We see the girls on their way to school, then later the parents on the bikes heading to market or to work”. Hay’s bike gets good use, and she often has her dad, who has limited use of his arms, on the second seat of her bike.

Hay and her father belong to Vietnam’s ethnic Raglai community, whose members are often segregated into communities with limited access to health, labor, and educational opportunities. These communities are overwhelmingly poor, surviving mainly on farming, fishing and seasonal work like picking cashews. Dinner is often nothing more than “rice and salt.” Daughters are often expected to contribute to the family’s income at an early age - and many girls are pulled out of school for months at a time to work in the cashew tree plantations.

Schools for Raglai students are often segregated as well, meaning many have to travel large distances on mountainous roads to the minority-only schools. Many are forced to drop out before high school or even middle school because of cost, transportation, safety concerns, or labor needs at home. In fact, by age 16, most girls in Hay’s village have already stopped attending school in order to work, marry, or help rear younger siblings while parents work.

Hay is not one of them. Her father makes sure of it. Having never attended school himself, Mang an, who lost his wife during Hay’s birth, has spent the last sixteen years ensuring that Hay is able to attend and finish her studies, even as she bears the brunt of the housework. Needless to say, she is extremely motivated. Each morning before school, Hay cooks the family meals, fishes in the rice paddies that border her small cement home, and does the cleaning and washing.

“She studies every night until she falls asleep,” says her father. And this is not unusual for girls her age who are still in school. In spite of the burden, last year Hay did not miss a single day of school.

We thank you very much for donating a bicycle or bicycles to help girls like Hay.

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