100 Bikes for 100 Girls

Dear Friends,

To date we have been able to donate 85 bikes through our “Bikes for Girls” program! Amazing! Thank you so much for your generosity. One of the areas that we are working in is an ethnic minority community near Cam Lam, Vietnam called Son Tan. Throughout Vietnam ethic minority communities like these are typically very poor. We worked with our partners from the local district, to identify students at the primary school in Son Tan who were in need of a bike based on distance to the school and access to transportation.  Our partners further identified the 3 neediest families of those students in the community and we were able to visit with them after we gave their child a bicycle.  

This is Phuong, she is just one of the girls who received a bike. Her house is on the top of a hill at the end of a twisting dirt walkway off of the main road of the village.  At the bottom of the hill, at an elbow on the trail, we walked past a group of small children playing in a muddy, puddle of water created from an old leaky hose. The kids were bathing and washing their clothes.  Small cinderblocks were scattered in a way to keep bare feet out of the mud.  The sight of children showering outside was not abnormal to us in Vietnam as we have seen many children washing up outside at their communal wells, but it was disturbing to see these children having to wash and drink from clearly unsanitary conditions.  What was also unusually striking was when we reached the top of the hill and made it to Phuong’s house, there were children there with very little or nothing on, and some just had old deteriorated, over-sized shirts covering them. When we asked about their clothes we were told that the children that were not dressed literally didn’t own or have clothes and their families were too poor to buy them. The conditions in this particular village were very difficult to see.

On a lighter note, we do want to say, that the joy on the children’s faces who received a bike that day was truly memorable. Do you remember the first new bike that you received as a child? You can imagine the meaning of these bikes to these girls then.

Since visiting the Son Tan community and school, we have since bought shoes and uniforms for all 100 students there. We are now working with the principal of the school to find more ways in which we can assist the community moving forward.  We look forward to those opportunities and will update you as soon as we can.

We would like to once again thank you for your generous donations and to let you know that you are making a difference, you are promoting change, and there is a girl in the end receiving a bicycle that now has an opportunity that she wouldn’t have if not for your gift. 

Thank you,

The Rock-Paper-Scissors Children’s Fund Team

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