Protect 30 girl children at risk of prostitution

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, this situation is larger than me.” - This is what a mother in Where Dreams Bloom program shared with us when we visited her house during the lockdown in Ho Chi Minh city 3 months ago. In our program, 84,6% of the families live in a renting house or relatives' house; 38,5 % have members have a chronic disease and depend on the family’s income and nearly 70% have members lose their jobs during the Covid-19 lockdown. We are so happy that we could share the problem with all of the families during the hard times with a financial support to help them overcome the situation.

Because of the negative impact causing by COVID -19, all of public and private schools in Vietnam including Ho Chi Minh city had to shutdown for more than two months (from the early of February to the middle of April 2020) following the instruction of the government. Most of the schools started to reopen in the middle of April while the Ministry of Education and Training has pushed the end date for the 2019-2020 academic year term to a later time. The summer holiday will be shorted to one month.

Last month, we was also happy to meet Lilac again. She is one of formal participants in the program. After graduating from high school in 2017, we supported Lilac in applying for a scholarship from Tuoi Tre newspaper (a famous newspaper in Vietnam) to help her continue her education in college. She is currently living with her mother in a small room with renting price in 3,000,000 Vietnam dong per month. She had a part time job as a cashier at a convenience store while her mother work at a local restaurant to cover expenditures life until her mother's health was getting worse. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer then. After the lockdown Lilac just lost her job as a result of Corona pandemic as well. With all this difficulties she has to deal with, we stand by her by supporting all of her tuition fee of her last semester. Our staff also support her mother in seeking suitable hospital to carry out the surgery. We are very glad that we still stay connected with our formal participants after years and continue supporting the ones in need to complete their study and achieve their goals. Lilac dreams of working at a logistics company in the future. We believe that with all of community support, the love of family and her determination, her dream will come true. This is the magical medicine for her mom as well.

Last but not least, we would like to update our donors that we have partnered with Click Media, a media company bases in Vietnam to run a campaign named Bride for Sale. Why we started the campaign? Do you know that women trafficking is still one of the huge problems many countries including Vietnam are facing. Meanwhile, the rapid growth of e-commerce has made buying anything online easier and faster. We want to use a familiar platform to raise awareness to help solve the problem. The Bride for Sale campaign illustrates how young women are sold like commodities in the modern age. We hope that through the campaign, more and more people will be able to access and enhance their knowledge on against human trafficking as well as increase self-protection mechanism of community. When you go to the website, it will connect you to website of AAT as well as the link of this project on GlobalGiving. Please go to the link: https://wegenerationvn.wixsite.com/mysite to access the campaign and share it with your friends.

We would like to express our deepest thanks to donor like you who plays an important part in our mission. Thank to your generous contribution, we could make it possible for children who are at high risk continue going to school and building a brighter future. Please keep supporting us!

Thank you very much,

AAT Team