Wednesday, November 15, 2017

One of the provinces we have been working no longer has any poor









One of the provinces we have been working in for the last 12 years has recently been classified as having no poor. All NGO's no longer are working there due to this classification, including CEF. I already miss this warm and honest farming community.

The reality is the communities here are very vulnerable each year due to the storms, flooding and animal diseases, which means it is just for short periods of time that some of them climb out of debt and poverty before dumped back in it again.

Due to the flooding and storms they many have wanted to build strong homes to protect themselves, so also have accumulated debt in turning their simple one room homes into solid two to three bedroom homes.

Many here still have dilapidated farm houses badly in need of repairs. There are broken homes due to not be able to make a living farming, so the fathers have gone permanently to live and work far away where there is work, with some not returning or sending money home. Children are being brought up by grandparents who are poor and elderly and can't easily deal with this big responsibility either financially or practically. It's a predominantly poor community.

Graeme CEF's Manager in Australia is helping with updates of our CEF students


Graeme, CEF's manager in Australia has met the CEF children as he has spent a lot of time in Vietnam over the last few years. He has been helping this term with some of the CEF student updates for sponsors. You may hear from him instead of me. Emails will come from the same email address. This help is wonderful and will reduce the period of time it takes to get updates out to all our sponsons which is normally about 8-9 months to get them all out.

We are grateful that we have so many caring sponsors and that you patiently wait for the updates on the children you care about and help to keep in school.