These girls have just been sponsored

Van's father just returned home from 2 months in hospital as he needed to have part of one leg amputated. He fell from the third floor at a building site and has spinal damage. His wife earns very little. Van, who is very bright, now has a sponsor allowing her will be able to continue her education.

Van with her mother who does house work for wealthy Vietnamese and also collects garbage

Ha is very bright and spoke some English when we met her, not a lot, but clear and good. Her mother has cancer, dad and her brother have both had building accidents and can't work at present. As she now has a sponsor she will be able to continue her education.

Ha with her mother who isn't able to work at present

Thanh Thuy's dad died last week

Thanh Thuy with her mother. Dad died last week after rice harvesting. The only income is from rice they grow, but dad did that as he was stronger and healthier than mum. Now she doesn't know who will do that. Thuy is bright and now her education is ensured as she has a sponsor.

Home life is not happy as granddad is crotchety and aggressive.

Her mother earns little; she collects garbage and helps in a kindergarten sometimes and doesn't earn enough for the girls to continue their education . Now they are sponsored they can.

The family home was sold to pay dad's medical bills, but dad unfortunately died of cancer.

Linh and Trinh and their mother now live in granddad's home (her deceased husbands father's home).

Gael and Steve's visit in photos

Some of the children we saw on Sunday

There are many poor families locally, and we do help some. They have many more work opportunities than families who live in the mountains. The poor families we visit and help further afield have very few employment opportunities and are less able to afford any transport to get to work.

These are some of the pictures from last Sunday when we visited some of the children in Quang Nam province who are more than one and a half hours away from Hoi An. Some of these children have been sponsored nearly a year, and some have just received a sponsor to help them with their education.

We visit them regularly to see how they are, how they are doing at school and to find out if their housing situation has changed or if their parents or grandparents health, or employment situation has changed.

Gael is in Hoi An

Gael is here in Hoi An!

Gael is one of our board members and has been wanting to come here for years to see our work in person. She is also a very good friend and I am thrilled she has come at last and brought Steve with her.

Yesterday was their first day in Hoi An and they chose to come on a rather long day (14 hours) of home visits of the children in one of our education sponsorship programs. They survived the 276 km of travel in Quan Nam province to Que Son, Nong Son, Hiep Duc, Nui Thanh and Tam Ky! They even flourished; I could see they loved being out in the countryside enjoying the scenery and meeting the children and families.

It was helpful having them with us as they asked many questions and had a different perspective to offer.

(Photos:Gael and Steve with Bao Linh and Gael with Buddhist nun Lien who are both in one of our education sponsorship programs.)

Linh from Platinum Global visited CEF

Yesterday Linh from Platinum Global (Outsourcing / Offshoring) spent the day with us visiting 15 children. Her goal was to understand CEF further, to see how she, her work Social Club and Platinum Global may be able to help support CEF.

Linh fitted in easily and was a delight to spend the day with. At the end of the day I realized I had only met her the prior evening and yet she felt very much a part of the team.

She has a huge heart and great understanding of poverty; she knows and understands poverty having spent her childhood in the south in the Mekong Delta region and also worked with an NGO in that area in the past.

She brought presents for the children from Platinum Global's Social Club. The most precious thing for the children were the books. Most poor children do not own a book!

Just sponsored

Thuong has just been sponsored thanks to Elizabeth! Thuong's mother has terminal cancer. Her family know, but decided not to tell her! She knows she is unwell but believes she will be well soon. She has been through many months of chemotherapy and now the family has a huge debt as medical treatment is not free here and chemotherapy is very expensive. This situation meant that their daughters were very likely to have to stop their education. Now they have the good news that Thuong can stay in school and complete her education.

We are in the process of introducing waiting sponsors to recently interviewed children

We are in a most fortunate position where we have sponsors waiting for children to sponsor.

With inflation affecting the poor we are getting many more requests than we have ever had before. Recently we saw many children who have asked for educational support for this coming academic year and for the remainder of their education. Now we have the satisfying work of giving each of the waiting sponsors a child in need of sponsorship.

Three of the children just seen have sponsors now and over the next two days we will be sending out bios on more of the children to the waiting sponsors. (The pictures are of three of the girls we interviewed recently)