Too small to get funding?

When an organization is very small it is almost impossible to get funding.

For example we have enough funds to have staff, but the minimum amount of staff we require. As we have the minimum staff, they don't have any spare time for writing detailed funding proposals, which of course all funders want.

Funders also require accountability; which means reports. As we have minimum staff they don't have time for extra report writing. So how do we get funding? Or do we just stay very small and not get any funding?

This has to be faced by all small non-government organizations at some stage, and there is no obvious answer to how each of us break the 'catch 22' situation.

What else is needed besides an education for a girl to choose outside the box

Children's Education Foundation wants girls to have a future with choices. What does that demand?

An education is needed to have choices:
If you are uneducated your choices are severely limited here. The future of an uneducated female looks like what I see almost every day; an early marriage to a so so man, the first child within the first year of marriage, some verbal and physical abuse, struggle to make ends meet and then the cycle continues with them not being able to afford to educate their children. Or it might be the other common option we see; no marriage, no permanent man and one, two or three children, and they struggle to make ends meet and find it almost impossible to send any of the children to school. At present we are helping quite a few single mothers with the education costs for their children.

But the cycle is inclined to continue and continue.... female, traditional and cultural conditioning is very strong in such traditional societies as in Vietnam. With a decent income at least it removes most of the daily back-breaking struggle. but hat is not enough to make conscious wise choices outside of the traditions one knows.

What else does it take to have a future with choices:
What does it take for a young woman in Vietnam to be brave enough, bold enough and knowledgeable enough to take a different step forward in a society that doesn't encourage such conscious modern boldness at all?

A girl I know is getting married this week and her situation has triggered me to complete working on an additional program we can do here besides giving academic education to many girls. She is an intelligent, English-speaking, university-educated 26 year old woman and is choosing to marry a lazy uneducated man, who is also a heavy drinker. His family are traditional vegetable farmers and she will now have to get up at 3am to pick the vegetables before the sun rises. At 6am when she finishes she will get ready for work, eat her breakfast and then go to her daytime job. Her parents are intelligent and have not done everything totally traditionally. Her mother for example married late, is hard working and is now a student Buddhist nun and her husband accepts this. He is an intelligent hard-working man.

Her choice will mean a hard life; this seriously struck home how strong our female, traditional and cultural conditioning is that a choice like that can be made!  There are many good traditions here, which I don't want girls to deny or reject, but in a society that teaches by rote, being reflective and making conscious choices out of the mold is rare here.

The program I am working I hope will start the process of the girls we work with being more reflective, and conscious of the choices they make.

Hi, my name is Barbara and I have been a friend of Linda's for many years now and as such became a first hand witness to Lindas' passionate work in Vietnam. I personally love the idea that Linda’s support is not just generally about helping children. but specifically about helping girls as so many girls in developing and third world countries just don’t get the same attention and support as boys. In those countries it is still a widespread conviction that girls – women are only good for having children, doing the cooking, or are available to abuse; physically or sexually. They are expected to bring funds in and that means they are sometimes prostituted, sold off or sent out to beg in the streets. 

Being a woman myself and having a daughter of my own it breaks my heart to realise how many girls out there fall under this very damaging judgement knowing that women can do so much more, and many things even better than men; just like vice versa. 

In 2007 I took my daughter to Vietnam as it was a long term wish of mine to visit Linda in Vietnam and see first hand what she was doing and get to know the country she was now living in. It was such an eye opening experience and it definitely confirmed to me what a good idea it was to support Linda’s work. And my daughter was so inspired and so impressed that she also decided to take on a sponsor child together with her brother. So now we have 2 girls in our family we are sponsoring and every time Linda sends the updates it brings tears to my eyes to realise that these 2 girls now have a much better chance in life than they would have had without Linda. 

The older one of the two is now going to University and I do hope that she really finds a way to independence which will enable her to then raise her own kids in a very different mindset to that of many others who haven’t had the good fortune to get support from someone else to better their lives. And even if she does not start an academic job, at least she knows how to write and read, she knows maths and some other general knowledge which definitely will set her up for a much better life than prostitution or begging. 

It took me a while to accept that even supporting only 2 children makes a huge difference as I felt so helpless when I was in Vietnam seeing the vastness of help needed. But I know, and Linda does too, we cannot help everyone. But everyone helped is better than nothing and invaluable for those at the receiving end, and that includes the families.

Thank you Linda for your ongoing work and I hope that you will find many more sponsors to help even more girls. Maybe it is time for me too to take on the next one.

Barbara

Barbara Simon

Back Care Solutions - Therapist - Trainer - Author

www.backcaresolutions.net

 P.O. Box 519, Avalon, NSW, 2107 Ph: 0407946294

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)