City child welfare foundation helps homeless children

City child welfare foundation helps homeless children

by Gia Loc



HCM CITY — Tran Van Quyen is unlikely to have dreamed he would one day become the executive chef of a three-star hotel on Phu Quoc Island as he did recently.

Especially during the period he was homeless and spent a fortnight on the streets.

His parents divorced when he was six months old and his mother left him with his grandmother in Hung Yen Province.

A few years later she returned to take him to live with her and her new husband in Gia Lai Province. He was ill-treated by his stepfather and forced to pick bamboo shoots in the forest every day.

"When I was 15, I decided to … escape my stepfather's ill-treatment," he said.

He took a bus to HCM City. But without money or shelter, he lived on the streets and slept in parks at night, and was constantly chased away by the police.

Two weeks later, his life changed permanently when, upon the advice of some people living near the parks he slept in, he went to the HCM City Child Welfare Foundation's Tre Xanh Shelter in District 1.

The shelter's manager, Do Thi Bach Phat, asked him to provide information about his family.

"The manager said they would take me to my family, but I did not want and begged her to allow me to stay."

She relented and Tran Kim Tuyen, a counsellor at the shelter, convinced him to take the entrance test at the HCM City Hospitality School. He got through and the school even waived his fees.

The shelter helped him do the necessary papers and paid for his uniform and health check-up.

"Through the year-long course, Tuyen encouraged me to study hard and make my dream come true," he said.

After he graduated, she helped him find a job at the Phu Quoc Charm Hotel where now, at 21, he has become the executive chef.

"Everything I have now is thanks to the shelter manager and counsellor's help and love," he said.

Quyen is one of more than 300,000 people who have received succour from the HCM City Child Welfare Foundation in the 20-odd years since it was set up in 1988.

"The foundation's objectives are to protect, educate and take care of disadvantaged and homeless children and young people and enable them to have a safe and happy life," Luong Thi Thuan, its chairwoman, said.

The foundation had so far carried out 70 projects and co-operated with city authorities to provide education to disadvantaged, homeless, sexually abused and HIV-positive children and youths and find jobs for them, she said.

It has also collaborated with the city's Child Protection and Care Committee to raise and educate children with disabilities.

It has set up the Tre Xanh (Green Bamboo), Hoa Hong Nho (Small Rose) and Hoi Nhap (Integration) shelters.

This year it has some more new projects on the cards and is looking for sponsors.

One of them is a programme to take care of disadvantaged children and those suffering from dangerous illness at hospitals during Tet (the lunar New Year). — VNS