Tặng quà Xã Trường Xuân, Trường Sơn, Quang Binh

Bring Lunar New Year Gifts to Ethnic Minority VÂN KIỀU in XÃ TRƯỜNG XUÂN and XÃ TRƯỜNG SƠN, QUẢNG BÌNH Communes

The end of the year is coming and everyone is busy preparing for the Lunar New Year. This is Tu Bi Foundation busiest time of the year, preparing gifts to bring joy and hope to the mountainous ethnic people. In 2018, Truong Son in Quang Binh province, was repeatedly hit by floods and typhoons, which damaged many poor villages in the areas that had not received the assistance. This is a meaningful and warm humanitarian gifts from our benefactors.

In 2019, Tu Bi Foundation open the New Year program in the North for Van Kieu ethnic children and relatives of Truong Son and Truong Xuan communes on the border district of Quang Binh province. It mountains next to it is Laos and up to 70% of people cannot speak Vietnamese. November 24, 2018 at Hang Chuồn village, Na Lam village, Truong Nam village, Truong Xuan commune – after the first phase of donating jackets to 76 pupils, we witnessed the poverty and deprivation of many families after the floods and many children who did not have cold jackets walked barefoot when the temperature was below 0 degrees Celsius. Tu Bi’s budget is limited, but we could not ignore after hearing presentation of the students’ difficulties. At 8:00 pm on January 20, we left from Hanoi crossing 620 km traveling the winding road to cross mountain pass, surrounded by only forest trees and reeds of Truong Son. At 7:30 am on January 21, 2019, the whole group was in the commune as planned. The whole night we did not sleep, but when we got out of the car all of our fatigue seemed to disappear upon seeing the joy of the ethnic people already waiting for us 15km from Rin Rin. We chose this as a location because it is the closest for two villagers of Reun and Po Loang (the commune center distance will be 35 km of forest road instead of 15 km). Very quickly the people helped us carry each of the boxes off the truck and waited us to call out each house to receive gifts.

40 poorest households in the 2 poorest villages of the commune received a gift worth VND 915,000, with a special blanket (all of the blankets were vacuumed seal for transportation and make it easier for people to carry home with such a long distance in the mountain), 10 kg of glutinous rice with yellow flowers, 2 liters of cooking oil, 2 bottles of fish sauce, 1 kg of noodles, 2 kg of laundry soap. The total value of gifts for 40 households is: VND 36,600,000. A lady told me, “I have to walk from 2 am to get here. I’m so happy, this year I have a decent Lunar New Year”. The next destination is Long Son preschool, Truong Son kindergarten, the boarding ethnic minority primary school and Truong Son ethnic boarding secondary school. We also went to the elementary school site in Da Chat and Ben Duong villages. I really feel joy and shy when seeing strangers come to give gifts from the children (especially preschool children). Small skinny children, some wearing 1-2 thin shirts. Some were better wearing an old warm musty coat. My heart ached and hurt. Warm new shirts, new sandals, cakes and candies were quickly given to them by Tu Bi volunteers. With a total of 998 shirts, 200 pairs of sandals and candies of brands with food safety brands such as Kinh Đô, Hải Hà, Kotobuki or Chupa Chups of Thailand were given to the students. The total cost for the number of gifts for children is 82,940,000 VND. The total cost of phase 1 and phase 2 is: 125,125,000 VND

Watching the babies cuddle with new sandals, curiously stroking the new or strange clothes, to looking at the candy made us feel so happy. Kind hearts have brought peace to the poor children here. The school was spacious, but the poor children still lived in poverty. 13:30 – end of gift delivery was also the time when the rain comes. We are all happy that everything happens when the weather was favorable. We continued to drive through the mountains and forests to return in time to catch the evening train back to Hanoi. Lunch took place at 15:40 pm. Fatigue and hunger set in and clearly shown on each member’s face. But whenever we look at each other, we smile and with joy.

At 7am on January 22, we were in Hanoi and returned to our usual work. The project coordination, transportation, and out reach went smoothly. The first charity trip of Tu Bi Foundation in 2019 ended with new motivation and belief in each of us.

Thank you to the benefactors and warm wishes to all.