Over the Holidays, I received a letter from Francie Nguyen.

Dec, 2007
Instead of Christmas gifts this year, my daughter, Soleil, had asked everyone to donate to her favorite charities. Please accept these donations on behalf of Soleil Ho.

Thank you,

Along with the letter I found two checks, $25 from Lemoore, CA. and $30 from Rockford, Il.

For all of us out there, year after year, we try to find the real meaning of Christmas. I didn't expect to find mine through a child. For this humbling experience, I'm very grateful.

When I was young, I admired people with wisdom. Now that I'm older, much older, I realized that wisdom means nothing without kindness. Without kindness, we're birds without wings. Kindness is an invisible pill for inner peace. Kindness has no age restriction.

Soliel, I don't know anything about you except for this letter from your mom, but one thing I'm sure of is that this world will be a better place with more kids like you.

Yesterday, Chan and I had a meeting with Anh Tan. He works with the Binh Thuan government on finding social projects and assisting with funding them. Chan best described his position as this: He meets families in poverty, talks to them, see how the government can help them, usually to build a house, then gives them government money to help them out. If it's not enough money, he will meet with the neighborhood and other companies to raise money.

His job isn't specifically education related, however, because he spends so much time on the ground meeting people in the community he knows where the needs are.

So we went south of Phan Thiet to look at a project for a kindergarten.

About 20 kilometers south of Phan Thiet, 5 kilometers down a dirt road littered with pot holes, surrounded by Dragon Fruit Farms, there's a kindergarten school. The locals are worried about the future of the economy here. They depend heavily on exporting dragon fruit to Taiwan, but an incident in Taiwan has the Taiwanese threatening to stop importing dragon fruit because of too many pesticides.

Twenty six kids study in the morning and another twenty study in the afternoon. But the existing building is showing it's wear. The ceiling tiles leak, soaking the cement floor during the rainy season. Termites have chewed into the existing wood frame, and the framing is starting to lean.

Anh Tan explains the situation as Chan translates: The school is an urgent project for them, they are worried the building won't last another year. The teacher is stressed about the conditions and works in fear for the children. The locals, worried about the future of their export dependent economy, are torn. They save all the money they can to protect themselves, but they also see the value of education for their children.

Chan thinks that many of the locals eat little food so they can save money for a rainy day, and many believe that day is coming.

South Phan Thiet School Project

Anh Tan introduced us to another project, although we didn't have time to visit the land, he did explain it to us: There's an elementary school on Highway One, the main thoroughfare that runs north south through the country. The school is overcrowded with students from a neighboring village a couple kilometers away. And these children, between 6 and ten years old, have to travel on this busy street every day to get to the overcrowded school.

The government has been working on a new school plan, but they simply don't have the funds yet. The project would be the largest for Village School Foundation, yet. When I return in March I will investigate it further.

One of the most rewarding parts of the work I do with the Village School Foundation is to build schools in rural areas of Vietnam where the children wouldn't have access to education because the schools are too far away. A couple weeks ago we completed one of these schools Nghi Duc - Tanh Linh.

It's a sturdy building with sidewalks in the front and back, a nice little garden on the porch, running water, a bathroom and 30+ five year-olds. :-)

A special thanks goes out to an anonymous donor in Salem, Oregon, who made this school possible.