Tonight, My partner Ethan and I received total funding ($4,999) for our project called Kết Nối. After a lot of hard work, it paid off, and we are thrilled to have this opportunity to do good. We'll do good with this grant because we are going to donate all of the money to an organization called Global Village Foundation, founded by a Vietnam War Refugee named Le Ly Hayslip and has several offshoot organizations. One of those offshoots is the Village of Hope in Da Nang, Central Vietnam, an orphanage and school for disabled and impoverished children. Our efforts took a long time and a lot of coordination with Ms. Hayslip, her family, and staff, so we're delighted to have achieved the goal of actual funding.
We recently had a zoom call with Ms. Hayslip and two of her contacts in Da Nang, Mr. Du and Ms. Hang, also known as Sunshine, Ms. Hayslip's daughter. Using Ms. Ly's contacts across different universities in Vietnam, we plan on using the money to stipend students coming out of university to teach at the Village of Hope. They would come two to three days a week and tutor the students in reading, writing, computers, math, science, and more. They would be considered "volunteers" to the Village of Hope, but we would pay them separately. The grant money would go to the Global Village Foundation, where Ms. Ly, Mr. Du, and Sunshine would use the money in Vietnam to seek out students who recently graduated from university and would be willing to "volunteer" to work at the Village of Hope. The money would not last forever, so we are hoping to establish a program at Poly where students can connect with students at the Village of Hope and help teach them English and other subjects. In turn, students at Poly would log service hours, connect with others, learn about a different culture, and more. On the other end, students at the orphanage will have individualized supplemented education, can connect with another culture, and learn from others. We are hoping to focus on this program after the grant proposal. In terms of budgeting the grant money, we have decided with Ms. Ly and Mr. Du that ⅘ of the $4,999 (~$4,000) would go to paying the stipends of university students GVF finds to volunteer inside of Village of Hope as 3-5 teachers for ~$500 a week. Instead of hiring Village of Hope and Mr. Vinh, getting volunteers to teach will circumvent possible corruption from inside VOH and the Vietnamese Government stifling salaried teachers. The teachers would teach English, computers, and mathematics to the children in bi or tri-grade classes, and as university volunteers, GVF will choose them of good moral character. The other ⅕ of the budget (~$1,000) would go to Global Village Foundation to pay for operational expenses to find applicants shortly (the next few months) that will fit well in the job and for GVF to continue supporting VOH's supplies, such as food, learning materials, and other items necessary for supporting its impaired children. Having met the people in charge of finding volunteers: Mrs. Sunshine Nguyen and Mr. Du Hua, we can uphold their passion for GVF and their pure intentions. Currently, VOF houses 117 students, 22 from outside the Village, 45 are deaf/mute, and most come from impoverished families in rural areas outside of Hanoi. We hope that VOH can divert some stress from paying for its resources and expand its fundraising efforts with our funding. Unfortunately, since the beginning of the pandemic, VOH has lost most foreign donors and has dramatically reduced support from the Government, so now it is more and more in a dire state of need of any money at all to continue its operations at even some of the capacity it had two years ago. With a large grant, Global Village Foundation will use its best capabilities to help Village of Hope continue to shine its optimism onto its community and support the 117 impaired children under its care. Over the next few months, Ethan and I will continue to work hard to make sure the money is used adequately and the children of VOH are supported by it.
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May 2022
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