Giang is 21 and lives with her family in Tien Giang. Since we met Giang in 2004, The life of her family has been a daily struggle. They have no land of their own, and the entire family lives in a temporary house lent to them by their neighbour.Giang’s family personifies the difficult task of breaking the cycle of poverty. Without qualifications, her father works as a hired labourer and her mother sells lottery tickets. These unstable and temporary paths of income-generation lock families into short-term survival strategies without savings for emergencies or for future plans. For example, the family currently can’t afford to treat her mother’s eye disease.
Her father earns about VND 70,000 (US$ 3.5), and the mother between VND 50,000-70,000 (US$ 2,5-3.5) per day – which is a reasonable income – particularly for the families we support.
Children’s access to education is often the only way for an entire family to change their situation – a long-term investment that most families cannot afford. Giang’s family has kept her going to school and this Autumn, Giang received the happy news that she passed the entrance exam to study at Tien Giang Medical College. She wants to be a pharmacist and work to relieve her family’s financial struggles.
Giang is not the only young person taking their family towards a more secure future – over 91 of the students, we have supported since primary school, are now entering university and college. Besides these 91 students, another 19, who had been sponsored by SCC to go to school, passed the exam to university too. After years receiving support from SCC, the families of these 19 students are now strong enough and able to keep them going to the university without support from SCC. Thanks to the hard work of our children and young people, we are happy to report that increasing numbers of SCC scholarship students are now qualifying for a place in higher education! University fees, normally a few hundred dollars a year, would be completely out of the question for these young people without the help of our university programme and our supportive.
We would like to thank all our supporters who have agreed to sponsor their child all the way into university. Giang received funding in September and is now taking her family’s future in her own hands.