Before moving to Ho Chi Minh City for her university studies, Oanh lived with her family in a small house that leaked from the roof whenever it rained. After her father passed away after a traffic accident years ago, Oanh’s mother has been the main income provider. In the past, she worked as a hired labourer, but as Oanh’s grandmother health has deteriorated, she opened a small vegetable stall to sell produce at home while taking care of Oanh’s grandma.
Her family’s financial condition is not as robust as others, but Oanh and her siblings relentlessly strive for their education, knowing that their mother has sacrificed a lot to help them keep up with their schooling. Oanh’s brother is a junior student at the university in HCMC and has been a beneficiary of saigonchildren’s scholarship for years. Simultaneously, he was the one who informed his sister about the U-Go programme, a programme jointly organised by the international organisation U-Go and saigonchildren to support female university students in difficult circumstances, which Oanh then applied for and successfully became one of the scholarship recipients.
Oanh is now a freshman majoring in Management Information Systems at the University of Finance – Marketing. She opened up about her decision to pursue this specialisation, “Partly it is due to my interest in e-commerce work, and partly from my research and understanding of the study programme. As far as I know, MIS is still potentially developing a lot in the future due to the rapid changes in technology. So, it will certainly broaden my career prospects, enabling me to try and improve myself in this field”.