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N
guyen Thi Phuong and Dinh
Van Hoc at are seeing out their
last days at university and
facing many important deci-
sions about the future. They each had
hard starts in life. Phuong, was born
to a poor family in Bac Giang province,
about 70km from Hanoi. Her father
died young, when she was just seven,
leaving her mother with triplets and
one son. “My mother was afraid of hurt-
ing us so she did not say why dad had
died. While he was alive he was not a
healthy man at all,” Phuong says.
Her mother took on the task of
rearing four children alone. “Working
at the Ha Bac Fertilizer and Chemical
plant, she always came home very late.
When I was young, I did not know why
she did not come home at 5pm like the
others,” says Phuong. “It turned out
that she never refused any extra job
so she could make ends meet for the
whole family.”
Phuong, who is set to graduate
from the Hanoi School of Public Health,
is visibly moved as she recalls memo-
ries of her childhood: “Knitting straw
brooms, making tapioca, picking weeds,
delivering coal, raising pigs, mum never
stopped working. I blamed myself so
much when I was a little child.”
Phuong began to help her mother
with part time work. It was very hard to
afford schooling for four children at the
same time, yet her mother always told
Phuong and her siblings to concentrate
on studying.
Hoc, who is now going through
training with HSBC before he graduates
from the National Economics Univer-
sity, finds many similarities between
Phuong’s story and his own. Hoc’s fa-
ther was a soldier in the Quang Tri bat-
tle and came home seriously wounded.
However, he did not get any social ben-
efit due to the loss of legal documents.
“The way that Phuong feels about
her mum is like me,” Hoc says. “I love
and respect her so much. My mother’s
situation is somehow like Phuong’s. Af-
ter giving birth to my brother, she gave
him up for fostering because my dad
was in the battle. 15 years later he
came back injured and died of a stroke
when I was 14 years old.”
Hoc joined the family’s farming ef-
forts. “I remember how hard the farming
22
timeout
Seeding hope
Golfing charity, Swing for the Kids, is helping young
people in hardship realise their academic dreams.
Story by
Dan Le
A proud moment: the students are awarded their scholorships