Vietnamese ocean apart focus on education of poor children of VietNam
Viet Tex News - Week of December 2, 2004
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Somewhere in Tay Dinh, a poverty-stricken fishing village facing the Pacific Ocean, 72-year-old Lê Si Nguyên is teaching his daily class of nearly 40 children in a makeshift classroom he has built for them, out of his own life savings. There was a time when, in almost every village in Viet Nam, learned scholars retiring from public life would return to their native villages to become the "village teacher" and impart their knowledge to the younger generations. Lê Si Nguyên's father was one of them, and now he is perpetuating a tradition that is drifting toward extinction, due to decades of social disruption.

Asked why he is devoting his life to teaching poor children, Mr. Nguyên explained some 50 years ago, he has made a solemn promise to his father that he would follow in his footsteps and dedicate his life to teaching children of poor villagers who could not send their children to school. "Lack of educational opportunities made it hard, if not impossible, for children to change their fate, or lift themselves out of poverty," he explained.

His piercing eyes and straight shoulders belied his age, but the moral responsibility Lê Si Nguyên imposed upon himself has indeed affected him as years went by. "I wish to live for just a few more years to help all of the children in this village learn how to read and write," he said, hoping he can keep the pledge made to his father for a while longer.

Perhaps Lê Si Nguyên could have felt a little less alone, had he known that, on this side of the Pacific Ocean, a group of Vietnamese Houstonians have made the same commitment to themselves, after returning from a trip to Viet Nam during which they witnessed the abject poverty of the children living in remote rural areas, where children attended classes in storage rooms that were used to warehouse fertilizers and insecticide. "I was rather sad, after seeing the rural Vi?t Nam exactly the same as I'd remembered it back in the early 70s, still poor and still hopeless," said Tuan Dào.

Since 2002, Tuan Dào, his wife Duy-Loan Lê, and a group of like-minded friends and colleagues, have founded Sunflower Mission, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing education to needy children living in poor villages with no access to educational facilities, because they believe "education is one of the key elements to improving the future of children in Viet Nam."