Taiwanese NGOs in Vietnam: Changing Children's Futures Through Education

After school, fourth grader Ruan Yuzhe’s grandparents pick him up on their motorcycle and drive him to his Eden Foundation Chinese class a half hour away.

For the last decade, Eden has been offering after-school Chinese classes to children of Taiwanese–Vietnamese marriages, known colloquially as “new Taiwanese children,” in Vietnam’s Vinh Long Province.

“We chose to set up in Vinh Long because many of its young women have married Taiwanese men.” Gao Ruiping, head of Eden’s Ho Chi Minh City office, explains that more women from Vinh Long Province and Can Tho City marry abroad than from any other area of Vietnam.

Mandarin provides the children of Taiwanese–Vietnamese marriages living in Vietnam with a connection to their father’s homeland. (courtesy of the Eden Foundation)

Staying connected

Van Thi Xuan Mai, who has been teaching at Eden’s Vinh Long center since it opened in September 2005, says that it currently has 13 students on its rolls, ranging in age from three to 13 years old. But she adds that the three-year-old, Xie Peilin, went to Taiwan with her mother last month, and that a growing school workload has been causing the 13-year-old to gradually give up her extracurricular Chinese studies.

“When the kids were younger, we could provide them with a half day of Chinese classes. Now that they’re older, they spend all day at school and have time for only an hour and a half of after-school Chinese.” Van adds that distance is also an obstacle. Many of the children live in other areas, and have to rely on their mothers, aunts, uncles, or grandparents to get them to their Chinese classes. That means that not only do the kids themselves have to be interested in learning Chinese, but their family members have to be willing and able to provide logistical support.

Eden has students from first grade to fifth. Some can pronounce Chinese characters using the bopomofo phonetic system but don’t know what the characters mean, while others can read and write characters. But Van remains committed to teaching all of them in spite of their different ages and abilities. “This class is the only thing around enabling these Vietnamese–Taiwanese kids to speak to their fathers and grandparents when they go to Taiwan,” says Van.

Take Ruan, for example. His father is in Taiwan, his mother is working in Australia, and he lives in Vietnam with his maternal grandparents. Ruan has relied on the vocabulary he has learned through the center to communicate his feelings to his faraway father. In fact, he recently used his Mandarin to ask pointedly, “Dad, do you know what day my birthday is?”

Mandarin provides these “New Taiwanese kids” living in Vietnam with an important connection to their fathers and their birthplace. Eden is happy to provide the classes, but faces many obstacles in doing so.

“It’s hard finding organizations to work with,” says a frustrated Gao, who has worked for Eden in Vietnam for seven years. She says that Eden had originally planned to offer Chinese classes in Ho Chi Minh City, but gave up the idea after failing to find a local partner.

Eden’s partner in Vinh Long is the Vinh Long Union of Friendship Organizations. Tran Thi Hoa, the head of the association’s office, says that while 40-some NGOs have been in and out of Vinh Long, Eden is one of 29 that have provided services on a long-term basis. “Vinh Long is pretty out of the way, so everyone here knows Eden.”

Van Thi Xuan Mai teaches children bopofomo and traditional characters.

Serving Ho Chi Minh City

Like Eden, the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families provides services to children. However, TFCF didn’t set up shop in Ho Chi Minh City until September 2015.

Established in 1950, TFCF has in recent years been extending its operations overseas. In fact, its move into Vietnam was its fourth foreign venture, following forays into Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, and Swaziland.

Frank Chung, TFCF’s Vietnam representative, says that TFCF serves the same people in Vietnam that it does in Taiwan: poor children. However, the different environment results in a very different approach to those services.

TFCF finds Taiwanese sponsors to donate NT$700 per month to support the education of poor Vietnamese children. After accounting for currency exchange fees, sponsored children receive about US$16.80 per month to support their educations. Chung says that while this amount won’t cover a family’s expenses in Ho Chi Minh City, it will pay a child’s tuition.

As of the end of 2015, TFCF was helping 623 Vietnamese students and had another 70-some kids on a list of those waiting for sponsors.

“Poverty has many faces.” Chung notes that poverty is widespread in rural Vietnam because there is little development and few jobs. But children in Ho Chi Minh City, which has a large population of migrants from the countryside, are more likely to be poor because they are being raised in a single-parent family or by their grandparents. “Rural migrants don’t have household registrations, so their children don’t appear on school rolls. In fact, they are unable to enroll in public schools.”

Dee Deng, a child poverty researcher with TFCF in Vietnam, observes that nearly 60% of childhood poverty is the result of growing up in a single-parent household or in a household with several children. “All the clients we’ve been dealing with lately are teen fathers and teen mothers who don’t have much education and are incapable of taking care of children. Such couples are prone to divorcing and becoming single parents,” says Deng.

The restrictions the Vietnamese government places on the activities of NGOs make it necessary for them to seek a local partner (usually a local non-profit or the local government) to deliver services. In TFCF’s case, its local partner provides documentation on kids, which TFCF then screens to find candidates meeting its criteria. 

“In Taiwan, TFCF can tailor its services to students in all kinds of situations. In Vietnam, we have to go about providing services indirectly. It’s more like charity work than social work,” explains Chung.

Though severely constrained, TFCF has been actively training and guiding seven local social workers, working with them to deliver and even expand its services. This year, TFCF plans to apply to extend the scope of its operations southwards, and is considering providing services everywhere within an hour or two’s drive south of Ho Chi Minh City.

The Taiwan Fund for Children and Families’ core mission is helping children get an education. (courtesy of TFCF)

Laying foundations

By the time TFCF began offering educational support in Vietnam in September 2015, Eden had already been there for a decade.

In fact, Eden held a ten-year-thanksgiving retrospective at its Ho Chi Minh City office in August 2015. There, many of its Chinese language students sang and performed the “Rock, Paper, Scissors” song: “My friend, let’s bow to one another / Shake hands, and play rock, paper, scissors / We’ll play the game and see who wins / And if you lose you’ll come with me.”

As the happy, innocent voices of the kids rang out, Eden’s workers remained focused on the importance of establishing firm foundations. After all, education provides children with greater opportunities to succeed in life, and, unlike a game of rock, paper, scissors, with education everyone wins.

Frank Chung (fourth from right), the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families’ representative in Vietnam, TFCF researcher Dee Deng (far right), and local social workers are working together to educate Vietnamese children.

Studying Chinese after school not only requires that Ruan Yuzhe be motivated to learn, but also that his grandparents take him to class.

Language is a bridge between cultures. Mandarin provides the children of Taiwanese–Vietnamese marriages with a connection to their father’s homeland. The Eden Foundation’s Chinese language classes in Vinh Long Province are bridge builders. (courtesy of the Eden Foundation)