The Global Fund For Children

Youth Entrepreneurship Takes Shape in Vietnam

• By Hoa Duong Piyaka on June 9th, 2010
• Category: Blog, East and Southeast Asia

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – Mr. Hoang arrived penniless in Ho Chi Minh City at the age of 19, and had no idea that eight years later he’d establish and become the head photographer and manager for Studio Anna, supervising a team of staff members, volunteers, and trainees. He started out with little concept of accounting, yet today he also handles the financial affairs and budgeting for his studio team. Mr. Hoang is quiet, calm, and unassuming. As we talk, he sits against a backdrop of brilliant sequined dresses in his elegant shop and photo studio just off Le Van Viet Street in District 9. Looking through his numerous photo albums, one understands immediately that he is a professional with an artistic eye.

Mr. Hoang photographs or supervises the photography of Ho Chi Minh City residents’ life events—from graduations to engagements, weddings to baby showers—and has assembled and trained a team of over ten people, most of whom come from the Binh Trieu Development Center and the Binh An Development Center, which are run by Friends for Street Children (FFSC), a GFC grantee partner and Sustainability Award winner.

FFSC established its formal program in 1997 and today operates ten development centers strategically located around the periphery of Ho Chi Minh City, offering 1,525 children classes in English, Vietnamese, computers, science, math, and art; vocational training; school sponsorships; and when necessary, a warm shelter. GFC’s support over the past decade has strengthened the Binh Trieu Development Center’s operations, materials, staff, and ability to provide healthcare. A portion of GFC’s funding also enables a select group of promising older students to attend vocational training or university classes.

Twenty-two-year-old An is one of the student vocational trainees. She is a hair and makeup artist who graduated from the Binh Trieu center and from FFSC’s vocational training and who now also works at Studio Anna. An came to Ho Chi Minh City five years ago from Soc Trang, a predominantly rice-growing village in the Mekong Delta, in search of work to support herself and her younger sister. When An’s parents died of AIDS, she and her sister were left to care for themselves. An and her sister stayed in the warm shelter of the Binh Trieu center for a time, but today she works at the studio and rents her own place.

“It is a very difficult and unsafe situation for young girls who come alone to Ho Chi Minh City,” cautions Le Thi My Hien, aka Sister Hien, the program director for FFSC. “This girl could not register for government school because she doesn’t have birth registration. She had no one to take care of her. Children like this generally don’t have very many options.”

Some sources report over 120,000 street children, many of whom are also migrant children, throughout Vietnam, while other sources report several tens of thousands, with high concentrations in urban areas like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Regardless of the exact number, most observers agree that the number is rising and creating negative social consequences for children and communities. It is common nowadays to observe child workers scavenging for recyclable materials, shining shoes, vending items on the street, begging, selling lottery tickets, pickpocketing, and even pilfering in the market. Without intervention, many of these children are susceptible to drug use, gang recruitment, sexual assault, sexual and labor exploitation, and other forms of violence.

Children and youth who arrive in Ho Chi Minh City without strong family networks and support often encounter extraordinary challenges in accessing education and options for future economic development due to their lack of birth registration or identity cards. FFSC works with these children to provide nonformal schooling, with the goal of either transitioning the children to formal schooling, when possible, or partnering with the education ministry to offer diplomas for certain grade levels. When the children become older, some of them drop out of school to find work in order to support themselves. FFSC offers vocational training as another option to assist youth in building marketable skills and finding jobs. The third approach that FFSC employs involves sponsorship of secondary and post-secondary students to study in government-run schools by assisting with tuition, materials, and other attendance costs.

Mr. Hoang is grateful for the chance to pursue his photography career at Studio Anna. He was born in Binh Cao and came to the city as a teenager to find work to help his impoverished family of eight. He encountered FFSC’s Binh Tho Development Center and studied there for two years, after which he spent nearly five years training to become a photographer and photo studio manager, with FFSC’s help. After he completed the trainings, he asked Sister Hien if FFSC could make a small loan to enable him to rent a studio and purchase some camera equipment. He shared with Sister Hien his dream not only to start his own small business but also to train and employ other FFSC youth. Microloans were a new direction for FFSC, but Sister Hien and her team believed in Mr. Hoang’s idea.

“We helped him with business planning and introduced some capital. He is very responsible and has never been late, and never missed a payment back to us,” Sister Hien proudly remarks.

Earlier in the day, I talked with about 20 students at the Binh Trieu center. This group graduated last week from fifth grade, and all of them will transition to the next grade level in the government-supported school next year. With the strong presence of local organizations like FFSC, these young people will be in a very good position to pursue their careers, with the successful examples of Mr. Hoang and Ms. An to draw from for advice and inspiration.