You are making a difference in Vietnam!
A glimpse of what your sponsored child’s life is like in Vietnam:
HOME LIFE
- The traditional Vietnamese diet includes rice, vegetables, and fish. Cooking methods often involve steaming or stir-frying.
- Houses are sometimes built on stilts to avoid flooding. Materials such as “rammed earth” (mixture of gravel, sand, silt, clay, and often, cement), straw, and bamboo are used for walls, and red clay tiles or sheets of corrugated metal for roofs. City homes are often made with brick, wood, and/or tile.
- In traditional Vietnamese family structure, three generations live under one roof.
SCHOOL AND EDUCATION
- Formal education includes 12 years of school, beginning with preschool or kindergarten.
- The school year in Vietnam begins in September, and the elementary school day lasts from 7:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
- At school, children often wear uniforms. Girls typically wear white dresses and boys wear white shirts and red kerchiefs.
VIETNAMESE CULTURE
- Children in Vietnam enjoy activities like badminton, video games, reading, swimming, and studying school subjects like English, social sciences, technology, or math.
- “Ca trù,” also known as “hát ả đào,” is one type of chamber music that has been popular in North and North Central Vietnam since the 15th century. It used to be the court music enjoyed by aristocrats and intellectuals who thought of ca trù as the perfect combination of poetry and music.
- Many languages and dialects are spoken in Vietnam, but Vietnamese is the official language and most widely used.
COUNTRY INFO
Vietnam is a Southeast Asian country located on the eastern coast of the Indochina Peninsula. The country’s landscape is full of mountains and tropical rainforests. Rice paddies and jungle regions are fed by beautiful rivers, home to a variety of wildlife. Vietnam is a densely populated country with a young population and a growing economy.
- Capital: Ho Chi Minh City
- Population: 97,040,334
- Language: Vietnamese
FH IN VIETNAM
Food for the Hungry’s (FH) work in Vietnam began in 1975 when FH founder, Dr. Larry Ward, helped refugees from the Vietnam War find new homes in the United States and other countries. In 2019, FH began child sponsorship in Vietnam. Today, child sponsorship is part of a community’s holistic development. Additionally, Vietnam is what we call a “sensitive” country, where traditional evangelism is ineffective or even illegal. We still strive to share the love of God in a culturally appropriate way.
YOUR SPONSORSHIP PROVIDES:
- Education initiatives to support children’s development.
- Worldview and values-based lessons that share the love of God in a culturally appropriate way.
- Hope and lasting change to your sponsored child’s life and community.
