Organic Farming to Secure Education:
Green House Project at Terexa Ethnic Home
Project Summary
"Giving better education and perspective
to disadvantaged ethnic children in Vietnam"
"Giving better education and perspective
to disadvantaged ethnic children in Vietnam"
Organic Farming to Enrich Meals for Children at Dak Rong Primary Boarding School
Project Background
Introduction: Socio-demographic issues often faced by ethnic minorities in Vietnam
Dak Rong Primary Boarding school is located in a remote area in K'Bang, Gia Lai Province, Central Highlands of Vietnam. The school has about 400 pupils and provides full boarding to them so that the kids don't have to travel long and rugged roads every day to go to school. At the same time, the school only gets funding to provide 1 meal per day to its pupils.
With the limited funding that they receive, Dak Rong Primary School can only cook very basic meals. Each meal costs around 0.15 USD and is composed of some rice, a bit of vegetable and fried eggs. It is by no means sufficient for children in that age who need much more nutrition to support their growth and learning activities.
We were very saddened by the image of such meal during our last visit to the school in July 2017. Hence, IAMIN is joining hands with friends, family members, other institutions and Dak Rong Primary Boarding School to improve the current situation of poor meals provided to the kids.
Dak Rong
Primary School
K'Bang, Gia Lai
Central Highlands
Hanoi
Capital of Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh City
Largest city in Vietnam
Situation at hand: Poor meals for kids at Dak Rong Primary Boarding School
326 children out of 400 are eligible for support from the council, with an amount of 150 mil. VND/month. To board all 400 children the school can only allocate about 370,000 VND to each child...about 18,000 VND/day (80 pennies) for food and other allowances.
The school also has to hire helpers to take care of cooking and cleaning. 18 mil. VND out of the 150 mil. VND are spent on salary of 6 helpers each month.
Eventually, only 10,000 VND is left to cover daily meals of each child. Breakfast gets about 3,000 VND (15 pennies), lunch and dinner together around 7,000 VND. This small allowance is also exposed to high prices of food ingredients due to remote location of the School.
Comprehensive project description
In the light of the principles of I AM IN FOUNDATION, and of our limited capacity to help, we choose to support institutions with head masters and staff that we think are guided by their hearts. We believe such people could never stop carrying for others, ie, those poor children around them…no matter how tough the job may be.
Of the 26 teachers in the school, many teachers still have no housing, and live in difficult situation. And yet, to help the children, each year the 26 teachers jointly donate 40 million to buy clothes for their students. The weather here is harsh, each child has only 2, 3 sets of thin clothes and they usually are very quick to get sick when the temperatures fall, says head master Tuan.
In addition, teachers also donate a day's salary on food and recreational activities for the kids to have some joy occasionally…making the kids to truly feel home at school. Still, it is unlikely to keep them from returning to school after the holidays because they indeed do miss their families much. Head master Tuan never gives up and always mobilizes all teachers to bring the kids back to school. Even during rainy days, teachers have to go long distance and dangerous roads to bring students back to school. Just by joining hands, head master Tuan and the teachers believe everyone will help the kids have a better life, with a brighter future.
Our Organic Farming project at Dak Rong primary boarding school encompasses three stages:
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Stage 1 - Construct greenhouse and drill water well: (completed) Greenhouse solution will help to protect vegetable from heavy rain and insects. Drill a water well to provide enough water to the school and farm during the dry season
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Stage 2 - Construct pigsty and purchase 30 baby pigs (completed): A pig raising scale of 30 pigs will allow the school to both add meat to the children meals weekly, and to have enough meat to sell and self-fund the next cycles of baby pigs
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Stage 3 - Extend capacity of farming and pig raising
The project is completed. We are beyond thankful for your support!
Click below to see our milestones
March 2018: Project completion with pigsty!
Dear friends and supporters,
I AM IN FOUNDATION would like to express our gratitude for your support on and trust in the Organic farming project at Dak Rong primary boarding school
The work on pigsty at TH Dakrong school is finally completed. It will help to provide more nutrition to the children at school, and help our school save money (they will no longer need to buy expensive meat from the market). In a few months, when the pigs reach 70 to 80 kg, the children at school will have 120 grams of meat / week.
In the near future, when the teachers know better how to manage the pigsty, we hope that you will help support Dakrong School to increase the number of pigs to further improve the children's meals.
Thank you so much for all your support!
October 2017: Water well is completed
We are so happy to inform you that with your generous contribution we have been able to complete the first part of our project. The work on water well drilling has completed completed recently and our children at Dak Rong School can enjoy fresh and clean water directly from the water basin behind their accommodation.
With this water well now in operations, the children can have regular water supply even during the dry seasons.
Furthermore, this water supply can also be used for farming when we complete the Organic Farm project part as next.
We look forward to sharing more exciting news with you soon!
List of our generous donors (updated in Jan 2018)
And all that success and hopefully long-lasting impact would not have been possible without your generous support, both mentally and financially.
IAMIN would like to express our deepest gratitude to our dear friends, family members, and supporters - we feel so blessed to have received your helping hands.
Already more than 190 million VND have been generously donated to support the Dak Rong Primary Boarding School project.
