Ethnic students prepare their own meals every day. (Photo courtesy of hagiangtv.vn)PhuongDo is a suburban secondary school about 4km from Ha Giang city’s centre,with 200 students, mainly ethnic minority children in highland communes livingin extremely difficult conditions.
Dueto dangerous terrains and lack of transportation, many students have to get upat 3 or 4am to walk to school.
Understandingthe difficulties of these poor students, Phuong has built thisself-sustaining model for about 60 of 200 students in the school. Accordingly,ethnic children who live far away and have difficult familycircumstances can temporarily stay and study at school from Monday to Fridayand return home at weekends.
Becausethe students are in difficult circumstances with limited money, in orderto reduce the financial burden on their families, the school has guided them inself-catering.
Atmealtimes, there is only one instructor and students have to cook,arrange food trays, wash dishes and do laundry themselves.
Thechildren also participate in growing vegetables on the school campus andcleaning their own bedrooms.
"Theethnic students here are used to hard living conditions, so they adapt veryquickly. Their cooking skills are even better than those of olderchildren," Phuong said.
Phuongsaid that the reason for establishing this model comes from her love for students,her desire to reduce the burden on their parents and her hope that the childrencan be more independent in their future lives.
“Ido not care about how many of them can participate in the provincialcompetition for excellent students, but I hope they can improve their lifeskills and be more independent in the future,” she said.
"Ofcourse, if students can get good grades and be good at life skills at the sametime, that is great.”
Difficultiesremain
Eachmonth to join hands with the school in paying for food and accommodation, eachparent must contribute from 300,000 to 400,000 VND.
Thus,each child's daily meal costs only 18,000 VND divided among three meals, whichbarely meets the nutritional requirements, and usually consists of vegetables,tofu, peanuts, very little meat, and eggs.
Therefore,in addition to building the self-sustaining model, the school also asks forsupport from organisations, sponsors and sometimes even teachers themselves toensure the students get meals.
Accordingto Nguyen Thi Quynh, a teacher at the Phuong Do Secondary School, everymonth each teacher contributes 50,000 VND to the student support fund andtakes turns on duty at the school to teach them life skills outside of schoolhours.
"Upto 30 percent of ethnic children boarding here cannot afford the costof meals and may have to drop out of school,” Quynh said. “So, all of usteachers want to contribute something to help them continue to go to school.”
Quynh,although only assigned to teach English at this secondary school threetimes a week, understands the difficulties of the teachers and students here.She says that students now face a lot of obstacles in homeschooling due to therecent citywide lockdown.
"Ethnic familiesdo not have computers and smartphones for their children to study online athome during the pandemic. So teachers have to make small homework books, thenprint them out and ask the village chiefs to deliver them to each student'shouse," she said.
“Atthe end of the week, we collect the homework books, markthem and hand out another book for the following week. Many studentsbefore returning home due to the pandemic told me that they did not want toleave school because going home meant they would have less food to eat. Thatmade me sad for a long time.”
Theidea for a self-sustaining school was upgraded by Phuong from the model ofthe semi-boarding schools sustaining local people, which appeared in Vietnamin the 1960s when times were even tougher.
Alongwith the change and development of the country, more and moreparents voluntarily send their children to school, and the number ofsemi-boarding schools for ethnics is growing fast.
The localself-sustaining schools are diverse, based on the specific conditions of eachplace. Sometimes parents prepare lunch boxes for their children to bring toschool, or contribute food and fuel or cook extra soup at the schools.
Withsmart, innovative models of schooling on the rise, life will hopefully getbetter for the children of the country’s ethnic minorities./.
VNA
