As a society organization established by some Belgian men, Donxa works to help poor children in the countryside in Vietnam. Donxa’s operation manner is very effective, with a small amount of money, Donxa can change a family for the better.

Needy people are around us

Ms Hue, the owner of a small grocery in Hamlet 8, Trung Chau commune, has a special customer, a skinny girl with sad big eyes. The girl often buys vegetables, eggplants and soya curd but she never pays in cash. Instead, the girl just gives her a small pad of paper to write down the amount of money she owes her which then will be paid by staff from Donxa.

Hoa is rushing home to cook for her family, a father and her two sisters. Her mother left her family last Tet, and a 10-year-old girl has been the breadwinner since then. Her father, a used-to-be drunkard, suffers from metal disorders and is unable to work.

Hóa and her two sister

Like her father, Hoa’s elder sister is also insane. Her younger sister is in the second grade.Sometimes, her sisters and she had nothing to eat. One day, Hoa was too ill to go to school, but she then was so hungry that she went to the field to seek sweet potato to eat.

Phan Van Hoa and his family left the village for the mountainous area to seek for his luck. Unfortunately, he failed and his family went back to the village. At first, they did not have a house to live so they had to sleep in a tent. Then, his uncle built a small house for his family. He was lucky enough for his children to receive free education. Additionally, Donxa came and gave them food. Some months ago, Donxa paid for a well for his family to have water to live on.

In Trung Chau, some poor households receive aid from Donxa, such as food, clothes, schooling, and finance so that their children can be better taken cared of. Donxa has lent cows to 20 households. Those calves will be lent to other household (Sind, a cow stock, Development project).

“What does Donxa mean? “

Ms Nguyen Quy Quynh Anh, the project manager, explained: “Donxa was named after a village in Ha Nam, where its first project was carried out. Roby Bauweraerts, the president of the organization, established Donxa in August 2001. Roby was born in 1969 in Belgium. He set up Donxa when he was working as a technician for BP in Vietnam.

“Because I love Vietnam and the children here.”

Roby stated, “Among the countries in Middle America and Asia that I’ve been to, and I love your country the most. I said “your country” but somehow I feel that Vietnam is also my country now. I love Vietnam for its beautiful landscapes and friendly people.” From that love, Roby thought that he should do something for Vietnam. At first, he gave money to a non-governmental organization to sponsor poor children, but then as he wanted to contribute more to Vietnam, together with two of his friends, Roby established Donxa.

“Children are the future so our priority is children. All children, rich or poor, disabled or healthy, deserve to have equal chance for a better future. Therefore, all Donxa’s projects are targeted at children.

Donxa spent about 400 million VND building a disabled children’s home in Co Loa, Dong Anh, Hanoi. In 2003 the school was opened to the public, and now there are 16 children with mental retardation from Co Loa and the nearby communes studying there. Each teacher is given a monthly allowance of 500,000 VND in addition to their salary.

Roby  signs the agreement to sponsor operation for disabled children

In 2003 Donxa was officially set up, operating under the method of selecting one child from a poor family, sponsoring him/her and offering him/her with a small grant so that poor children can go to kindergarten and school.

The financial aid program has the advantage of bridging the sponsor individuals and the foster children. The sponsors are updated with information about their foster children and how their money is used every six months. Typically the sponsors make more donations when they know about the miserable situations of children in Vietnam. Donxa will work to find out what is best for the children. This way of working takes programme managers and volunteers a lot of time and energy (they have to pay at least one visit to each of hundreds of families involved in the project every month). However in return, they have received good results.

Another project that targets children is building the drinking water system in schools. The commune in which school benefit from the project pays for equipment storage house, and Donxa pays for the water filter system (cost about 100 million VND). And the program of vaccination to little children from poor families has been carried out in Co Loa, Duc Thuong.

One winter when Roby visited a commune located by a river dam, he saw that there were many houses had no door though it was very windy and cold. From that visit, Roby set up the “Wooden door” project installing doors to houses of poor family so that their children could be kept warm inside.
Donxa is working on a number of useful projects set up based on a humanitarian soul.

“Want to offer help to all poor people”

In order to select the needy people, Donxa normally asks local authorities for help with a list of poor people. After that, staff from Donxa comes and inspects, if those people in the list are really in need, Donxa will find ways to help them.

Donxa is funded by donations from Belgium. “Belgian sponsors come to us because they know Donxa works effectively and efficiently. Interestingly, not all of our sponsors are rich,” Roby said.

“If I could, I would like to help everybody, unfortunately, it is not what I can decide. We are trying to attract more sponsors and volunteers. When we have more sponsors, we will have more people starting from the poorest ones” Roby shared with me. Donxa is going to spread the projects to My Duc, Chuong My commune (Ha Tay) and Bat Bat commune (Ba Vi, Hanoi).

We are calling for the participation from the youngsters. Not until last July when Donxa hired some staff, before that Donxa used to run based on volunteers.
Nguyễn Quý Quỳnh Anh has joined Donxa’s projects since 2003 when she was a student at University of Foreign Relation.

Besides working in office every week, Nguyễn Quý Quỳnh Anh goes to communes 2 days a week and she visits 10 families involved in the projects a day. In those boiling hot days, two girls on motorbikes go from villages to villages. “It is not good salary that that we keep us here (we are   

“If you have clothes or books that you no long use, you can take them to us. Many children are living in need,” Quynh Anh appealed.

Children in cities now have too many beautiful clothes and toys that when they do not want them, those things are still nearly new. Quynh Anh then got contact to a group of volunteers “Love Sharing” from Webtretho.com, and collected old clothes for the children from 2 families in Trung Chau. This simple thing should be done widely, if so, more and more children will have clothes to wear, books to read and their future will surely be better. If a man from a far country in Europe works to help Vietnamese people, why can’t we help our people?

Translated from the source: http://vovnews.vn/Home/Donxa–vi-tre-em-ngheo-Viet-Nam/20066/35789.vov