Thanks to Virga Foundation, 90 children at Le Tri Secondary School will be studying in safer classrooms by next year
In Ba Chuc Commune, a remote border area five hours from Ho Chi Minh City, Le Tri’s students have learned to watch the sky. Two of the school’s five classrooms are makeshift wooden buildings, their pillars eaten through by termites. The iron roof pushes dry-season temperatures toward 113°F, and when the rains come, water blows through the walls and the noise drowns out the teacher. Many of Le Tri’s students come from Ba Chuc’s Khmer ethnic minority community and already face steep barriers to education. Packed forty-five to a classroom built for twenty-five, the children most at risk of dropping out find staying in school harder still.
“We worry the room might collapse. The walls are damp and insects and snakes hide in the gaps. We come to school to learn, but we spend our time worrying instead,” said Chau Say, Grade 9 student.
With Virga’s gift, our partner, Saigon Children’s Charity, will be able to replace those structures with two permanent classrooms and add a 200-square-metre playground, the school’s first outdoor space. Built by SCCUSA’s in-country partner Saigon Children’s Charity and handed over by mid-2027, the classrooms will serve 90 children a year and more than 800 students over the coming decade.
Virga is a familiar friend with SCCUSA. Late last year, as typhoons flooded classrooms across Vietnam, the Foundation gave $10,000 to our Back to Learning 2025 campaign, helping refurbish 13 storm-damaged kindergartens and restore safe spaces for more than 1,000 of the country’s youngest learners. From those kindergarteners to the teenagers of Le Tri, it is clear that Virga shares our deep belief that every disadvantaged child in Vietnam deserves the tools, the safety, and the opportunity to build a better life for themselves, and that education is where that better life begins.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to the people of Virga Foundation – for their generosity, consistency, and the trust they continue to place in Vietnam’s children.
