On 14th Dec, a special get-together took place at the British Consulate in Hồ Chí Minh City, welcoming over 100 alumni from the Scholarship Programme and the Skills & Vocational Training Programme (Thăng Long School) back to their shared home at saigonchildren.
These are two of the four core programmes that Saigonchildren has initiated since its early years of operation to support children in Vietnam. Among these, with the Scholarship Programme, we observed over time that the need for support to enter university or college significantly increased among our beneficiaries. In response, we expanded the scope of our support to include those who had received scholarships at the grade level. As a result, the first group of tertiary education scholarship recipients was supported in the late 1990s.
Upon years of not gathering, many are now in their 30s, with successful careers and happy families. Yet, the bond between them and the saigonchildren team remains as strong as ever. They exchanged warm hugs after so much time apart, chuckled and exclaimed, “Look at how different we were back then!” while flipping through old photos on the ‘Memory Station’ from when they first joined the programmes.
The event also marked the official launch of the Alumni Network, a platform to foster mutual support and collaboration while undertaking community projects, especially to help disadvantaged children. During the event, some (former) students also shared their long-short stories about their journey with saigonchildren and when they became members of the Network.
Saigonchildren would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Pizza Hut Vietnam for providing delicious pizzas that fuelled our lively conversations, and to NISE Media as well as Quỳnh, Minh, and Nhật from Éclair Jolie, for capturing the beautiful moments of the event in stunning photographs.
