Thy on her graduation day
Thy grew up in Dong Nai. Her parents divorced when she was young and when her mother remarried and took on the responsibilities of a new family, Thy was raised by her aunt, who took her in and did her best with what little she had. The two of them shared a rented room in Ho Chi Minh City, though her aunt could not fully provide for her.
Aware of her situation from a very early age, Thy learned to stand on her own. To earn her diploma, she studied at night and worked days as a factory worker in the city’s export processing zone to pay her own way through school. Her mother could help with only a small part of her tuition, already stretched thin caring for a younger brother and two younger half-siblings.
Thy needed to complete an internship in order to complete her program, which required full-time commitment. To take it on, Thy had to leave her factory job, and losing that income cut off her main means of support. With her tuition for the upcoming semester still unpaid, she found herself in crisis so close to the finish line.
“Losing my main income put me in a very difficult place,” she remembers. “I hadn’t been able to finish paying my tuition, and I was worried I wouldn’t make it to graduation.”
In October 2025, as Thy weighed whether she could carry on, her school flagged her situation and connected her with our partner, Saigon Children’s Charity, whose team stepped in with a scholarship that helped her finish her final semester of Logistics.
Thy on the job in her logistics role
“That scholarship came just in time,” she says. “It let me set down the burden of the fees and complete my studies with a steady mind.” In May 2026, she graduated with strong marks and stepped into her job at Spider, a logistics and freight transport firm where she now earns about $300 per month, which is enough to support herself and stand on her own two feet – and many times more than she could make had she not finished school.
The support also gave Thy more than a way to pay for school. Through the program’s life skills classes, a young woman who had always kept to herself learned to open up, to speak with confidence, and to share. The moment she remembers most was a volunteer trip to a vocational center for people with disabilities and orphaned children.
“Seeing those children smile, I was so happy to realize that even with my own difficulties, I still had enough to pass something positive on and help others’ lives.”
Thy lends a hand during a volunteer day at a vocational center
