Balancing school with a part-time job was never easy for Mai, yet with her determination and the right support helped her take the first steps into the working world.
“It’s a good start,” Mai says of her first full-time job. “Giving me the opportunity to apply what I’ve learned and continue growing.”
For a long time, a start like this was far from certain.
Mai grew up in a rented home in Ho Chi Minh City. Her father drives a motorbike taxi and her mother works as a housekeeper, and money was always tight. After ninth grade, rather than let the costs of school keep mounting for her family, she enrolled in a vocational program at Ly Tu Trong College. To pay her own way, she waited tables for about $1 an hour. It was just enough to keep her in school, and she struggled to make every class and make every shift counted.
In her final year, that changed. Through its Getting Ready for Work program, our partner, Saigon Children’s Charity in Vietnam, gave her a scholarship that covered her tuition. From then on, Mai could give her full attention to her studies and her graduation internship.
“The scholarship gave me so much more than help with the costs,” she says. “It was real encouragement, the strength to keep moving toward my dream.”
The support did not stop at one diploma. When Mai finished the vocational program and wanted to continue her education, a second scholarship enabled her to earn a full college degree in logistics. Through the program’s life skills classes, she also built the kind of confidence a degree alone does not give.
“The life skills classes were a gift of their own,” she says. “They gave me and a lot of other students the confidence to walk into our first jobs.”
Mai graduated with strong marks. In May, her diploma in hand, she stepped into a job at a food company, in the field she trained for, earning about $275 a month. The work lets her put what she learned into practice, pick up new skills, and see more clearly the path she wants to follow.
The girl who once waited tables to stay in class now has a degree, a profession, and a steady income of her own.
“I’m grateful to my teachers and to Saigon Children’s Charity,” she says, “for helping me study well and reach a steady job like this.”
Mai’s support came through our partner’s Getting Ready for Work program, which helps young people in vocational training finish their studies and step into their first jobs. Alongside tuition, its life skills classes prepare them for what comes after the classroom, at work and in life. Every gift to the program helps another young person get ready, not only for a first job but for everything that follows it.
The classroom is only the beginning.
Give young people the education and life skills they need to take their next steps with confidence, at work and in life.
