The Touching and Helping Programme
Children in Vietnam
This programme covers a wide variety of activities; the common thread is helping rural villages break the cycle of poverty. The main activities are:
- help and encouragement for remote villages to set up their own nurseries and schools, enabling more children to get an education and find better work later on. Plum Village helps fund teachers and sponsors children whose parents could not otherwise afford to send them to school (their education is not free). This is a great help to parents – it allows both of them to work and bring more money into the household, whilst the children receive a meal and glass of soya milk at school.
- other proactive support for poor rural communities, such as the construction of bridges, roads and wells, and planting trees.
- care for the more vulnerable members of the community – those who are elderly and / or disabled but whose families have no resources to attend to their needs.
- aid at times of emergencies, such as the floods and droughts that occur regularly.