Sunflower Social Protection and Orphan Fostering Center (Sunflower Center) in My Phuoc Ward (Ben Cat town), on a day under the harsh sun of early March, is a small house hidden in a small alley. Over the years, this place has become a warm home, a solid fulcrum for "special" children and helps them confidently overcome their fate.
“Special” children
Vu Thi Phuong Thao, manager of Sunflower Center, said that now the older children have learnt directly at school after a long online learning time. Currently, there are 30 children, ranging from 5 to 18, including 24 orphans and 6 children with disabilities. All the children here have special circumstances. Some are fatherless, some motherless or lost both of their parents. Several children have a partial defect in their body. There are also children, whose families are in too difficult circumstances and were sent here for help.
Two sisters Thu and Dat learn first words at Sunflower Center.
Huynh Huyen Trang, born in Binh Dinh province, is only 5 years old. Despite her young age, Trang has been at this facility for more than 1 year. Huyen Trang soon became motherless when her mother left the family, and her father is in poor health due to a work accident. In 2021, she came to this center. When she saw Ms. Thao, Huyen Trang quickly showed her notebook to show off the results of a whole morning’s hard work. But when she saw strangers, Trang was closed, timid and quiet. It took a while to talk, get acquainted, Huyen Trang said: "I am about to enter the first grade so I have to try hard. I want to do as well as brothers and sisters here. I want to become a teacher."
Ms. Thao pointed to the two children who were writing together in the back, and said that they were two sisters Vo Anh Thu (12 years old) and Vo Tan Dat (11 years old), who had been here recently. The two sisters followed their parents from Ca Mau province to stay in Bau Bang district. But during the fourth Covid-19 wave, their mother died of Covid-19 infection, their father also died a few months later due to a serious illness, grandparents on both sides are too old and not able to feed them. "The two had come here recently, it was a little strenuous at first, they cried and asked to come back all day, cowered and refused to play with other children. After a few months, the children are now getting used to this house and getting along better."
Due to their special circumstance, although they are 11 and 12 years old, both Dat and Thu have just started to learn the first-grade program. Having long, silky black hair with a round face, bright eyes and a cute smile, Thu said: "My parents are gone, so sometimes my brother and I are sad and miss our parents. But teachers, brothers and sisters here all love and help us too much so that our sorrow is reduced somewhat. We went to school to learn reading and writing."
30 lives with 30 different circumstances, coming from different provinces and cities, but all children in Sunflower Social Protection and Orphan Fostering Center will be raised and matured thanks to the love of teachers here. The love and care given here may not be equal to the love of their biological parents, but it all contributes to alleviating the losses and disadvantages that they suffer. It gives them more confidence in a better life ahead.
Incubation of green shoots
Sunflower Center is located at the foot of a small alley in quarter 2, My Phuoc ward. This place is both a classroom and the home of many children with disabilities and orphans. Today's Sunflower Center is a united collective, members stick together as one family.
Nguyen The Vinh, Director of Sunflower Center, said: "I myself am a disabled person, so when I see children here, I see my childhood in it. Empathy has prompted me to do something to protect them. Numerous children have grown up here and achieved success in their lives. To have a Sunflower Center like today, we went through countless hardships and difficulties."
Huynh Huyen Trang with her writing practice.
Although it is a social protection facility, the material and spiritual life of the children here is taken care of quite fully by the teachers. In addition to regular school hours, the children also received extra math, physics, chemistry, English classes taught by teacher Vinh and five other teachers. The most surprising thing is that foreign teachers come here to teach the children more English skills. Besides, they also learn to do the smallest things in the house, such as cleaning, growing vegetables..., and life skills and how to be a good person.
Just like that, for more than 10 years, whenever anyone introduced a difficult circumstance, teacher Vinh travelled from south to north, directly verified the situation and picked them up to the Sunflower Center. Some children here gained high scores and were admitted to prestigious universities, even received scholarships to study abroad.
More than 4 years with this place, teacher Vu Thi Phuong Thao, said: "I came to Sunflower Center as a predestination. Children have long seen us as their mothers and fathers. Every time they face a problem, they actively come to me or other teachers to confide in, ask us for advice so that they can make the right decisions. Until now, I have no regrets about coming to Sunflower family."
Living under a house full of warm feelings, whether they have grown up, leave the Sunflower home to go to school or work and achieve certain successes, but they always remember and return to visit teachers here. It is also the motivation for teachers at Sunflower Center to continue their mission of becoming godfathers and godmothers for disadvantaged children in all parts of the country.
Reported by Hong Phuong – Transalted by Ngoc Huynh
