The Main emphasis of our work is, to invest into the youth. Actually we pay the salary for 351 kindergarten teachers of 25 € per month and we supply 796 children in our kindergarten with a warm lunch. The lunch is mostly whole-food vegetarian with rice, vegetables and soyproducts and we try to regularly distribute soy-milk. In some remote areas people are anxious, that kids would get sick by eating only vegetarian food. To avoid, that they do not send children to the kindergarten for that reason, we add some meet to the lunch in those cases.

 

Often children are locked away in the huts, because both parents try to earn some money. In these cases our kindergarten receive those disconcerted children. They receive loving care, get washed and they learn, that they are unique and beautiful as flowers. Our nursery school teachers, by playing games and singing songs with the children, try to mediate a consciousness of a peaceful inter-being and the protection of the environment with its animals, plants and minerals. The children are lifely but still seldom savage – very different to what we are used to in Europe. 

From the age of one up to two and a half years the children are taken care of in day nurseries and the elder ones in kindergarten. For children from the age of five a preschool with calculation-, writing- and reading exercises are provided. Before children are allowed to visit primary school, they have to be trained in writing letters and numbers over one year in preschool. In regions where most of the people communicate in dialects, children have to learn proper Vietnamese in preschool, before they are allowed to enter Primary school. Because parents have to pay preschool-fee, many children of poor families stay illiterates. Maitreya-Fonds supports many of these families by offering preschool-education for free including a warm meal for lunch. Kindergarten-buildings are also an important village center for the parents and are used for meetings. This reduces the migration of the day-laborers looking for a job and helps to create a social structure within the new villages. Kindergarten-projects are a resting place and anchor for the poor families and enable both parents to earn their living - still that means that for most families in this situation hardly more than 10,00 Euro per month remain as earnings.

Recently we have to deal with a new problem: Inflation and skyrocketing prices concerning food, construction-material and fuel. This is not a specific Vietnamese problem, but the expression of international food shortage, not only caused by weather or catastrophes, but also due to speculations on the commodity prices.

This new development strikes especially the poor people and creates a threatening life situation. We are asked to adapt our budget to this situation and request sustained donations for this reason.