Today we visited the VinaCapital Foundation and spoke with Mr. Kivette. Their mission is to transform the lives of underserved, marginalized and ethnic minority children and to empower their mothers. They typically focus on rural communities across Vietnam where women are massively undervalued and commonly treated in an almost subhuman manner. Some are kidnapped, raped, and forced to marry men who abduct them. This typically happens around the age of 13. The girls then have around 8 kids by the time they are in their late 20s. Medical complications can arise resulting in the death of the mothers. This treatment is ingrained in the tradition and culture of the area. VinaCapital works to educate the women of these villages that they are legally protected from this sort of treatment and should tell the police. The education also empowers young women in the community to become leaders and to pursue further education.

I was shocked to hear about the treatment of rural women across Vietnam. I never knew that these issues even existed. When I later asked one of the student volunteers about some of the issues he said that “kidnapping your bride” used to be common. Now, globalization through social media is teaching the people that the behavior is not good. He believed seeing western standards on social media was modifying the behavior in these villages. It seems that VinaCapital’s missions may be becoming easier to accomplish due to access of the internet being brought to the villages.

Mr. Kivette spoke about how income levels increase when medical care is given to impoverished people. Vina finances more than 1000 heart surgeries for rural children each year. They then monitor the family for 5 years and commonly find that the families has moved out of poverty. So benefiting the health of young people across Vietnam has immense effects across all aspects of their lives. Overall, I was amazed by the good done by Mr. Kivette and his team. They work extremely hard to change the lives of children and women across the country. I wish we could have spent another hour on the visit to hear more about the foundation as well as Mr. Kivette’s life.

We then went to class to learn about Vietnamese language and culture. We got to paint Nòn Lá hats and try desserts from across the country. Today’s class taught me about the regional differences present across Vietnam.