Our projects from 1996 to 2012
Between 1996 and 2012, we built, renovated and extended 32 nursery schools, 4 in Kon Tum Province and 28 in Phu Tho Province. All the schools are equipped with school canteens and income-generating activities such as pig farms and vegetable gardens. Personalised support has been developed for families to finance livestock farming: micro-credits have been granted to 60 villagers with a very good repayment rate. This proved very positive, and the scheme was taken over by the Women's Union, enabling the development of chicken farms and tea plantations.
Two field missions in 2018 and 2020 enabled us to visit all the schools in Phu Tho and carry out an assessment several years after the end of our projects. All the infrastructure is in very good working order: François, an SDE volunteer, and Mai-Linh, an interpreter, travelled through the districts of Thanh Son, Tan Son and Yen Lap for a month in March 2018 to meet the villagers. Children, parents and teachers were very proud to show them around their schools, which are, in general, very well maintained. These three districts have greatly developed in recent years: road infrastructure has replaced previously difficult tracks. Villages that were inaccessible in the early 2000s are now easily accessible, enabling children from isolated hamlets to attend school. The results of the mission were very positive: 23 schools are operating in very good conditions. Some have been enlarged and improved by the authorities. 5 small, isolated schools have been annexed to larger, more central establishments. Medical check-ups for children have continued and are managed by the local health centres. All the canteens are operational and offer a meal to schoolchildren every day. Most schools still have vegetable gardens. Only the pig farms have not survived. The white pigs, which are much more fragile than the smaller black pigs, died after eating manioc and other tubers. The President of Sourires d'Enfants, Florence Nguyen-Rouault, also visited Phu Tho province in February 2020, where she was welcomed by the Vice-Governor of Yen Lap district. She was able to visit nursery schools built by the association in the early 2000s. The schools are clean, healthy and well maintained. At the time, the teachers were busy cleaning and disinfecting schools that had already been closed because of the Coronavirus-covid19 epidemic.