Be A Guardian: Phan Thi Thuy Dung

Thuy Dung is the second child in a family with 3 kids. Her father died when she was only 15 months old. Her mother works seasonally to support her children. She makes and sells rice cakes in dry season, and works for food stalls during cold season.

The family lives in a tiny room rented on Huynh Ngoc Hue street. Dung’s older sister, a freshman at Da Nang Medical College, has to stay with her grandparent near Nga Ba Hue. The family’s monthly income is only VND 700.000 (about SGD 70). One half of this is to pay the rent, and the other half is spent on all other expenses.

Despite the difficult situation, Dung is a thoughtful and caring girl, who is much loved by friends and teachers. She tries to study well and gets the tuition fee exempt from the school, which eases her mother’s financial burden. Once she wrote an excellent essay titled “You met a fairy in your dream, and were granted three wishes”. She wrote it in tears about her mother and deeply touched her teachers. Dung has been an excellent student in several years continuously.

Dung dreams of becoming a doctor to help cure other people. She loves drawing, especially designing clothes for dolls. She showed us a whole fashion collection she had drawn in a notebook.