vietnam Archives - Life is a long story

Come and see

At first, no one believed the children were being trafficked. What changed everything was not an argument, but an invitation.

Blue Dragon’s first days of rescuing kids from slavery were scary. Not just because of the dangers of confronting human trafficking, but because people couldn’t see that this really was trafficking.

We were seeing children taken from rural villages in central Vietnam and put to work in factories in Ho Chi Minh City. They were lured with promises of opportunity and training. Parents, most of whom lived in extreme poverty and had never been to school themselves, dreamt of their children having a better future. So the children left home with parental consent – by deception, of course – to work in sweatshops.

At that time, Vietnamese law was clear on human trafficking when it involved crossing international borders. But when it came to trafficking within the country, the law was very grey.

Blue Dragon didn’t want that to stop us. There were kids as young as 10, working up to 18 hours a day on factory floors while their parents thought they were in vocational training. We began working with families, village by village, to help them understand the reality and offer to bring their children home.

That’s how our earliest rescue operations began.

Doubt

However, not everyone was convinced. Around the villages, there were parents, community leaders and government officials who thought we were making it all up. I believe the phrase “trouble makers” may have been mentioned more than once.

As our work grew, so too did the pushback. In places, we were not welcome. I remember one day going to visit a family whose child we had recently found in a factory and brought home. Now we were helping them enrol in school again and assisting the father to buy fishing nets so he could earn a better income.

Out of nowhere, a local official appeared, apparently doing his own home visits. I found myself hiding behind a house until he had left, fearing that I’d be detained and asked to leave.

That was more than 15 years ago. Fast forward to today, and Blue Dragon works in seven provinces around the country, engaging communities and government agencies on this same issue of human trafficking. We regularly rescue people from slavery and represent them in court cases against their traffickers.

So what turned the tide, to take our work from being on the margins to being embraced and supported?

An invitation

It was a discussion one day with a local official, Mr “Thi”. He was a good man and cared for his community, but he was certain that no child trafficking was taking place in his area. He argued with us that going to work or training away from home was a better option for the kids than being at home, out of school, with no prospects locally for earning money.

And he simply didn’t believe our stories of kids being exploited to work long hours in hazardous conditions without pay or adequate food.

Our breakthrough came with a simple offer: Come with us. We’ll take you to these factories so you can see for yourself.

By this time, Mr Thi knew us well enough to see that our intentions were good, even if we might be wrong about the issue of child exploitation. The trust we had built by assisting members of his community opened a door that argument alone never could.

And so, Mr Thi accepted the offer. We arranged his travel to the city and accompanied him from factory to factory. He could see with his own eyes the children from his community working on ancient industrial machines and sleeping on factory floors.

Until he saw it, he couldn’t believe it. But once he knew what was happening, Mr Thi became a powerful advocate for protecting children from human trafficking. What began as skepticism had shifted into understanding and trust.

From seeing to action

Blue Dragon didn’t need to lobby for change. A local official took the lead, sharing what he had seen so that stronger protections could be put in place. This quickly spread from the village level to the province leaders – and then to the central government.

Blue Dragon no longer had to hide our work. We received formal acceptance to operate in the communities affected by this form of human trafficking – and we still work there to this day.

When the law was revised just a couple of years later, it included clear reference to “domestic human trafficking”, allowing police to take strong action when children are lured away to work like that.

With the whole community on board, we were able to put an end to child exploitation in those areas. The sweatshops that once thrived on child labour are shuttered. Children from those villages who once were easy targets for the traffickers are now in school, or have grown up to join training and get good jobs. Luong is one outstanding example.

And our success there has opened the door for Blue Dragon to take our anti-trafficking work to other regions of Vietnam that also need it.

What we learned

We started by rolling up our sleeves and doing the work ourselves. This showed others both the problem and the solution.

From there we turned our critics into allies, who went on to “own” this for themselves. Mr Thi and other community leaders didn’t simply start to support Blue Dragon; they took ownership of the issue and took the lead.

And that led to a change of mindset which in turn made possible the revision of the national law on trafficking.

The struggle to end human trafficking is far from over. But those early days taught us something we’ve carried ever since: systems don’t change just because they are instructed to. And they don’t change because well-meaning people promote a great idea.

Systems change when people can see clearly what is happening; and people only see when trust makes it possible.

Sometimes, the work of creating change begins with something as simple as an invitation:

Come and see.

Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation is working towards a world where we are all free from exploitation and slavery.

Invisible

What happens when a child is loved, known and cared for — but unseen to the system meant to protect him?

Trong waved me over to the table as soon as he saw me.

It was lunchtime at the Blue Dragon centre in Hanoi. Kids were drifting in – some from school, some from the streets – and the meal was just getting underway.

There at the back of the room, sitting with a table of kids, was Trong.

He’s 7 years old but Trong was surrounded by a group of teens. They saw themselves as Trong’s protector, making sure he ate plenty – as Vietnamese families do.

It’s been a while since I saw Trong, so I joined his table and we chatted endlessly while we ate. When he finally had his fill, the teens helped him clear up his bowl. Trong raced out the door, back to the drop-in centre to play.

And that was it. A brief encounter over a bowl of rice. But I haven’t been able to get that moment out of my mind.

Trong’s mother and father are both Blue Dragon ‘alumni’.

His mother died when he was just a baby; I don’t think Trong has any memory of her.

His father is in prison. He’s a good young man, but grew up without the support of a loving family. As a single dad, he has struggled to get a job and settle down. He’ll be released from prison soon and I know he’ll be eager to start over, reunited with his son.

So Trong is living with an aunty who loves him very much despite her own difficult situation. A young woman in her 20s, raising her brother’s child is a heavy responsibility.

On top of it all, Trong has no birth certificate. His mother died before the paperwork could be completed and with his father in prison, there just hasn’t been a way forward.

And no birth certificate means no school. Trong was initially accepted into Grade 1, but partway through the year he had to leave because his family couldn’t provide the documentation that’s required.

So now he studies with Blue Dragon teachers a few times a week and while our lawyers are poised to help him get a birth certificate, there’s nothing we can do until his father comes home.

In the midst of this complexity, all this grief and hardship and loss, is this delightful 7 year old boy who loves to play and enjoys being doted on by the Blue Dragon teenagers.

There’s a predictable process that will take place here. When Trong’s father is released from prison, Blue Dragon will help him get set up with a home and a job – maybe some vocational training first. We’ll start work immediately on the birth certificate and aim to get Trong back into school when the new academic year rolls around in August. From there, we’ll continue as needed.

For now, Trong waits. Not because anyone denies his need to learn, or his right to be cared for—but because a system designed for order has no place for a child whose parents are absent.

Trong’s story asks to face a larger question: how many children in our world are quietly excluded, not by cruelty, but by procedure?

If we are serious about protecting children, then helping Trong is critical, but not enough. We also have to fix the systems that inadvertently make a seven-year-old invisible.

Blue Dragon’s work bridges the divide between helping children in immediate need and making systemic change for the benefit of all. You can read more about our legal advocacy here.

Starting over

It’s been a long hiatus. Time to return to the Life Is A Long Story blog.

I’ll be posting on the first Monday of each month (and sometimes more), starting February 2.

As always, I will share moments and insights from behind the scenes at Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation. My purpose is to inspire hope that our world can be a better place, but I’ll never gloss over the ugly truths of injustice and hardship.

Sometimes I will share important news and articles, and I’ll start that today with this link to a story we’ve just published: Fortresses of Fraud. In late 2025, some of our team went on an undercover visit to Cambodia to witness the development of online scamming compounds. What we saw was eye-opening and disturbing.

Keep an eye on your inboxes for coming posts!

Baby. Bathwater.

Burning the house down is great theatre, but it doesn’t make anything better.

Two things can be true at once.

It can be true to say that US government foreign aid has sometimes been poorly managed and funded things it shouldn’t.

It can also be true to say that US government foreign aid has done remarkable good for the whole world, including for America, and has saved millions of lives.

With a wave of change sweeping through the United States, the daily news cycle is overwhelming. All of us are finding it difficult to keep up. Some of my friends are talking nonstop about the issue of US foreign aid being cut and USAID being closed. Others haven’t even heard that this is happening.

I feel that there’s nuance missing from the discussion. So after a couple of months break from writing, I’d like to wade in on this highly controversial topic and say some things that perhaps nobody will fully agree with. And that’s OK.

Where we stand

My organisation, Blue Dragon, has benefited enormously from US funding. In addition to the people of America donating generously, about 10% of our budget has come from the US government. Not from USAID, but from the State Department.

Within the Department there’s an office called JTIP, which deals with human trafficking around the world. It releases an annual report evaluating the efforts of every country on the planet in their efforts to deal with human trafficking. And in identifying areas for improvement, it offers funding to make that happen.

Unlike some foreign aid programs, JTIP funding has been particularly flexible, covering direct action, research, and training, according to local needs. Above all, this program has been funding activities in countries that have little other funding available.

Because the US understands that human trafficking anywhere affects all of us.

Funding for Blue Dragon in the past few years has enabled us to work on the issue of human trafficking into forced scamming compounds. These are criminal enterprises in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, where people are lured with false promises of work and then forced to operate online as scammers. They set up fraudulent websites and apps; they create fake social media profiles and send out millions of emails; and they scam billions of dollars from people.

Who are their victims? You are. I am. I’ve lost a few hundred dollars of my own to scammers. If you haven’t had the experience yet, I can guarantee that you know someone (other than me) who has been scammed.

Frozen

US government funding for Blue Dragon’s work on this is now frozen—just like every other anti-trafficking organization that was receiving these funds.

We don’t know if it’s permanent. It might be unfrozen. We’ve been told that there’s a 90 day suspension during which all foreign aid is being reviewed. So I’m not giving up hope. We have an extremely difficult 90 days of budget shortfall and I’m grateful that many of our friends around the world are pitching in to help with this.

But after 90 days, nobody has any idea of what will come next.

And for those organisations who were receiving anti-trafficking funds from USAID? That source appears to be gone forever.

So… the US political movement that was so vocal about protecting children and stopping trafficking? Well, they’re the ones who just cut off the largest source of global funding for anti-trafficking work.

The flip side

At the same time, I know as well as anyone else that US Government funding has sometimes not been managed well. I’ve seen grants for human trafficking prevention go to agencies that have never been involved in this field of work, while agencies with expertise and experience have been overlooked.

That’s been incredibly frustrating and I know that money hasn’t been used as well as it could have been.

Do I think that closing it all down and freezing everything is the answer? No. That’s not even attempting to solve the problem.

Burning the house down in this way is great theatre, but it doesn’t make anything better.

We all know the old saying about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Right now, it feels to me that that’s what we’re seeing.

It’s not too late and I can only hope that the funding reviews lead the administration to see that there is lots of good in the programs that the government funds. Cutting these out will be harmful to us all – including the American people.

Cutting efforts to combat online scamming will only lead to more Americans falling victim. As I’m quoted saying in this Wired article, these cuts may save millions, but will cost billions.

Similar arguments could well be made about funding to other forms of anti-trafficking work and to other causes. We live in such an interrelated world that the domino effects of development aid really do reach all of us, even if we never realize it.

If somebody doesn’t figure this out soon, we’ll all be realizing how much we’ve lost.

Lots of great charities are in need of support in this time of uncertainty. If you can support Blue Dragon, your gift will go toward protecting people from human trafficking and keeping families safe from exploitation.

The Road Home

A rescue operation to set free 21 people from slavery. Late-night street outreach in the city’s dark corners. These are powerful moments: but what comes next?

Blue Dragon’s work can get the adrenalin racing.

This week alone we rescued 21 people.

All were enslaved in one of Myanmar’s notorious “scam centers” where people are forced by armed criminals to work online under the constant threat of torture. Getting them to safety involved a swift escape from the traffickers, followed by a journey over land through a war zone.

Much of our work is less dramatic, but similarly complex. Working on the streets of Vietnam’s two biggest cities, our task is to meet children who are sleeping rough and offer them help.

When we first meet them, we never know what situation we are walking into. Are pimps controlling these kids? Are human traffickers watching from the shadows?

Unfortunately, there’s only one way to find out.

Reunion

But as exciting as all of this can be, what comes next is just as important: the journey home. True impact happens in the quieter, unseen moments that come next—moments like reuniting a child with their family or helping a community rebuild.

Whether we’ve met them on the city streets or rescued them from slavery, Blue Dragon takes great care when it comes to reuniting children with their families.

And that typically involves accompanying the child back to their home, however remote that may be.

Doing this allows us to understand how to help the family – and sometimes the whole community.

This week our staff traveled for 3 days to reunite a boy named Hung who we met on the streets of Hanoi. He’s just 14 years old and hadn’t eaten for days when we found him.

He came to the city looking for a way to earn money for his family. The journey home showed us very clearly why he needed to do that.

Following a very long bus ride into the mountains, the road became impassable by anything with more than 2 wheels. Hung and our staff took to motorbikes to travel from the main road to his home.

Here’s some video taken on the way:

The start of the motorbike ride to Hung’s home.

After some hours, the road was finished. The rest was by foot.

After the journey

Of course, the whole point of taking Hung home is so that we can find out what caused a child to make such a long and dangerous journey to the city – and then deal with that problem.

All of which means that getting Hung home doesn’t mark the end of the story. Just the end of a chapter.

Now he’s safely with his family and they know who Blue Dragon is. We’ve started discussions about helping them start some farming and improve their home. If we can make Hung’s living conditions better, he has no need of leaving at least until he’s old enough and has a plan.

Family reunions might not be the most exciting aspect of Blue Dragon’s work, but they are vital to our success.

Going beyond rescue means helping children and families to heal.

With Christmas and the new year coming, Blue Dragon is inviting our friends to donate for children like Hung. Just $1 is enough to provide a meal.

This is what it’s all about

After a terrifying year enslaved in a brothel, Linh is home. Her rescue reminds us that there is much we can do to end human trafficking.

For a few moments, 13-month-old Bi looked mystified as he stared at the woman before him. She was both familiar and foreign, leaving him lost in a haze of confusion.

But as she held him to her body and cried his name, understanding dawned on Bi’s face. This was his mother.

Bi’s mother Linh left their home in southern Vietnam almost a year ago.

She didn’t want to leave her son but felt that she had no choice. Her little boy, then just 3 months old, was growing fast and Linh knew that she needed an income. In their quiet village in the Mekong delta, there were no factories or businesses with jobs on offer. So she set out to find work further afield, leaving Bi with his grandmother.

Linh just wanted to earn enough so that she could send money home each month for her mother and her child to survive.

Thinking that she was on her way to northern Vietnam for a job in a restaurant, she was instead trafficked to Myanmar and sold into a brothel. For almost a year, life was a constant hell. The only thing that sustained her through the pain and terror she endured was the hope that she could hold her child again one day.

Blue Dragon went in search of Linh. Following a complex operation, we brought her home last week, along with other women who had suffered similar fates at the hands of the traffickers.

Home again

Most likely, Bi will grow up remembering neither his year without a mother nor the day she returned home. But the pain of separation and the joy of their reunion is certainly something that Linh will never forget.

Blue Dragon has rescued more than 1,500 people from places of slavery: brothels, sweatshops, forced “marriages” and forced labor. We’ve brought home people who were tortured, shot, operated upon, raped and beaten.

While it’s the rescue that seems most dramatic, it’s the moment of reunion that is the most powerful.

Some journeys home end with tears of devastating grief. There are people we’ve rescued who were away for many years and returned to find their parents have died, never knowing what fate befell their missing child.

Some journeys end in shock, like the teen we rescued who had no idea she was pregnant with twins.

And some journeys end with the true joy of a family reunited, of hope restored.

Life is a long story and continues well beyond the rescue operation.

The children, women and men we bring home invariably struggle with trauma, feelings of shame and the hardship caused by months and years lost to slavery. But by far, most go on to write their own story of survival. Some pick up where they left off while others start over anew.

Perhaps the deepest cruelty of human trafficking is that it denies its victims the control of their own life, their own story. People in slavery have little agency over their day to day; “tomorrow” is beyond imagination.

Right now, there are so many more people awaiting rescue. We must find them and bring them home, while at the same time doing all we can to end human trafficking forever.

To see Linh back with her family, once again the author of her own story, is what drives us on to do this work.

In a world where the news is filled daily with stories and images of tragedy out of our control, this is something that we can do.

If you can, please consider a gift to Blue Dragon’s urgent appeal. All funds raised will go toward operations to rescue people trapped in slavery.

Will this ever get better?

Trinh feared she would never see her family again. Today, she is safely home. What can we do to end this crisis once and for all?

On Saturday morning, Trinh walked across the border back to Vietnam.

It was a long journey home for the 31-year-old. Almost a year ago, she was trafficked to Myanmar and sold into a brothel: a violent, terrifying place where she believed she would surely die.

Trinh had the courage and good fortune to one day be able to call for help. This set in motion Blue Dragon’s rescue operation which came to fruition on the weekend when she finally reached her homeland.

*Trinh on the journey from Myanmar to Vietnam.*

The path home was long and dangerous. Trinh and the rescue team crossed rivers and jungles, taking boats, motorbikes and buses to escape danger and make it home safely.

And Trinh’s rescue isn’t the only one we’ve been working on. As I write this, we have 8 more operations underway, bringing home a total of 17 more people.

As we complete them, new operations will begin immediately.

Calls for help

Blue Dragon is on track this year to rescue from slavery double the number of people we rescued in 2020. That’s a rapid and deeply worrying growth in the need for our services.

So we’ve just launched an emergency appeal, asking friends around the world to donate to this work.

The problem is: We did the same thing last year.

Does this mean we’ll be calling for urgent help like this every year?

I want to believe that the answer is ‘no’. Looking forward, there’s hope that this crisis in human trafficking will eventually peak and recede. I shared my thoughts on why I remain optimistic in this post just a few weeks ago.

But I also know that human trafficking isn’t a problem that will disappear any time soon. While Blue Dragon is working on a big picture initiative to reduce its incidence across Vietnam, we know that it will take a long-term effort to really make a difference.

And as a charity, the only way we can make anything happen is by asking for support from the global community.

All of which means that we may well be calling again for urgent help. Not because we want to, but because that’s the only way we can respond to the children, women and men in slavery who are desperate for someone to rescue them.

As we rescue, we’ll keep on working to strengthen communities so that people are safe from being trafficked in the first place.

We have to believe that one day this work will be over. When there’s no more need to rescue another person, Blue Dragon’s job will be done.

Thank you to all who have already donated. If you can, please consider a gift to Blue Dragon’s urgent appeal.

Where are we now?

Human trafficking and slavery continue to take new forms, constantly staying a step ahead of attempts to keep people safe. Is there any light at the end of this tunnel?

It’s been a few months since I wrote my last post.

What’s changed since then? Nothing. And everything. All of it.

Blue Dragon’s rescues continue. Continue to grow in number, continue to grow in urgency. That’s not new.

But the numbers calling for help are new. In the second half of 2023, we rescued 7 times the number of people we rescued in the first half. Looking ahead to the coming months, those numbers are still growing.

*Crossing a river during a rescue operation*.

And the urgency of every call is beyond what we’ve seen before. Messages are coming to us along the lines of:

“Please help my sister, she is in Myanmar and the trafficker plans to take her kidneys.”

“I am desperate. All night I hear bombs and gunfire. I don’t want to keep living.”

“Send help, please! We are being tortured. They used an electric prod on me and now I cannot walk.”

Trafficking in all its forms is horrible, but these new levels of barbarism are shocking nonetheless.

So is there any hope at all?

When talking about human trafficking, I’m always careful of two things. First, I never exaggerate how bad things are. This includes sharing rumours or speculating. And second, I never give false hope when there’s really none to be had.

But despite all of these developments, I do believe there’s still hope. There’s light at the end of this tunnel.

Life is getting harder for the traffickers who are luring people into Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, where they are violently enslaved and forced to scam people online.

People are hearing about their tricks and are less likely to fall for them.

International pressure is causing some of these scam operations, which have enslaved over 200,000 people in south-east Asia alone, to close.

Police from China, Vietnam, Thailand and Laos have been pursuing the criminals behind the trafficking and scams, reportedly arresting thousands of people involved.

And rebel armies in northern Myanmar have sworn to shut the scams down as they take control of new territory.

Although the situation right now is worse than it’s ever been, we’re seeing signs that maybe, just maybe, the tide is starting to turn.

I hope I’m not speaking too soon. But it’s definitely too soon to give up hope.

Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation is on a mission to end human trafficking.

A personal mission

Vi is an unlikely hero on the streets of Hanoi.

In the evening, Vi finishes eating dinner with his family and says goodbye before putting on his mask and heading out to the streets.

Vi works for Blue Dragon, leading a team of over 30 social workers who help street kids. Despite being in a formal management position, he insists on staying involved in frontline work.

Every day he’s at the drop-in centre with kids and at night he’s in parks and under bridges looking for homeless young people. He will never admit it, but he’s a hero to many of the kids.

For Vi, this work is very personal. Because as a teenager, Vi was a street kid himself.

He left his village home in 2002, taking a bus to Hanoi where he found work shining shoes on the streets. All day he would walk through the city, polishing people’s shoes in return for a few cents before heading back to a dorm room where he slept, crammed in with 20 other people who also worked on the streets.

Vi at a game of football with Blue Dragon in 2003.

It was a lucky break for Vi to encounter the founder of Blue Dragon one day while out shining shoes. He immediately accepted an offer to join an English class, and before long Vi was living in a group home, going to school, and had left his days as a street kid behind.

Some people who escape a difficult situation – like being a street kid – would be happy to never look back. After his studies, Vi found work in one of Hanoi’s top restaurants and became a stellar barman. He had a great career in hospitality to look forward to.

Vi loved his work, but had a yearning to give back. So he returned to Blue Dragon, and for 10 years has been protecting girls and boys on the streets of the city.

Vi at the Blue Dragon drop-in centre in July 2021, teaching a child to play ping pong.

And now the city is in a state of crisis. With a wave of COVID-19 leading to lockdowns around Vietnam, people in poverty and living on the streets have it harder than ever. So Vi and his team have stepped up to the challenge.

Since Hanoi called for people to stay home and for non-essential services to close, Vi and his social workers have been delivering food during the day to families without incomes and handing meals directly to homeless people through the night.

As they go from home to home and person to person, they’re checking on people’s health and seeing what else they need. Some families need help to pay the rent so they don’t get evicted. Others need medication. One mother with a newborn needed a fridge – so Vi went to the Blue Dragon centre and took the fridge from the office!

Now Vi is planning another challenge. He’ll be walking on September 19 as part of the Blue Dragon Marathon Walk to raise money for the very kids he works with each day.

If you’d like to be involved, you can sign up and walk wherever you are in the world: bd-marathon-2021.raisely.com.

Or, if walking a full or half marathon is not your thing, you can sponsor Vi to show him your support: bd-marathon-2021.raisely.com/vido.

Vi has even declared that he’ll walk an extra 30km if he reaches his fundraising target.

For Vi, his work may be a very personal mission but he’s not alone. His dedication to the kids is shared by many, from the staff on his team to Blue Dragon’s donors near and far who keep us going.

And as long as there are kids out on the streets in need of help, our world will need people like Vi to keep them safe.

Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation rescues kids in crisis.

Mother

A life of hardship and tragedy could not stop Vy from dreaming that she would one day have a family of her own.

Vy has lived a hard life.

She’s always been poor. She has usually been unemployed. And in recent years, she has been homeless.

But there’s something else that she has always wanted to be:

A mother.

Collecting scrap on the streets with her partner, Vy shares the same dream that we all share: a happy future with people she loves. So the first time she fell pregnant, she was delighted and hopeful that brighter days were ahead.

When she lost her baby in a miscarriage, she was devastated. And more than a year later when she was pregnant again, a second miscarriage seemed to spell the end of her dreams.

Blue Dragon met Vy in January when Help Hanoi’s Homeless, an awesome local volunteer association, contacted us. Normally Blue Dragon focuses our attention on people who have been trafficked and street children; supporting homeless pregnant women is a little outside our regular work.

But Vy’s situation was dire. 38 weeks pregnant and living on the streets, she was unsafe and unwell. And the risk of a third miscarriage was just too great.

Working with the volunteers, we rented Vy a room and supplied her with some basic needs to see her through. Seeing the mix of joy and fear in her eyes was heartbreaking. Vy’s final weeks of pregnancy were filled with both hope and dread. She faced every day wanting nothing more than to have the chance to be a mother, and hold her baby in her arms.

This is a story with a happy ending. Vy’s dream has come true. Her baby girl was born safely in hospital. Ha Chi has every chance of leading a healthy, happy life. Vy is over the moon.

Now that she has a child, Vy doesn’t want to work on the streets any more. We’ve helped her stay stable through these first months while Vy’s partner starts in a regular job and begins earning an income. We’re also helping to get a birth certificate for the baby; Vy is from southern Vietnam, so needs some extra help to make that journey and get the paper work done.

Of course, Vy’s story isn’t over. It isn’t always easy for people who have experienced years of homelessness to return to a more stable life. But this is what Vy wants and has fought for; and more than anything, she wants to give Ha Chi the life that she wishes she had had.

Vy may have been through a lot in life, but she’s going to be a wonderful mother.

Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation rescues kids in crisis.