Our Mission
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"Lúa Non" translates to "young rice shoots" in Vietnamese and symbolizes the potential that each young person possesses.
Our mission is to nurture youth in rural Vietnam so they can thrive and lead fulfilling and healthy lives.
We founded Lua Non with the goal of supporting education for youth in rural Vietnam. We believe education plays a major role in exposing youth to new ideas, challenging their beliefs, and transforming their lives. Additionally, we recognize that without basic support structures in place, young people not only struggle to learn but also to maintain their health and wellbeing. With that in mind, we approach supporting youth's education holistically - we not only sponsor youth's school-related expenses, but also medical care, food, housing, and other needs deemed important by our community members.
Our Approach
2020-2023
Lua Non was founded in March 2020 in the middle of the pandemic. Since its founding days, we distributed more than $21,000 to support 135 students from Lao Cai, Quang Binh, and Dak Lak provinces to pursue education.
In the beginning, we selected our scholarship recipients based on their academic achievements, financial circumstances, and other indicators. We covered school, medical, food, and other expenses.
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Currently, we no longer select our students based on their academic achievements since we don't believe that grades reflect a youth's personal worth. We try to sponsor as many low-income and historically disadvantaged youths as we can, based on the applications they send to us. Our goal is to accommodate the needs of all our scholarship applicants.
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Additionally, we:
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Collect qualitative feedback from youth and teachers to understand how we can be more useful to them in the future
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Strengthen our relationships with Lao Cai and Dak Lak communities
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Raise money :p
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In the long run, we would love to spend more time in person with Lao Cai and Dak Lak provinces and run summer school programs for young people in rural Vietnam.
