A person with a disability herself, she has risen above all difficulties to become a loving mother who raises and creates jobs for nearly 800 young people with disabilities. That is Ms Le Minh Hien (pictured), Director of the Vi Ngay Mai Centre for Health Care and Vocational Training for Young People with Disabilities, a woman of extraordinary determination, writing a fairy tale in real life.
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A stormy life
Born and raised in a traditional Hanoi family, Le Minh Hien was very intelligent and an excellent student from childhood. After finishing high school, with outstanding academic results, she was selected to study in Germany, but her father, loving his daughter, did not want her to struggle alone in a foreign land, so he asked for her to stay.
Staying in the country to continue her studies, she sat the entrance exam for the University of Foreign Trade with outstanding academic results. But the door of life seemed to slam shut in her final year at university, when she had a road accident that compressed her spine and shattered her left arm and right leg. Waking in hospital after many days in a coma, unable to walk and still bandaged all over, Ms Hien was still determined to sit her graduation exam. For three days, she lay on a stretcher to take the exam, and the result was that she passed that year. After the exam, she had to stay in hospital for another year, undergoing eight operations before she was discharged, and she became a person with a disability from then on, with only 19% of her health remaining and legs that could no longer walk normally.
After that, Ms Hien married and had two lovely children, and it seemed that after the difficulties, she would now live a happy, full life, but then her husband died young of illness, leaving her with two small children.
“I remember then, the meal for the three of us, mother and children, was just thin porridge and white salt. I loved my children but could only swallow my tears. I did every job I could, from cooking pho and porridge, crocheting clothes, selling drinks, embroidering, weaving… to earn money to raise my children”, Ms Hien said.
Seeing her at work, children with disabilities nearby often came to play, learn and help her, and gradually their numbers grew. It was from that deep empathy that she decided to set up the Vi Ngay Mai Centre for people with disabilities in 1998 in Tu Liem, Hanoi, hoping the children could integrate into the community and support themselves.
A tomorrow for children with disabilities
Vi Ngay Mai is a vocational training centre for young people with disabilities aged 15 – 30, mainly with types of disability such as: limb paralysis, intellectual disabilities, hearing impairments, visual impairments… The children are divided into groups, each group doing a different job according to its abilities. From old newspapers, pieces of cardboard and scraps of fabric that seemed fit to throw away, their skilful hands have created many beautiful and eye-catching products such as vases, cushions, hair bows… which sell very well.
“In the early days of the centre, difficulties piled upon difficulties, with no facilities, too few teachers, and no outlets for the products… I went to many places to find teachers and places to sell the products. Fortunately, an 80-year-old silk-flower artisan, a lacquer-painting artist and a teacher who made souvenir postcards volunteered to teach free of charge with me in those early days”, Ms Hien said.
To date, the centre has trained and created jobs for nearly 800 children with disabilities from many provinces and cities across the country. The children who come here not only learn a trade but also learn culture and how to be a person. For many of them, Ms Hien is truly like a second mother who loves and cares for them. “Many children, when they first set foot in the centre, could not read at all, swore, and were unruly, and it took great persistence to bring them into line. There are many children here who are deaf or unable to speak. So that the children can work together, the teachers all have to learn and teach them sign language so they can work well together”, Ms Hien shared.
In more than ten years of being with them, there are stories that Ms Hien still cannot recall without pain. A boy from Hai Duong came to Hanoi to sell lottery tickets; once, climbing a tree, he unfortunately fell, leaving his mind less agile and not normal. The boy was brought by a friend to the centre to learn a trade. But however much he studied, he could not take it in, so the boy became ashamed and lacking in confidence. One day, he quietly went to buy sleeping pills to end his life. After taking them, he went to his closest friend and said: “I have just taken sleeping pills”. The girl hurriedly went to find Ms Hien. The two of them rushed down to find the boy and take him to hospital, and fortunately the boy was all right. Now, that boy has grown up, learned a trade and can earn money to support himself. Telling this story, Ms Hien could not hide her emotion.
Not only caring for and teaching the children as her own, Ms Hien also plays the role of mother and father when they grow up. No wonder the centre has become the place where dozens of couples have met over more than 10 years. So there are times when Ms Hien plays the mother taking her daughter to her husband’s home, times when she officiates at the weddings of both of her “children”, and sometimes she is simply an honoured guest. But whatever the case, she is always greeted with loving and admiring looks from everyone.
Ms Le Minh Hien shared: “What I worry about most now is hoping the community will take a more positive view of people with disabilities. Do not look at them with sympathy or pity, but give them the chance to fulfil their social obligations. That is, to live and work like other people”.
Tin Tuc Newspaper