About the Projects

Viet Nam Youth Projects was started on Make a Difference Day in October 1998. These projects are the brainchild of Chi and Truc Nguyen, beginning with the simple goal of raising just $200 to help "people in Vietnam." With the first fundraiser event, a small garage sale held on Make a Difference Day, Chi and Truc received overwhelming support from their community and raised more than $1,000, a startling sum of money to novice fund-raisers. This was donated to VNHELP (Viet Nam Health Education and Literature Projects), to benefit a small library in the rural village of Giai Xuan.

The sisters made their first trip to Viet Nam in 1999. There, in the city of Can Tho, they met street children whose warmth, brightness, and determination to improve their own futures touched them deeply. Upon returning to the United States, Chi and Truc decided to focus their efforts, with the specific goal of helping the street children gain an opportunity for a better life--through education.

Chi and Truc organized and performed in their first Children's Benefit Concert together in 2000. Chi has since taken the lead role in organizing seven more annual concerts and is currently planning the ninth and last concert for 2008. Chi and Truc's widespread impact in Vietnam have been possible through eight full-scale benefit concerts, two community recitals, and the annual sale of homemade almond toffee and Chi's personal collection of beanie babies. Chi and Truc continue to make and sell toffee year-round, but especially during the winter holiday season. 2008 will be the last year they offer their world-famous toffee. In the last nine years, the projects have evolved from a tiny garage sale to a growing number of supporters all around the Bay Area. A large number of media–CNN and CNN international, NPR, KCBS radio, the New York Times Upfront, and NBC11–have featured Chi's story. Chi has worked with Target and the Tiger Woods Foundation for two years as part of Start Something, a program encouraging young kids to participate in community service. Since August of 2004, Chi's commercial with Tiger Woods to promote Start Something has aired on all the major networks as well as the cable channels. In fact, you have caught Chi and Tiger on television.

In the past nine years, Chi and Truc have supported a variety of VNHELP projects, most relating to children and education. After the first library project, which provided books for about three hundred children in Giai Xuan village, the candy sale in 1999 was used to provide emergency relief for about thirty flood victims in central Vietnam. Since that donation, the street children in Can Tho has received first priority in funding. Specifically, the street children project helps to provide intervention services, such as food, clothing, daily meals, remedial literacy classes and basic medical needs to homeless and semi-homeless children between the ages of 5 and 17 years old, and to fund the vocational training program for youth. This includes approximately one hundred children and youth in total. Residents of the shelter are also given the opportunity and funding to continue their education through college.

In December 2004, Chi received NetAid's national Global Action Award for her work for children in Viet Nam. In the months following, she worked extensively with NetAid to promote both her cause and NetAid's mission of eradicating global poverty. Chi and Truc also work closely with VNHELP to keep their connection with the street children's shelter in Can Tho and to expand their sponsorship to other projects in Viet Nam. This past summer they returned to visit a few of their latest projects, including a brand-new kindergarten in Lam Hai, in the Mekong Delta, and to meet recipients of their college scholarship in Ca Mau.

Viet Nam Youth Projects is not a non-profit organization. However, Chi and Truc donate all proceeds to and collaborate extensively with VNHELP, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in San Jose. [top]