Bringing Cheer To Special Needs Children During Mid-Autumn Festival

Employees of the QI Group in Vietnam completed another impactful Social Staff Responsibility activity, with the Educational Centre for Handicapped Children (ECHC), which cares for more than 100 children with disabilities in Ho Chi Minh city. Based on the findings from The National Survey on People with Disabilities, 2.8% of children aged 5-17 in Vietnam suffer from some form of disability. It is also widely accepted that improving the educational environment for disabled children and adolescents is key in helping them to better integrate into society. In the spirit of understanding more about the issues surrounding children with disabilities, 3 of our QI staff in Vietnam conducted a short visit and sharing session with the children at ECHC. The activities that were organised during the visit included games, quizzes, as well as interview sessions the principal and vice-principal of ECHC to gain insights on the daily challenges that are faced by kids at the Centre. Our volunteers also distributed mooncakes and other gifts to the children. The visit was a very moving experience for the volunteers. One of the volunteers; Dao Nguyen said, “From the visit, I’ve come to know how difficult it is to take care of a disabled child, and how it is even more difficult to care for 100 disabled children when you have insufficient resources. We hope our visit and contributions today helped to provide these kids with a better mid–autumn festival experience.” The Centre coordinator; Ms.Truong Thi Loi, thanked our volunteers for organising the session.

“What we’re trying to do here is to teach basic survival skills that would be necessary for these kids to integrate with the society. On behalf of the Centre, I would like to thank the volunteers and RYTHM Foundation for organising such a wonderful session and bringing some joy to our kids.”