Family case N°3

Preventive Case Studies no3

Family of Mr. Le Le (Ngai) and Ms. Ho Thi Mai — Pho Nam A Village, Quang Tho Commune

Similar to other beneficiaries in Quang Tho Commune, the family of Mr. Le and Mrs. Mai was selected after 3 strict selection meetings.

His family contains 6 members (3 little children and paternal grandmother). He looks older than his age maybe because he has many things in life to contrive. When I came, Mrs. Mai was making conical hats with all her concentration and Mr. Le was taking care of little pigs. The house of 5 x 7m is well arranged. Formerly, due to money limitations, their house had no doors and walls were not plastered yet. That is the reason why their family was selected as a beneficiary of the project. The total reinforcement cost of their house is 4,000,000 VND; of which, 2,000,000 VND subsidized from DW project and 2,000,000 VND from Commune Damage Prevention Committee credit program. The reinforcement work includes:

• Plastering walls
• Reinforcing roof
• Doors and windows

Beside this, they used their savings to improve the floor and the front yard.

Through the conversation, I was informed that they have a stable income. Beside the rice from their rice field, they also earn 2-3 million dong /year from porkers and 1.5 million dong /year from sows. In addition, Ms. Mai can earn 12,000 VND/day from conical hat making. Hence, to refund loan for housing is not so difficult for them.

There is one point that is interesting; that is, they also got a loan of 5,000,000 VND from Women Union with the interest of 0.5% /month to breed pigs. They already finished one out of five years of refunding.

On the other hand, Mr. Le is a skilful builder and he can get some more income. He used to join the training for builders organized by the project in Quang Tho. After the training, he got a chance to apply the technique gained to Tan Xuan Lai Kindergarten which was reinforced with the support from DW.

Their last-born daughter is at the age of kindergarten. Before, she was not sent to school because of lack of schoolrooms; however, she presently is a school child of the kindergarten next door and her parents do not worry that it could be collapsed or not (before being reinforced, it was very weak). According to Ms. Mai, everybody supports and hopes the project can help and work with much more families in years to come.