Charity
Mother Muoi follows her destiny to adopt those in need
  • | dtinews.vn | May 04, 2010 02:32 PM

Mother Muoi adopted intellectually disabled children who were abandoned by their parents. She has devoted 8 years of her life towards bringing up these handicapped children.

90 of the 120 children at Thien Duyen Centre are disabled

“Truly speaking, it’s hard to find any place in Cu Chi which was not bombarded. This area itself was a very deep crater from a B52 bomb. After the Phoenix Campaign during the war, this place was completely destroyed. There were no houses, no trees left,” shared Tran Thi Cam Giang (who is referred to as “Mother Muoi”) about her Thien Duyen Adoption and Vocational Centre for handicapped orphans.

The Thien Duyen Centre was established in 2002 and rebuilt last year to include housing and farming areas. Housing areas are arranged in a very neat and clean manner. It has classrooms, therapy rooms, rooms for elderly people, rooms for ill-mentally children and some others.

The centre now has 120 children, 90 of whom are intellectually or physically disabled.

The rooms for the intellectually disabled children left unforgettable images to those who visited them where children sat and lied in a different fashion on each bed.

Daily meals cost VND30,000 ($1.6) per person. The centre has to pay over VND100 million ($5,182) per month just for food. Mother Muoi said, “To do charity, we need not only a compassionate heart, but also funding." This is why she built a farming area to earn money for the centre.

In 2008, Thien Duyen Centre built a vase with a record amount of buttons which received an appraisal letter from President Nguyen Minh Triet.

Her cricket farm generates over VND100 million per year. She is willing to help any family who wants to keep crickets or plant mushrooms. Currently, there are about 10 families who have learned how to raise crickets from the Thien Duyen centre.

It’s very difficult to bring up and nurse a normal child, much less one with special needs. It’s difficult to illustrate how much effort “mothers” in the centre have to pay to care for disabled children.

Mother Muoi has never refused a child and the number of her children keeps going so rapidly that she has to add nicknames after their real name to remember them easily. However, at the age of 72, she sometimes says the wrong name. Mother Muoi said, “When I was 14, I joined revolutionary campaigns.” In 1968 she was disguised as a house keeper in a Hamlet Chief’s house to hide guns and explosives in his house. Unfortunately, on August 12, 1973, she was discovered and put in jail.

She underwent a lot torture from her captors yet she never felt she was unlucky. “God left me alive till now to adopt disabled orphans. It’s my destiny,” said Mother Muoi.

After the South’s liberation, she was appointed as Vice Chairman of Ward 23, Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City. She then worked in market management, in the Women’s Union of the District. When her children grew up and her husband passed away, she returned to her hometown in Cu Chi to establish this centre.

Now, Mother Muoi maintains her simple lifestyle. She wears used clothes given by other people. Somebody though she was “crazy” when she sold all her assets and property to help handicapped children, but for her, it is a calling.

Disabled children under the care of Mother Muoi

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