PROGRAMS

Bridging Hope provides vital support to Vietnamese initiatives that directly improve the lives of that country’s most vulnerable people, its impoverished and disabled women and children. All of these projects are in collaboration with local Vietnamese and U.S. base organizations and individual donors.

Click to download a pdf version of the program summary.

PHU LONG SCHOOL UNDERNUTRITION RELIEF PROGRAM
Beginning in 2012, Bridging Hope takes on another program which called Phu Long School Undernutrition Program in the Mekong Delta. Even though school is free of charge, the dropout rate is still relatively high. The reason for this is not only from being unable to buy school supplies and uniforms or too far to walk to school, but also due to undernourishment.

DAILY BREAD PROJECT
Daily Bread Project provides all the meals for the 40 mothers living at Mai Tam Shelter in Saigon, Viet Nam who are impacted by or suffering from HIV/AIDS. Mai Tam is a network of services and shelters for women with HIV/AIDS and their children. These women are some of the poorest and most marginalized in Viet Nam. Bridging Hope partners with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange County Fund to directly serve these mothers, providing them three meals a day to sustain their health in fighting such a serious disease and to restore their lives.

CHRISTMAS FOR BREAKFAST
Bridging Hope also helps to feed the children in the Mai Tam network through the Christmas for Breakfast project. Its unique name comes from the original inspiration to ask Vietnamese-American kids to send money for daily breakfast to Mai Tam kids in place of receiving more Christmas gifts. The idea spread, and now Christmas for Breakfast (C4B) is supported not only by Vietnamese-American kids, but by many Americans young and old. Currently that support providesa daily breakfast for some 350 plus Mai Tam children. The cost per breakfast is only $.31 a day, but the number of children served grows every year. Some of the children reside in one of Mai Tam shelters, but the vast majority live with foster parents either because their mothers have died or because they are incapable of being the primary caretakers.

THREADS
Bridging Hope provides job skills, supplies, and a market for this Saigon craft co-op of isolated, poor women, who are disabled by severe polio, and their children. Sr. Sen has sold their embroidery and smocking for over a decade in Colorado galleries and festivals. Bridging Hope plans to strengthen the co-op’s abilities and marketing with new sewing equipment, new marketing in Viet Nam and on the internet, and on-going training for the women in order to create more sophisticated and marketable products.
Click here for a slideshow of THREADS images.

CON EN DAYCARE
Young, pre-school children on this small island in the Mekong River in southern Viet Nam were hungry, unsupervised, and often unsafe (especially during monsoon) until the Catholic Church, with the help of Bridging Hope, created a daycare shelter and program for 60 impoverished children. Each year Bridging Hope raises funds for teachers’ salaries, tuition, and food. The number of children and needs increase yearly.

ELDER CARE SHELTER
Bridging Hope is beginning to fund-raise for an existing shelter for homeless elderly women in Da Nang. Planning also has begun on developing a new shelter for elderly women in Saigon. Fewer traditional family options for the elderly exist today, forcing frail women into the streets.