Hello, I am Thang.

I grew up in a very far-away place in the Dien Bien province. My village has 22 H'Mong families. We don't have electricity from the national power grid. My parents made a small power plant from stuff in our village. It uses water from a stream near our house. It makes a little bit of electricity which is enough for only a few hours.

 

When I was a kid, my cousin and I loved to watch Superman on TV. But it used up all the electricity. So, when my parents came back from their farming work, there was no power left for cooking dinner.

 

Not having electricity is a big problem. It stops our village from doing more. Young people like me don't have many chances to do other things. Many get married early. This has been happening for many generations. "We have been living hard on farming," I say. "Our land is rocky and it's hard to grow crops."

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But I always believed that we could change our lives. That's why I joined a 3D course at REACH in September 2020. I wanted to show other people in my village that we could do better. "I wish we could live better and our children could learn more," I say.

 

I had to face many challenges when I was training and living in a big city for the first time. But after six months, I learned how to make cool 3D graphics on a computer. Now, I have skills that many companies need.

 

I hope that one day, my village will have electricity. I want to start a business there and create jobs for young people like me. REACH's training program helps young people from ethnic groups to live better. In the past two years, REACH has helped 260 young people from all over Vietnam.