American girls, cookies change lives of Vietnamese street kids

(05-12-2007)

by Hong Van

Street children, their families and volunteers at Sozo’s opening ceremony. Sozo trains disadvantaged kids to work in the food preparation and service industries. — VNS File Photo

HCM CITY — Sozo in Greek means to save, keep safe and sound or rescue from danger and destruction.

That was the original vision of 24-year-old Rachel Lutz from the US state of Georgia, and her friends Tracy Tuning, Cindy Zuspan and Max Raabe when they first visited Viet Nam more than four years ago.

During that first trip, Rachel said she met many street children and learned about their family situations.

Besides buying postcards from the kids, putting them on the back of motorbikes for a fun ride and taking them to Vung Tau beaches for a day out, Lutz and her friends had a burning desire to give the children more stable lives.

In January 2004, Lutz returned to Viet Nam and realised that it was for the long term.

The idea of baking and selling chocolate chip cookies from a small cart in the budget tourist area of Pham Ngu Lao, De Tham and Bui Vien streets came to Lutz and her friends in April after they learned that one of their Vietnamese friends was deeply in debt.

Beginning from that small cart set up in front of a travel agency on De Tham Street, Lutz and her eight volunteers are now managing a larger shop, the Sozo Centre at 176 Bui Vien Street, District 1, with 25 Vietnamese former street children and their families as staff.

The centre is a small coffee shop on the ground floor selling American-style bakery goods, including banana and carrot muffins, banana-chocolate bread, cinnamon rolls, apple tarts and a variety of cookies, like oatmeal raisin and peanut butter.

Lutz said Sozo was expanding and would soon have a function room upstairs for meeting and training.

She also plans to invite non-governmental organisations and other social welfare organisations to visit and talk about volunteering and how it can change lives.

Brighter future

Lam Trinh Hong Quyen, 16, was among the children who travelled to Vung Tau with Lutz in 2003, deciding finally to visit Sozo just last year.

"I was used to the street lifestyle," Quyen explained, saying that she didn’t know what the centre could offer her.

She said while she was on the streets, she used to make more than VND100,000 (US$6.25) a day.

"But then I was making less and less because foreigners tend to buy postcards and books from smaller children," Quyen said.

So she quit and approached Lutz’s centre for employment.

Now Quyen is making VND4,000 per hour an average of six hours a day, with meals provided.

The centre pays for her school tuition, and she stays with other children at a house the centre rented so that they can be close to Sozo and the school.

Quyen’s younger sister is also working at Sozo.

Quyen said her mother preferred her to work at Sozo because it was safer and more stable. "Every week I can send back VND100,000 to my mother," Quyen said.

More than two years ago, another employee, 15-year-old Chau Thi Phuong Hang, came to HCM City from the Mekong Delta province of An Giang to sell lottery tickets.

After one week, her aunt who was working at Sozo brought Hang to the centre.

Hang said she learned how to make the cookies sold at the cafe.

"I would want to open a small shop selling cookies like this. A small one, not something big, and not with so many utensils like this," Hang said.

While Quyen wants to become a tourist guide, Hang dreams of being a cai luong (reformed opera) performer.

Support system

For others who first worked at the centre and were in debt, Lutz and her friends helped them pay off the debt. And with their weekly savings from their salaries, some of the staff have been able to repay Lutz and her friends.

Committed to helping street children and disadvantaged people, Sozo uses its revenues for expanding the business, supporting the staff and sending them for training.

Lutz said she was lucky to have private sponsorship from back home so that she could dedicate herself to helping disadvantaged people.

The long-term vision, Lutz said, was to eventually transfer the grown children to restaurants or hotels in town.

To encourage other people to engage in volunteering, Sozo has a network of more than 2,000 students who take part in Sozo’s monthly charity activities at HIV/AIDS centres or orphanages in the city.

Twice a week on Tuesday and Friday, Vietnamese students also pack the centre to practice their English with foreign volunteers.

"I’m so happy with what I am doing," Lutz said. "When I first came here, I thought it was impossible for me to be able to make a difference because I was young, and I knew nothing."

Speaking to the student volunteers last Saturday to celebrate the United Nations International Volunteer Day which falls on December 5, Lutz said: "If you take a very small rock and you throw it into a big pond of water, the rock disappears and falls to the bottom."

"In the beginning you cannot see anything, then you will see little bubbles on the water and then it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It is the same for volunteering. You might do something small, but it can affect many people’s lives." — VNS