Project Details
Mac Ha, located 7 km from Sapa town in Northern Vietnam, is the most impoverished area of the Sapa region. There are over 1,000 Black H'mong ethnic minority people living in and around Ma Cha village. Sapa Rooms supports the 120 children in the school from kindergarten to 5th grade. Our long term focus is to continue to solely support the Ma Cha school so these children are able to have a more comfortable environment in which to learn, grow and develop. As we believe education is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty.
Before Sapa Rooms support, most of these children had no shoes, many had no pants and they certainly had next to no school resources. Going to school in Winter for these children was and still is extremely difficult. Close your eyes and imagine for a moment what it must be like for these children to firstly walk up to 6km bare foot over rice fields to school each morning when the temperature in winter is often minus 5 degrees celsius. the children sit in cold cement class rooms with no heating while the wind whistles through the broken windows and doors.
Christmas 2009, Sapa Rooms donated USD2,500 of duck down jackets at the request of the teachers, there were 120 jackets altogether donated, one for each child. Christmas 2010 Sapa Rooms boutique hotel raised enough money to cement the schools playground to prevent the spread of disease. Each month we donate more then 300 kg of second hand clothing and school supplies which are generously donated by our guests.
Our goal is to make the following physical improvements to the School building so that the children will have a safer, cleaner, and healthier environment in which to learn. Specifically we plan to: build a playground for the children so that they can actually have a chance to play as children.
