Overcoming adversity and thriving

Many disabled women in Cam Ranh City have overcome adversity to achieve personal success and earn stable incomes to improve their lives.

Dang Thi Van is living with her aunt in a small house in Thuan Loi Residential Group, Cam Thuan Ward. She got paralyzed from polio at the age of 3. Unable to walk, she tries to learn knitting from online craft classes to make handmade products. She can design various kinds of key chains, bags, shoes, hats, vases, paper boxes, etc. at reasonable prices. This job brings her an average income of VND 3 million/month.

Born into a poor family, Vo Thi Kim Hoan (Phu Hai residential group, Cam Phu Ward) suffers from Agent Orange birth deformities. Thanks to the encouragement and assistance from the local Women's Association, she got a loan of VND50 million from the Social Policy Bank to produce and trade in fishcakes, 5-6kg/ day, earning about VND2 million/month. She has maintained the work for nearly 7 years, which partly eases her family’s financial burden.

Dang Thi Van and her hand-made products.

The life of Pham Thi Nghiep (Tra Son Village, Cam Phuoc Dong Commune) is also very touching and pitiful. After 10 years of marriage, her husband died in an accident, leaving behind 5 children. Misfortunes came one after another when she got paralyzed after a severe illness. Through treatments, her health got better and she started to grow vegetables to sell at the market, getting an income to cover her family’s daily expenses.

Currently, in Cam Ranh City, there are more than 1,000 disabled women, hundreds of whom are making brooms, knitting, making incense, lotus seeds and so on. In 2022, the City Women's Association at all levels mobilized livelihood donations worth nearly VND80 million for 31 members in need and with disabilities; facilitated members’ access to loans totaling VND227 billion from the Bank for Social Policies; and maintained mutual support groups of women with savings more than VND1.6 billion.

According to Le Thi Anh Hoang, Vice-President of the City Women's Union, assisting struggling disabled women is one of the local Women's Union’s key tasks. The Women's Union has directed its affiliations to implement specific activities, including creating livelihoods, facilitating access to loans from the Social Policy Bank, creating jobs and organizing start-up business days. Many members and women have made constant efforts to overcome obstacles to study and find work that accommodates their health challenges to get stable incomes to improve their lives.

L.N

Translated by N.T