A Hoi An-based charity organization is seeking participants for a charity ride to raise funds for an education scholarship that will help send needy Vietnamese students to university.

The Lifestart Foundation Charity Ride, slated for 2017, needs 20 riders who will cycle 750km over the course of ten days in central Vietnam, with each expected to raise a minimum US$2,500 for the fund.

“The fund is enough to fully sponsor one student for one year of university,” Nguyen Thi Cam Nhung, education scholarship manager for Lifestart Foundation, told Tuoi Tre News in an email.

A recently registered rider to the charity ride is seen in this photo posted on Lifestart Foundation's Facebook on May 3, 2016.

Founded in 2000 by an Australian named Karen Leonard, Lifestart Foundation is a grassroots, not-for-profit charity that helps disadvantaged Vietnamese and their families become self-sufficient.

The charity organization has been actively assisting students in Hoi An, a small town in central Vietnam, and its surrounding regions through its biggest project, Education Scholarship, believing that every child should have the opportunity to access education.

Currently, Lifestart Foundation supports students until grade 12 but is hoping to use the charity ride as an opportunity to expand even more sponsorship to university education.

The ride is scheduled to run from April 13 to 27 next year, venturing into the famed Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park and along the Ho Chi Minh Road, according to the program’s website.

Riders can register for the 2017 Lifestart Foundation Charity Ride at http://www.lsfcharityride.org.au

Two recipients of the Lifestart Foundation educational scholarship are seen in this photo posted on the organization's Facebook.

Supported by a team of dedicated volunteers, Lifestart Foundation grants scholarships to children who are at risk of ending their education because of financial difficulties.

Scholarships include the provision of school fees, extra classes, books, stationery, uniforms, and transport, according to the education sponsorship manager.

Nhung said the foundation is helping 91 students at the present, 12 of whom are at university level.

“We also have two successful graduates,” Nhung said.

“One of them is now a doctor at the Women and Children Hospital in Da Nang, and the other is an architect working for a Japanese company in the same city.”

(Source: Tuoi Tre News)