Over the past 3 years, the ‘Mountainous Nutritious Meals’ programme has been deployed at schools in mountainous Tay Tra District in Quang Ngai Province and Nam Tra My District in Quang Nam Province.

Thanks to the ‘Mountainous Nutritious Meals’ programme, school pupils enjoying better lunches.

Organised by the ‘You Love Each Other’ Club, the programme aims to serve school pupils with healthy meals instead of their lunches with only salt, chillies, and vegetables.

In addition to offering nutritious meals to pupils, the club has given mountainous schools such kitchen appliances as cooks, pans, bowls, spoons, and chopsticks.

Mr Nguyen Binh Nam, the Club’s Chairman, remarked during the 2017 - 2018 academic year, the club raised over 181 million VND from generous donors from both home and abroad to fund the programme.

Of this, more than 128 million VND was spent on providing healthy lunches for pupils studying at 8 mountainous schools, namely Tra Na, Tra Reo, Tra Bao and Tra Bung in Quang Ngai Province, and Long Cheng, Ong Phung, Ong Deo, and Khe Chu in Quang Nam Province.

In the 2018 -2019 school year, the club is planning to offer nutritious lunches to a total of 225 pupils at 6 schools namely Tak Chai and Tu Nat in Quang Nam Province’s Nam Tra My District, Ho Le in Quang Tri Province’s Huong Hoa District, and Tra Na, Tra Bung and Tra Bao in Quang Ngai Province’s Tay Tra District. The total cost for this programme is estimated to be 94.210 million VND.

“With the remainder of over 52 million VND from the previous academic school year, my club is now appealing for generous donors to donate additional 41 million VND to fund this year’s programme”, Mr Nam added.

Mr Nam noted that each of mountainous school pupils is only given allowance of nearly 6,000 VND per lunch, so it finds very difficult for teachers there to prepare lunches for their pupils with full of vegetables, meat or fish.

Therefore, he and his club are now in desperate need of financial assistance from social community to maintain this meaningful programme for poor mountainous pupils.