Our Impact
What your support has achieved, straight from our annual reports.
FoVO has no paid staff, and our administrative costs are covered by our board rather than out of donations, so every dollar donated directly to us goes to assistance in Vietnam. Each financial year, Peter Kabaila takes a motorbike across the length of the country, visits orphanages, shelters and villages to assess needs on the ground, and the work is then written up in a Report to Donors with photos, costings and receipts. FoVO's work spans poverty relief, disability support, village development, health, education and housing; here is a snapshot, grouped by some of our main areas. Since 2011 we have assisted more than 35 orphanages and shelters, alongside village, household and family projects right across Vietnam.
Children with disabilities
Food, nappies and hygiene supplies
A single gift of around $500 lets us deliver a disabled children's orphanage a full food and hygiene supply (small, medium and large nappies, 100 kg of rice, hand soap, shampoo, laundry powder, cooking oil, milk cartons and instant noodles), or a large range of materials for disabled children's learning. We do this for orphanages such as the 19.5-children's home in Xa Doai every year.
It started at Huong Phuong
The charity began when our founder donated nine weeks of architectural work at the Huong Phuong orphanage for children with disabilities in Central Vietnam. We have stayed close to that community ever since: rice machines, a washing machine, kitchenware, bed frames and voltage stabilisers for the home that cares for around 45 children with disabilities.
A playground for disabled children
Children at the Holy Cross disabled children's orphanage got playground equipment, funded by $6,365 raised in 2011 and matched dollar-for-dollar. Alongside it: padded interlocking foam mats laid in shelters with hard floors, so a fall means a bruise rather than a trip to hospital.
Poverty relief & household income
Piglets, chickens and a bag of feed
For around $1,000 we can lift household income for 10 indigenous families (each gets a mountain piglet for free-range raising and a 25 kg bag of feed), or for 15 families, each with 25 free-range chickens and feed. We have run pig- and poultry-raising projects for E-đê, M'Nong, Raklay and Van Kieu villages and for families rebuilding after fire, illness or flood.
Farms, gardens and small machines
Some families need a one-off lift rather than a handout: a free-range chicken farm of egg-layers for a volunteer soup kitchen, a rice harvester, sewing machines, a pig house and piglets for a burns-affected family, 1,000 trees planted across 15 families in Van Kieu village. Each project asks the same question: if the funding stopped tomorrow, would life still be better?
Orphanages, shelters & health
Clean water and hot showers
Around $400 buys a water-filter machine or a hot-shower unit for an orphanage or shelter, a one-off gift that keeps a whole house healthier for years. We have installed water filters and hot-water units at Trang Nứa Orphanage, the Suoi Tien shelter for homeless women and others, where children and residents had only unsafe well water before.
The everyday essentials that keep doors open
More than 35 orphanages and shelters have been assisted since 2011 with the unglamorous things: food and instant noodles, washing machines, fridges and rice cookers, bedding and winter blankets, bicycles so children reach school on time, repairs, kitchenware, and care packages for single mothers and babies: a pillow, blanket, cloth nappies, clothes and basic hygiene items.
Medicine for orphanages and clinics
For around $200 we supply an orphanage a full medicine package: worm treatment, allergy and diarrhoea medication, cough syrup, paracetamol, anti-inflammatories, multivitamins, fever-reduction bandages and mosquito repellent. We have delivered these across 12 orphanages and schools in the Nha Trang region, plus clinic equipment for village doctors.
Education
Schoolbags, sandals and a year of fees
$20 puts school sandals and a schoolbag on one child, or 30 exercise books in a classroom. $100 covers a year's school fees for a high-school student, or clothes and equips a child at an orphanage for the school year. We supply returning-to-school packs, library books, study lamps and bicycles for disadvantaged families across Hue, Ben Tre and the Mekong Delta.
Tertiary scholarships for women
A study scholarship costs about $250 a semester (roughly $1,000 over two years) and covers half a young woman's university costs, with her family and monastic community matching the rest. We have sponsored 25-plus women from the Holy Cross convent at Huong Phuong studying nursing and disability care, and computer training for a young man in a wheelchair, so they can go on to help others.
Study libraries and learning materials
Orphanages often have no library or study room. We have built start-up study libraries (shelving, furniture, English-language posters, DVDs, textbooks and illustrated children's books) and supplied a scanner and photocopier for Vi Nhân School, sewing-machine and musical-instrument training, and a comprehensive package for Thien An orphanage: school fees for 10 children, rice, noodles and library books.
Our reports to donors
Read the full story of every financial year: each report itemises the projects, their costs and outcomes, with photos and receipts.
- 2025Report to Donors 2024–25(PDF)
- 2024Report to Donors 2023–24(PDF)
- 2023Report to Donors 2022–23(PDF)
- 2022Report to Donors 2021–22(PDF)
- 2021Report to Donors 2020–21(PDF)
- 2020Report to Donors 2019–20(PDF)
- 2019Report to Donors 2018–19(PDF)
- 2018Report to Donors 2017–18(PDF)
- 2017Report to Donors 2016–17(PDF)
- 2016Report to Donors 2015–16(PDF)
- 2015Report to Donors 2014–15(PDF)
- 2014Report to Donors 2013–14(PDF)
This is what your support makes possible. With more donors we can reach more orphanages, more villages and more families, with donations made directly to FoVO going straight to the people who need it.
Help us do more →