Class for migrant's children

2. As urbanization is in progress, many Vietnamese have left their rural homes in the countryside to look for jobs in cities. Of the total of eight million inhabitants of Hochiminh City, for example, two million are migrants. Understandably, they face many problems regarding adaptation, domicile, employment and study of their own or their children.

A young Dominican priest, fr. Andrew Pham Duy Than of St. Martin de Poress priory, has involved himself to help migrant workers at Honai, Bien Hoa. He says mass for them, hears confession, talks to them and listens to their problems; he even opens a free class to those children, and most recently a “Migrant workers Club” has been set up which welcomes all migrants once a month.

Migrant workers Club

House for students
Fr Joseph Tran Vinh Ha OP

In HCM, Danang, Haiphong and Cantho we try to gather students into groups of 40 or 50 to pray, study, play and help one another. Right now there are about ten such groups. In paricular, last year we opened three boarding houses for students. We also rent private houses for them and share part of the rental cost. Living at these houses the students learn to manage themselves like members of a family, setting time table, cooking, helping one another to study and taking care of one another. Fr. Joseph Tran Vinh Ha, OP is currently in charge of these boarding houses.

4. As Vietnam is open up to the world, there arise new pastoral needs for migrant Vietnamese abroad who are either hired workers or women married to foreigners. In Taiwan alone, there are bout 100,000 Vietnamese brides and another 100,000 Vietnamese labors.

Recently, the Province of Vietnam has assigned some Brothers to Taiwan, Thailand and South Korea to study and work. But since our Brothers have been present there only very recently, they have yet to come up with a concrete working program. Meanwhile, this remains to be one of our primary concerns in the future.

Mass for workers in ThaiLan
Fr Joseph Nguyen Tien Duc OP