Building Better
Photo: Dang Ngoc Tan takes control of his pressing machine at Rainbow Village construction site
Kien Giang City, December 2009
For 30 years Mr. Tan had never imaged he could own a decent shelter. Growing up into a poor family, he shared a 40 square meter house with seven siblings and parents. Eventually, he decided to leave his hometown but was only able to earn money extracting waste from a dump site, which he did on his own until he got married in 2002. At that time, he began to look for employment that would better support a family. In 2008, Mr. Tan, having heard about the Rainbow Village building project, decided to rent a house and a pressing machine to begin a small construction enterprise.
Now after a year, he finally has a home of his own, actually owning a pressing machine and renting another, supervising two 5 person construction teams. His employees work on a local government project and at the Rainbow Village construction site.
Now that he has the pressing machines (the only two in his community), his income has increased to 2 million VND a month, approximately 110 US dollars. However, with the security of her own home, his wife, Mrs. Thi, supplements that income with earnings of her own—one million VND a month—from selling baguettes using a pushcart in their community.
Smiling happily, Mr. Tan says that his wife and children enjoy the new house because it’s “bigger and cleaner.” He adds, “When we were still at the dump site, the children had to suffer from the dirt and smell. Now, they can go to school and concentrate on their study.” Also, when the rainy season comes, he says that he does not have to worry that the roof will leak.
However, Mr. Tan realizes that the security of a home and the education it provides will afford his own children even more employment opportunities than he and his wife enjoy with a 5th and 8th grade education respectively—that his daughter will “continue to study higher and higher.”
For his daughter Han and the other children of Rainbow Village, the options are endless. Like her father and his construction machines, she is building a brighter future for herself. Since moving into the Rainbow village, Mr. Tan has a more stable life, one that will allow his children to construct their more secure tomorrows on the foundation of decent housing today.
