Plant a seed of dream in a child

Have you met children who have no dreams? Their only hope is to escape bombs, have food for the day, have family around them? I have.

I met this group of refugee children living in Mae Sot, Thailand. They came from their mother land, Myanmar, to escape war. If they are lucky, they live in shacks with their family. The shacks are without water and electricity. If they are not lucky, they live in the dorms because the families can’t escape from Myanmar, or the parents are dead.

The condition of the schools is just as primitive as the shacks except there is water and electricity. The classrooms are made of tents without walls, several grades share one big tent. Teacher and children need to whisper so other classes will not be disturbed.

Can you blame them for not having dreams?

My name is Ruth Jeng, I am the founder and CEO of Peach Foundation. I have been helping poor children to acquire education through colleges in Yun-Nan China in the last 23 years. I have helped more than 17000 children, and 7000 have finished college education working as teachers, doctors, lawyers, government officials, bankers, etc. They have become the middle classes in China.

When I started 23 years ago, this group of Chinese children were just as hopeless as the refugees’ children at Mae Sot. They were the first kids in the villages going to 7th grade as all their classmates had dropped out of elementary schools. Girls would get married at the age of 15. With our effort, now 7000 children have finished college, become the first doctor, first banker, first lawyer in their villages.

I want to replicate our success in Mae Sot; I want to tell the children that they can dream. They can be anyone they want to be, they can do anything they want to do, the sky is the limit.

But how can you describe the rainbow color to a blind? How can you describe Mozart to a deaf person? How can you tell the refugee children to have a dream when all they know in life is to run away from war? They are just as the blind to imagine the color of the rainbow, as a deaf person to imagine the melody of Mozart.

Empty encouragement serves no purpose to the blind and the deaf telling them to imagine the rainbow and Mozart. The only way to tell the blind the beauty of the rainbow is to open their eyes, to tell the deaf the melody of Mozart is to open their ears.

I vow to open the eyes of the children; I vow to open the ears of the children. I will tell them that we have thousands of volunteers and donors behind their back to mentor them, to fund them, to help them every step of the way to achieve their dream. Yes, they can have a dream like everyone else. Go ahead and dream. The only thing we can’t give them is their own determination, persistence, and perseverance.