From a Temporary Classroom to a Solid School on the Stone Plateau

After 14 hours on the road, Khuoi Roai met the survey team with the early-year cold of the stone plateau. The small hamlet in Tat Nga commune, Meo Vac appears among the mountain slopes, where the roads and the conditions of daily life are still hard. In the kindergarten satellite school at that time, more than 40 children studied together in a single prefabricated room that had outlived its service life.

The temporary classroom no longer safeguarded the children’s health or safety; the satellite school had no boundary wall, no toilet, and too little equipment for care and teaching. Those shortcomings showed most on cold, rainy days, when the one classroom served at once as the place to learn, to play, to eat and to rest.

Out of that field survey came a project of 130 m², with two classrooms, a kitchen and a toilet block. The construction budget first estimated was 420 million VND, not including equipment and fittings. On the drawings these were specific line items; for the teachers and the parents they were the answer to a worry about the children’s safety whenever the weather turned severe.

Over the nearly five months that followed, contributions from officials, teachers, staff, parents, students, partners and the wider community were drawn together into one concrete building. Every share — money, materials, or labour given locally — pointed at the same goal: to replace the temporary classroom with a solid satellite school better suited to the daily life of kindergarten children.

On the morning of 2 June 2025, the Khuoi Roai satellite school was officially inaugurated. At the ceremony, representatives of the project cut the ribbon, handed the keys to the head teacher, unveiled the project plaque and gave gifts to the teachers and the students. That moment of hand-over marked the whole stretch from a need that had been seen to a building ready to be used.

The new school does not erase the hardships of a highland hamlet, but it lays an important foundation. The children have a solid classroom in which to learn and to rest; the teachers can organise care more effectively; the parents feel easier about sending their children to school. A small building on the map can be an enormous change in the everyday life of more than 40 children.

When the scissors closed on the inauguration ribbon, what opened was more than the door of a new classroom. It was the chance for the children of Khuoi Roai to grow up in a safer place, and the proof that many small contributions, when aimed at one goal, can build somewhere lasting for a childhood.

What changed

The Khuoi Roai Kindergarten satellite school was inaugurated on 2 June 2025, with the keys handed over to the school to serve more than 40 local children. As first surveyed, the project covered 130 m² with 2 classrooms, 1 kitchen and 1 toilet block, at an estimated construction budget of 420 million VND not including equipment.

Source: the survey report, the inauguration report