On September 6, 2025, Tuoi Tre Online told the story of Tran Le Nhat Doan, a freshman admitted to the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence program at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Engineering (HCM-UTE, formerly Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education). Before the new academic year began, Doan and his mother, who has a heart condition, moved from Quang Ngai Province to Ho Chi Minh City and worked together at a garment workshop to save for his studies.
IN THE PRESS · Tuoi Tre Online · Youth Life
Saturday, September 6, 2025, 5:33 p.m. | By Yen Trinh
Original headline, translated: “Admitted to HCMC University of Technology and Education, a son and his mother with a heart condition struggle to make ends meet in Ho Chi Minh City”
A rented room and a garment workshop
For about a month, Doan has lived with his mother, Le Ngoc Vien, 40, in a rented room at the end of a narrow alley in Ho Chi Minh City. Through an acquaintance, both found work at a garment workshop in Linh Xuan Ward, where Vien works as a skilled seamstress and Doan helps out while waiting to begin classes. Vien gets up at 4 a.m. to cook breakfast and pack lunch, and the two try to spend no more than VND 50,000 a day. When they left home in My Khanh Hamlet, Long Phung Commune, they brought along a box of green eggplants and winter melons to eat over the following weeks.
Vien hopes Doan can secure a free place at Co May Dormitory once classes begin, so that she can move closer to her workplace and cut costs. To save on electricity, she lights the room with a dim solar-powered bulb.
A dream rooted in robotics
Doan was admitted to his first-choice program, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, through the University’s high school transcript review, using the A00 subject combination of mathematics, physics and chemistry. He sees the field as one with great potential and wide applications, from healthcare and education to smart systems. His phone has a cracked screen, and his greatest wish is a laptop to support his studies.
Doan told Tuoi Tre that his mother’s greatest wish is to see him succeed in his studies. He aims to study hard and become fluent in foreign languages so that he can one day work for an international technology company and earn enough to support his mother and grandparents. TRAN LE NHAT DOAN · HCM-UTE freshman, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence |
School by day, farm work and caregiving at home
Life at home in Quang Ngai has not been easy. Doan’s grandfather has been in poor health since undergoing heart valve surgery in 2015, and his grandmother also suffers from heart disease and high blood pressure, which used up the family’s savings. Hardship deepened when Vien fell from her motorbike while collecting onions and garlic to sell, breaking her foot and jaw. For the next two years, Doan spent half of each day at school and the other half caring for his mother and doing housework.
In his spare time, he helped his grandparents carry rice and corn in the fields and pulled mustard greens for his mother to sell at the market. On busy days, he could only sit down to study at 10 p.m., sometimes working until 2 a.m.
Learning resilience from his mother
Vien’s heart condition continues to weaken her, and without money for treatment she can only take medication sparingly. Since the accident, she walks with a limp and her left hand can hold only light objects. When Doan offered to quit school and work to support her, she urged him to keep studying, believing that education is the only way for him to escape poverty.
Doan said resilience is the quality he has learned most from his mother. Raising him on her own, Vien trained as a seamstress, then studied pharmacy at an intermediate vocational school while waiting tables and washing dishes. She later worked at the provincial hospital but could not make ends meet, so she returned to sewing and selling onions and garlic. The savings she had set aside for his university studies were spent after her accident.
A helping hand from teachers and the community
Before Doan left for Ho Chi Minh City, his teacher Ngo Khac Vu of Mo Duc 2 High School gave him some money for the journey, and later visited him at the workshop during a medical trip to the city. Vu said it would be a great loss if Doan had to give up university because of his circumstances. He also noted that Vien did not ask him for money, only for advice on her son’s education and help finding work. After reading Vu’s social media post about the family, Le Thi Phuong Dung, a former student of Vu’s father, offered mother and son jobs in Ho Chi Minh City.
ABOUT TIEP SUC DEN TRUONG 2025 Tuoi Tre’s Tiep Suc Den Truong (Support for School) program planned to award 1,000 scholarships worth VND 15 million each to disadvantaged first-year students across 34 provinces and cities in 2025, with total funding of about VND 20 billion. The program also included 20 special scholarships of VND 50 million each, covering four years of study. |
Note: The article uses the University’s name at the time of publication. On December 26, 2025, the University was renamed Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Engineering (HCM-UTE).
Original article (in Vietnamese)
Con trai đậu ĐH Sư phạm kỹ thuật TP.HCM cùng mẹ bệnh tim bươn chải giữa TP.HCM
Tuoi Tre Online, tuoitre.vn, September 6, 2025 · By Yen Trinh
Read the original article on Tuoi Tre ↗
This English summary is provided for international readers. The original article and its photos are the property of Tuoi Tre Online.
Source: Tuoi Tre Online
