How a Hong Kong woman’s travels opened her heart to sponsoring needy Vietnamese girls in a country still grappling with child marriages and bride kidnapping
- Agnes Lam’s experience as a flight attendant has made her aware of the large income gap in many societies, spurring her to help others
When Agnes Lam Man-ching started flying around the world, meeting people of various nationalities and cultures as a flight attendant seven years ago, the large income gap between the rich and the poor in many societies shocked her.
It was then that a seed of helping others was sown in her heart.
“I flew to India once at the very beginning of my career and saw a family without a home. Their children had to walk barefoot and they obviously would not have a chance to go to school. It was then that I started to think about what I could do to help them,” Lam says.
Fresh out of college and 23 at the time, she did not have much savings. Still, she searched online and signed up for the “Sponsor a Girl” programme by British-based Plan International, an NGO that works for children in developing countries.
Now 30, Lam has sponsored the education of some eight girls over the last seven years.
“I spend less on unnecessary items to save up for them,” she says. “The money needed to sponsor a child is not much after all.”
