A poverty-stricken student from southern Vietnam has stepped into college after days of striving to earn money for the tuition, determined not to relinquish his hope for a better future based on education.

Vo Dien Lam left his hometown in Tra Vinh Province of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta for Ho Chi Minh City, over 130 kilometers away, in order to do the job of loading and unloading items from trucks.

Lam made the decision right after taking the crucial high school graduation exam in late June, whose results determine a student’s likelihood of entering college.

The test scores were announced last month and Lam knew that he had been admitted to the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, a highly selective higher education institution with high prestige nationwide.

However, Lam received the good news with a fresh worry: he may have to choose a short-term vocational training program or, in the worst-case scenario, even stop learning, if the money obtained over the past two months could not cover the tuition fees.

Fortunately, he eventually chose to enroll in the university.

He has lived with his mother and grandmother in a poor house along the Mekong River that is partially submerged when water levels seasonally rise.

In some cases, his books were washed away as floods came rapidly overnight, and he only knew that after his bed was wet with water.

His family possesses no arable land, which is a great disadvantage since most households in the Mekong Delta depend on farming as the main means of livelihood.

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