On a sun-soaked morning in June 2025, COV staff and our local partners returned to Trieu An Elementary School. Just a few weeks earlier, in late May, a brand-new water filtration system had been installed—and today was our chance to see what it meant for the children.
As we stepped into the schoolyard, the steady beat of drums rose through the warm air. A group of students was rehearsing for their end-of-year celebration, their faces bright with focus and joy. We clapped along, feeling their energy ripple through the summer heat. When practice ended, the children all moved in the same direction: toward the new water station.
For children in Vietnam’s mountain districts, moments like this are not routine. In many highland communes, nearly 1 in 3 households still lack access to safe drinking water (UNICEF Vietnam, 2022). Families rely on unprotected wells, streams tainted by livestock waste, or rainwater that dries up when the season turns. Because of this, diarrheal disease remains one of the leading causes of illness among rural children under 15, closely tied to unsafe water (Ministry of Health, 2021).
That’s why what we witnessed at Trieu An felt so deeply significant.
Among the students gathered at the new water station was Dat, a cheerful fourth grader who had just finished leading the drumline with steady, confident strikes. When asked how he felt about the new filtered water tap, he smiled shyly: “It’s clean, and I feel at ease.”
At home, he explained, his family once used a small filter. But when it broke, they had to buy 20-liter jugs of water—an expense that may seem small in the cities, but for families in the mountains, where daily meals are still a struggle, it becomes a constant, quiet worry. Now, with three tall filtration tanks at school, Dat can drink as much as he needs. “The water tastes fresh,” he added with a grin.
For Dat and his classmates, clean water is about more than quenching thirst. It fuels their learning and play, keeps them healthy, and lifts one of the many daily burdens their families shoulder.
At Trieu An Elementary, each glass of water now carries hope—hope that no child will be held back by something as basic as what they drink. Thanks to the generosity of donors, something as small as a drop of clean water is rippling outward into something much bigger: brighter, healthier futures.
Because sometimes, the biggest changes begin with just a drop.