“Warm Porridge” Season 8: Bringing Warm Love to Difficult Situations

“Warm Porridge” is an activity within the “Warm Winter Love” program of the Dai Nam University Volunteer Student Team. Over 7 seasons, Dai Nam’s “Warm Porridge” has reached thousands of poor workers and homeless people in Hanoi; spreading humanity, the spirit of mutual love and volunteerism of Dai Nam University’s youth.

“Warm porridge” with the message “A piece given, a thousand loves received” is a volunteer activity, educating community awareness that students are particularly interested in and respond to. Through this activity, generations of students of Dai Nam University will learn to love, sympathize, and share with those in less fortunate circumstances; thereby having the motivation to study, and a correct and positive attitude towards life.

Students prepare ingredients to cook porridge.

This year, “Warm Porridge” will start in mid-October 2022 and last until January 10, 2023. Accordingly, the Student Volunteer Team will deploy 22 porridge batches with a total budget of 10 million VND. This funding source is called for from benefactors and the “Warm Winter” fundraising program of the Student Volunteer Team. Accordingly, young people have deployed a program to sell fermented pork rolls - buy ingredients to cook porridge.

On average, each week, the Student Volunteer Team will cook and distribute porridge 3 times on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Up to now, “Warm Porridge” season 8 has produced 10 times; more than 400 portions of nutritious porridge were cooked by volunteer students and delivered to people in difficult circumstances.

“I am happy to cook and “give” porridge to poor workers and homeless people. The value of each porridge portion is not large, but it is the wholeheartedness of us young people. Hopefully, this small gift will help them feel warm and have more faith in life…” , Phan Thu Hien – student of class KT 14-03 expressed.

Each bowl of porridge is cooked with all the passion and love of the young people.

Each porridge delivery usually starts at 9pm and ends around midnight. Each porridge portion is carefully packaged, ensuring hygiene and stored in a styrofoam box to keep the porridge hot.

The DNU Student Volunteer Team is ready to go and give delicious porridge to the poor and homeless people in Hanoi.

Not only did the students “give” hot bowls of porridge, filled with love, they also sat down to chat, share and listen to the life stories of the poor and homeless. The sharing and sincere hand holding of the young people helped the unfortunate people feel more optimistic and warmer during the cold winter nights in Hanoi.

Ms. Ngoc Bich (63 years old) shared: “Thanks to the hot porridge from the students, I feel full in the cold late at night. Surely many people feel as happy as I do…”

A bowl of porridge given, a thousand loves received.

According to Mr. Vu Dang Tuan Anh - Secretary of the Youth Union of Dai Nam University, only by going like this can students feel the difficulties that poor workers and homeless people are going through. From there, young people learn to understand, sympathize and be grateful for life, be grateful for still having a roof over their heads, having enough food and clothes, etc.

“Each bowl of porridge given away is a time of sharing love. Through activities like this, young people will learn many useful things in life to grow and improve themselves,” Mr. Tuan Anh shared.

Some other pictures:

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