“I was given a lot of love, trust and sense of pur-pose.” – how sometimes the most logical of all things – helping needy human beings – can be a very exhaustive job.

Jimmy Pham, Founder & Director, KOTO, Hanoi, Vietnam

Jimmy, an Australian citizen, has been taking care of street kids in Hanoi for a couple of years. How does something like this start? In Jimmy’s case it was like this: “I kept feeding, clothing and washing a couple of street kids during my vacation in Viet-nam. One day one of the girls came along with her mother and siblings. “Mom, that’s Uncle Jimmy” – she shouted, “Go ask him for money” – replied her mother. “No!” - The girl did not find it was right to ask me for money and her mother smashed her head at the house wall several times. This moment I de-cided to come back to Hanoi for longer. It was not any more about maybe I should, maybe I shouldn’t. I had to.”
Following that event, Jimmy has spent all of his and most of his family’s money to support a growing number of chil-dren. He gave them shelter, clothes, food, paid for their education. Giving up has never been an option: “If you promise to stick around, you do stick around”, Jimmy says. It was the kids who told him that there may be a better way to help them, that they needed more. What they needed were voca-tional skills so that they could work for their own support. Jimmy, having a background in hospitality, founded a KOTO Café in Hanoi and later a re-staurant training school where his kids can learn skills for life. Today he is thinking about expanding his model first in Vietnam, than internationally.

Let us give you a short impression of our emotional dis-cussions with Jimmy. You might be able to read more about this fantastic guy and his passion to help in our book “MyImpact”.

Jimmy Pham’s selected quotations:
“After graduating and working in Australia I got a job as tourism inspector in Vietnam. That’s where I first met the street kids. There were four of them; dirty, hungry, full of blisters and carrying coconuts in huge baskets. They worked 17 hours a day, slept on the riverbanks, thought that was a normal thing and still managed to smile.”

“I believe that everybody deserves basics like shelter, water and food. I invited the four kids to my room to take a shower – usually they had to pay for one. Next day 10 kids were standing in front of the hotel. At that point I did not understand the extent of the problem. I thought I would just do whatever I could to help.”

“I was always doing some community work, but I never considered fully getting engaged in a social initiative.”

“If your passion is big enough, you don’t tend to see the obstacles.”

“I was given a lot of love, trust and sense of purpose. I also received immediate feedback from the children – they started using my words, repeating my gestures. Every-body likes to be needed.”

“You could not expect children who fought for life in the streets to be angels. But they played that role for me; they believe that’s what I expected.”

“Once the kids asked me what I want in return for what I give. I told them that I wanted them to become the best person they can be. And then they could repay me by helping someone else. That’s how “know one, teach one = KOTO” was born.”

“I was and again and again am amazed by the children’s ability to assess their situation and come up with solu-tions. There is a lot to learn for me.”

Some background on Jimmy Pham:
Born in Saigon, Jimmy Pham was two years old when his family fled the war. From Vietnam, they traveled to Singapore, then Saudi Arabia, and eventually came to settle in Australia when Jimmy was eight. After high school, Jimmy did a variety of jobs, from working in a sandwich shop to selling vacuum clea-ners, before enrolling in a tourism course.
In the 1990s Jimmy returned to Vietnam as a tour guide. Here he met some of Saigon’s 25,000 street kids and was shocked at their situation. Jimmy also got to know nine street kids from Hanoi and would meet up with them each time he came through the city. He fed them, bought clo-thes and paid for them to attend school or English lessons.
Jimmy wanted to be able to help these kids in the long-term and together they came up with the idea of running a café so that they could learn useful skills and earn some money. In 2000 Jimmy decided to quit his tourism job and give it a go. The café was a great success and KOTO has since grown into a popular restaurant and a training centre where an internationally accredited hospitality curriculum is taught.

Some background on KOTO:
KOTO (Know One, Teach One) is a unique and dynamic hospitality training program that is helping to change the lives of former street kids in Vietnam. The concept of KOTO began on the streets of Hanoi in 1996 when Jimmy Pham asked a group of street kids what they wanted out of life. They simply replied that ‘they needed skills, so they could find stable jobs’ and so the concept of KOTO was born.
Today the KOTO training project is fast becoming recog-nized as one of the leading hospitality programs in Viet-nam. Through a training program involving theoretical and practical skills development as well as essential life skills, each KOTO trainee develops both personally and profes-sionally during their time at KOTO.

If you would like to engage with the work of Jimmy Pham or to know more about his organization “KOTO”, please visit www.streetvoices.com.au,
or, for more specific opportunities, contact joanna.stefanska@myimpact.ch or wolfgang.hafenmayer@myimpact.ch directly