When Staying Clean Becomes a Childhood Challenge
From countless field visits to remote boarding primary schools in Điện Biên, we witnessed a heartbreaking reality.
Growing up without enough food or warm clothes is already difficult. But growing up without access to basic hygiene can leave even deeper, longer-lasting consequences—for children’s health, confidence.
In many of these mountain schools, even a bar of soap or a personal toothbrush is something many children do not have. The lack of basic hygiene supplies, together with old and damaged bathrooms and toilets, means children often miss something many of us take for granted—the chance to live, learn, and grow up in a clean and healthy environment.
That is why Go Clean Go School was created. We are not here to organize one-off donation drives where supplies disappear as quickly as they arrive. Instead, we choose to stay, to walk alongside these communities, and to build lasting change from the ground up.
Vision & Mission
Vision
Through integrated approach: providing hygiene supplies, nurturing healthy habits & improving sanitation infrastructure, we envision a future where every child in Điện Biên can confidently maintain hygiene in a safe environment, supported by a caring & sustainable community.
Mission
We work directly alongside primary school students in Điện Biên by providing essential hygiene supplies on a regular basis, organizing hands-on workshops that help children build healthy hygiene habits, and mobilizing resources to repair and improve school sanitation facilities.
Phase 1 (2026–2027 Academic Year): Providing Essential Supplies & Building Lifelong Habits
Our first focus is on two primary boarding schools: Sinh Phinh 1 Ethnic Semi-Boarding Primary School & Ta Phin Ethnic Semi-Boarding Primary School. Both are located in Sính Phình Commune, Điện Biên Province. While these schools already have basic sanitation infrastructure, they continue to face severe shortages of essential hygiene supplies.
📍Target: 54,000,000 VND (Semester 1 – academic year 2026-2027)
📍Core Action: Throughout the school year, we will ensure children have continuous access to five everyday essentials: Hand soap, Bath soap, Shampoo, Toothpaste, Toothbrushes.
Together with dedicated volunteers, we work alongside teachers to make good hygiene a natural part of every child’s daily routine—not simply a lesson, but a lasting habit.
Phase 2 (Planned for the 2027–2028 Academic Year) Creating Safe and Lasting Hygiene Spaces
Future Plan: Once the hygiene supply and education model is running effectively, the project will move forward to assess and support other remote schools across Điện Biên.
📍Core Action: We will conduct site assessments, mobilize larger-scale funding, and directly construct, renovate, and upgrade handwashing facilities and boarding school bathrooms, creating a lasting legacy for generations of children in the mountainous regions.
The Team Behind Go Clean Go School
Go Clean Go School is led by a dedicated project management team that approaches social impact with the same discipline and accountability expected of professional project management.
Every fundraising decision, budget allocation, and implementation plan is carefully designed, measured, and transparently managed to ensure every contribution creates meaningful and measurable impact.
Võ Phương Thảo – Founder
Thảo leads fundraising, operations, and local partnerships.
Born and raised in Vũng Tàu City, Thảo became involved in community initiatives while still at university. Driven by a desire to create sustainable impact, she spent nearly three years working directly in remote communities across Northwest Vietnam, particularly in Lai Châu and Điện Biên, supporting disadvantaged families and primary school children.
Today, Thảo serves as a Project Coordinator at Volunteers For Education (VFE), where she works closely with local authorities to implement school infrastructure projects throughout Điện Biên while managing a long-term network of volunteers based at local schools.
Although VFE has helped build essential facilities—including boarding houses, classrooms, bathrooms, and toilets—and continues to organize volunteer programs, significant gaps remain. Many schools still lack basic personal hygiene supplies for the 2026–2027 academic year and beyond, while countless others continue to rely on aging, deteriorating sanitation facilities.
Witnessing these unmet needs firsthand inspired Thảo to establish Go Clean Go School.
Trần Ngọc Thanh – Co-founder
Thanh leads fundraising and communications.
With more than five years of experience in advertising and media, Thanh is responsible for raising awareness and mobilizing support for children who lack access to essential hygiene in rural and mountainous schools.
Since university, Thanh has always hoped to contribute to community initiatives through communications—the field she knows best. However, it was only after learning more about conditions in Điện Biên through Thảo that she truly understood the scale of the challenge.
Before conversations about educational quality or equal opportunities can even begin, many children still struggle to access something as basic as toothpaste, a toothbrush, or hand soap. That reality became impossible to ignore.
Through this project, Thanh hopes to bring greater public attention to the hidden hygiene challenges faced by children in rural Vietnam, helping connect more people, organizations, and resources to support children in Điện Biên and other underserved communities.
She believes every child deserves to grow up in a clean, safe environment with the basic foundations needed to learn confidently and thrive.
Collaboration with Volunteers For Education (VFE)
One of the defining strengths of Go Clean Go School’s first phase is the support of two dedicated full-time volunteers from Volunteers For Education (VFE). Throughout the school year, they live and work alongside the communities they serve. Together with teachers, they monitor the project’s progress, demonstrate proper handwashing and toothbrushing techniques, reinforce daily hygiene practices, and encourage children every step of the way.
