Saving Hanoi's street children from abuse, hunger and self-destruction

As night falls in Hanoi, the crowds thronging around the Hoan Kiem Lake begin to dissipate. Do Duy Vi scans the crowds of teenagers hunting Pokémon on their phones, women dancing and street vendors hawking the last of their wares.

“You learn to look for the signs,” says Vi. “Sometimes they’ll be dirty, or carrying bags of clothes. Sometimes you can tell from the way they sit.”

Vi is making his nightly search for destitute children sleeping on the streets of Vietnam’s capital city. “They’re seen as the lowest of the low. In Vietnamese they’re called ‘tre bui doi’ – ‘children of the dust’,” he says.

Vi, who’s 29, is the chief outreach officer for Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, an Australian-founded NGO that has been working with street children in Vietnam since 2004. He has been in the job for seven years...

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