PHAN LE QUYNH NHU
I would describe myself as a small girl with a big mission, shaped by a unique background and diverse life experiences that have forged within me strength, intellectual curiosity, ambition, romance, open-mindedness, and compassion.
I spent my early years in a quiet rural village, living with my grandparents while my parents struggled to earn a living in the city. In our cozy home, my grandmother nurtured my love for poetry and painting, while my grandfather introduced me to the first lines of code. I later learned that they once held high-ranking positions with the American forces during the Vietnam War. But after 1975, they returned to village life as farmers, enduring systemic discrimination ever since. Their quiet resilience became my first lesson in overcoming hardship.
At age four, I joined my parents in Ho Chi Minh City. Understanding our situation, I worked hard to earn admission into competitive schools for the gifted and consistently maintained top academic performances to secure scholarships. With remaining scholarship funds and support from my network, I founded a nonprofit that turns discarded water hyacinths into handcrafted products. Its success allowed me to fund a tech-education center and launch charitable initiatives focused on women’s empowerment and educational equity.
I live by Buddhist teachings of karma, impermanence, and compassion. Yet I really enjoy learning from other cultures and religions, believing in the power of shared humanity.
This is my story and my mission: to build a brighter, more equitable world, where hope blossoms like the water hyacinths of my childhood, even in the most forgotten corners of the world.
Below are the materials regarding my Grandma's poetry journal, my Grandpa's scientific materials, Buddhist rituals and other traditions in my culturally rich hometown, Long An.
RELIGIONS
Kite Flying on Nang Thom Cho Dao golden rice paddies
These rice fields cradled my childhood—where I took my first steps, awaited my parents returning from the city, clung to my grandmother as she carried water hyacinth crafts to market, and welcomed my grandfather with food and books from the pagoda. The rice we yielded from these fields was more than sustenance; it was the essence that nourished and united my family.
In childhood, I would gather with neighborhood friends to craft kites from discarded magazine paper and slender bamboo, flying them over the boundless rice paddies. Each kite carried handwritten notes of our dreams, entrusted to the heavens with the belief that the gods would read our aspirations and bestow our blessings.
This is my grandmother's wood-burning stove, the hearth that has sustained generations of my family. It is where water hyacinth soup, fermented fish hotpot, floating rice cake, and herbal creations (black locust tree shampoo and coconut oil) came to life.
Grandmother’s Hearth
The fire flickers, steady and warm,
cutting through the hush of dawn.
Ashes settle like quiet echoes,
holding the breath of generations.
A pot of hyacinth soup simmers,
its fragrance rising with the past.
Fermented spice lingers on the tongue,
the taste of a land that never fades.
Bamboo ladles stir rice cakes afloat,
soft and yielding, like her embrace.
The hearth hums a familiar tune,
its glow a refuge, its warmth a vow.
Black locust perfumes her silvered hair,
coconut oil softens her timeworn hands.
Bent by years, yet steady as stone,
she carries the echoes of those before.
The embers fade, but their glow stays,
a quiet light through all of our days.
The UNESCO Informatics Magazine - Vietnamese version(my Grandpa's scientific magazine regarding scientific breakthroughs and their ethics)
My Grandma's poetry collection written when she was the Saigon Ministry of Education Secretary before 1975
Map of Europe and Asia drawn by my Grandma
