The gifts were sponsored by the Association of Vietnamese People in the Ukraine’s Kharkov province.

# The Big C supermarket chain and the P&G Vietnam held a number of activities for poor households and handicapped children in Nam Dinh province to celebrate the Lunar New Year festival.

At the province’s vocational centre, Big C donated such products as sticky rice, fish sauce, mineral water, cooking oil, glutamate, sugar and candies to 92 children with disabilities.

Le Si Hien, Manager of Big C Nam Dinh, pledged to allocate one booth in his supermarket to display goods made by the vocational centre and promote them to the customers. Hien added that the company is ready to receive the centre’s disabled members for appropriate positions at the supermarket.

Meanwhile, in Nam Dinh city, Big C presented 127 gifts to local poor households.

# On January 22, the Ben Tre provincial association for sponsoring poor patients, orphans, and disabled people presented gifts, each worth VND250,000, to 90 child patients who had undergone heart operations in 2010.

Each heart operation cost about VND80 million. Most of the costs were covered by domestic and foreign charities.

# On January 21 and 22, the international relief organization Samaritan’s Purse gave 2,000 gift packages worth nearly VND1 billion to disadvantaged children in Quang Dien district, Thua Thien-Hue province.

Each package comprised clothes, socks, hats, study aids, and toys.

Also on this occasion, the local fund for sponsoring children presented nearly 3,000 gifts, worth nearly VND2.5 billion, to the province’s poor children. These were also funded by Samaritan’s Purse.

# Meanwhile, 30 orphans in Cam Ranh, Nha Trang, have been invited to attend a party at the five-star Sheraton Nha Trang hotel on the 26^th day of the 12^th month of the Lunar Calendar.

They will take part in a special spring welcoming programme and receive lucky money from the hotel’s managing board.