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SOUTH SALT LAKE -- A grassroots citizen group wants to end poverty and is calling on President Obama to keep a campaign promise to improve education.
At the Hser Ner Moo Community and Welcome Center, named after the young immigrant girl who was murdered in April 2008, children heard from a woman Friday who knows first-hand what can be accomplished with strong schools.
75 million children worldwide are out of primary school and denied access to a basic education. Over 226 million youth do not have the opportunity to attend secondary school. -Global Campaign for Education
Lieu Tran is highly educated, with two bachelor's degrees and a master's degree. Not bad for a Vietnamese immigrant who never went to school the first decade of her life.
"Instead of sending children to school, children at the age of eight had to go to work," Tran told the children.
Years later, her family immigrated to Salt Lake City. She enrolled at a local elementary school--her first time ever in school.
"I never got good grades in school," she said. "I always got Fs."
She is a volunteer member of RESULTS, a grassroots advocacy group spreading the word about the importance of educating the impoverished.
"One of the things that keeps people poor is lack of education, and the big problem right now is there's 75 million children in the world that don't get a chance to go to primary school. And that's just bad news," said RESULTS chairman Scott Leckman.
Reaching the goal, Leckman says, would make mire be more success stories like Tran's possible.
For now, Tran is just focusing on the young group of kids she spoke with Friday; she calls them the future of Salt Lake, Utah and the nation.
"I want every kid in this school to have the same opportunity I did," Tran said.
