During May Lan Dong’s first visit to Guinea, the extreme poverty throughout the land deeply touched her. Yet, despite many of the schools’ dilapidated conditions, May encountered many bright, hardworking, and motivated students eager to learn. The needs of the students, particularly the impoverished young women, so moved May that she decided to use her own education and skill set to help them resolve their most pressing needs.

May has created a number of programs and raised $50,000 toward sustaining three schools for young women in Guinea. She raised $20,000 to buy sewing machines for the NAFA Center, an all-girls orphanage, to help the girls develop job and domestic skills.

Then May raised an additional $27,000 to build a girls dormitory at CFP Boke Vocational School, so that women could have still better access to training for skilled jobs. Finally, she has collected used textbooks while raising another $10,000 to buy additional textbooks for Sangaredi High School, which had no text books to speak of before May’s efforts.

May Lan Dong feels passionately about improving the education of young women in Guinea, Western Africa. Coming from a good school herself, May knew the power of education to transform and empower people, no matter how impoverished the land or region in which they live. What makes May Lan Dong a hero is that she has undertaken to translate her passion to do good in the developing world into actual programs and initiatives that will help provide young Africans, women in particular, the means to a better life.

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