For more than seven years, Nối Trọn Yêu Thương (Connexting with Love)— produced by the team at the Center for Humanitarian Television in partnership with Tan Hiep Phat Group — has traveled the length of Vietnam, meeting and telling the stories of people who have refused to let hardship define the limits of their lives. Behind every story of resilience lies another story: one of kindness, responsibility, and the desire to give back.
People Who Live Larger Than Their Circumstances
Some lives begin with far more against them than others. But what defines a person is not only what they must face — it is how they choose to continue living.
That question has driven Nối Trọn Yêu Thương for more than seven years.
Produced by the Center for Humanitarian Television with the support of Tan Hiep Phat Group, the program has traveled across the country to find and tell the stories of ordinary people who share one trait: they do not merely strive to overcome their own circumstances — they also create positive value for those around them.
Editor Nguyễn Nhật Mai, who has been with the program from early on, once posed a question: why do people who have endured so much hardship — often seen as vulnerable and disadvantaged — not only overcome their own struggles, but go on to help and inspire others?
After years of traveling and meeting people, the answer began to emerge from the program’s own subjects. In them was not just the will to survive, but a deeper desire to live meaningfully, to contribute, and to give.
Đỗ Hà Cừ is one such story. Living with the effects of Agent Orange exposure and able to move only a single finger, he turned his love of books into the Hy Vọng (“Hope”) Reading Space. When the program first met him in 2019, his model consisted of just eight reading spaces. Today it has grown into a network of 34 community libraries, many of them run by people with disabilities.
Lê Thị Thắm was born without arms, yet never gave up her dream of becoming a teacher. After years of tutoring disadvantaged students free of charge, she was granted a special appointment in 2023 and finally stood in front of a classroom as a teacher in her own right.
Lê Văn Công, born with impaired legs, rose to become one of the leading figures in Vietnamese para-sports. In early 2026, competing despite injury, he still won gold at the 13th ASEAN Para Games.
These are just three of the nearly 100 stories Nối Trọn Yêu Thương has gathered. The people vary widely in circumstance, profession, and life path, yet they converge on one shared choice: never to let hardship become the final boundary of their lives.
Journalist Phạm Văn Hà, Director of the Humanitarian Television Channel, says what stays with him is not what these individuals endured, but how they chose to live afterward. “They lived lives larger than what they were given,” he said.
That is also why Nối Trọn Yêu Thương never chose to tell its stories solely through the lens of loss or hardship. Behind every difficult circumstance is still a person with abilities, aspirations, and choices of their own — and it is precisely those choices that the program wants to bring to its audience.
A Journey to Carry Stories of Resilience to the Community
A story told on television may last only a few minutes. But for Nối Trọn Yêu Thương, the meeting between the production team and its subject has never been treated as an endpoint. What the program aims for is to carry each deeply personal story out to the wider community, so that a person’s resilience, kindness, and spirit of giving can be seen, felt, shared, and multiplied.
Achieving that starts with earning the trust of the people whose stories the program tells. Some are wary of the camera. Others are reluctant to revisit painful memories. In some cases, health issues force filming plans to change entirely. According to journalist Phạm Văn Hà, a crew that shows up expecting its subjects to simply be ready to appear on camera will rarely get close to the real story.
What matters most is making each person feel heard, and their story treated with respect.
For editor Nguyễn Nhật Mai, these encounters offer more than raw material for a television program. Many of the people featured have, in turn, become a source of inspiration for the very team making the show — through their resilience, kindness, and dedication. Some of these meetings took place years ago, yet the way these individuals chose to live has stayed with the crew ever since.
The value of Nối Trọn Yêu Thương lies in more than simply presenting a hardship to its audience. When a story is told with enough honesty, viewers can see, behind each fate, a person striving to live, to work, and to contribute. Empathy, then, no longer stops at pity for someone’s difficulties — it grows into genuine respect for their resilience and for the good they choose to give back.
That is also how these personal stories begin to forge new connections. What starts as a meeting between the crew and one individual grows into a meeting between that person and the audience — and from there, people who want to give find each other.
A beautiful story, told the right way, can give rise to many more beautiful stories. And that is precisely how love continues to be carried forward.
Keeping Love Connected
Behind every story that reaches an audience lies a long, persistent effort by the people making the program. For more than seven years, the Nối Trọn Yêu Thương team has traveled across Vietnam in search of people whose stories deserve to be told, building the trust needed for them to open up, before bringing those stories to the public.
Nearly 100 featured individuals mean nearly 100 personal encounters, each one opening onto a story of resilience, kindness, responsibility, and dedication. But for a journey like this to go the distance, the storytellers need partners willing to stay the course.
Tan Hiep Phat Group has stood alongside Nối Trọn Yêu Thương since its earliest days — support that has gone well beyond simply funding the trips and connections that make the program possible.
According to editor Nguyễn Nhật Mai, company representatives have taken part in these trips in person, meeting the featured individuals directly and staying in touch with some of them long after their episodes have aired. That is the crucial difference in this partnership: it is not just about helping a story get told, but about caring for the value that story can continue to create once it has been.
For Tan Hiep Phat, its partnership with Nối Trọn Yêu Thương grew out of a deep alignment with the values the company pursues: resilience in the face of adversity, optimism, kindness, and a drive to create positive value for the community. Every person featured on the program, whatever hardship they have faced, has chosen to accept it, to live meaningfully, and to keep contributing to those around them. When kindness and resilience move together, good values multiply — from the individual, to the family, to the business, and out into the community. It is that same spirit that pushes each person to move past their own limits, keep contributing, and help build a better society together.
That is also what gives the program’s stories their power to move people.
If the program helps these stories be seen, heard, and connected with the community, the company’s ongoing support helps ensure the journey can be sustained — and its reach can grow even further.
After more than seven years, Nối Trọn Yêu Thương is preparing to enter a new chapter. Journalist Phạm Văn Hà says the team is reworking the program’s format, particularly for digital platforms, to increase interaction between featured individuals and the community and to bring these stories to a wider audience. It is a natural evolution of the spirit the program has always pursued: not simply to tell a story, but to find ways for that story to keep forging connections long after the episode ends.
Looking back on that journey, what remains of Nối Trọn Yêu Thương is not simply a tally of the people it has met or the places it has traveled.
It is the meetings that left behind trust. The stories that helped others see hardship through a different lens. The people who once received love and support, and who went on to give it in turn. The connections forged among the individuals featured, the production team, the audience, and everyone who has walked alongside them.
From a person brave enough to walk through hardship, a story is told. From a story told, seeds of compassion are awakened. And from those seeds, other beautiful stories can begin.
And that, in the end, is the meaning of Nối Trọn Yêu Thương: never letting a beautiful story stop where it was first told, but carrying it forward to reach people who can listen, share in it, and keep writing it onward.
Source: https://vnexpress.net/7-nam-lan-toa-nghi-luc-cua-chuong-trinh-noi-tron-yeu-thuong-5122712.html
