Refusing to let hardship define her life, Lâm Thị Nga turned her own longing to move freely into the drive behind a workshop that builds three-wheeled vehicles for people with disabilities — and, with it, a chance for many others to work, live independently, and find their place in the world.
“I am always grateful to life for everything wonderful it has given me,” says Lâm Thị Nga, director of Ba Bánh Hà Nam Company Limited, speaking in the June episode of Nối Trọn Yêu Thương (“Connecting with Love”).
It is a striking sentiment from a woman who has used a wheelchair since the age of six, after transverse myelitis left her legs paralyzed. Her family sold off what assets they had trying to find a cure, but her condition never improved.
Rather than dwell on what she had lost, Nga chose to hold on to what she still had: a devoted family, an encouraging father, and companions who stood by her as she built a business from nothing. That perspective, she says, is what carried her through and eventually opened doors for other people with disabilities as well.
Her story is one of many the “Nối Trọn Yêu Thương” program has told over more than seven years, in partnership with Tân Hiệp Phát Group, with the aim of spreading resilience, compassion, and a sense of civic responsibility.
Refusing to Let Hardship Write the Ending
Few would guess that the small woman in the wheelchair runs a mechanical workshop producing three-wheeled vehicles and mobility aids for people with disabilities. For Nga, it all traces back to a simple wish: to move on her own and take charge of her own life.
After she fell ill at six, her legs stopped functioning. For nearly a decade, her father took her from place to place searching for treatment, hoping she might return to school one day. The illness could not be reversed, but her father never let her lose faith in herself.
That encouragement stayed with her into adulthood. While working as an embroiderer, she once had a three-wheeled vehicle custom-built so she could collect materials on her own — but it needed repeated adjustments before it was usable at all. The experience convinced her that people with disabilities need vehicles designed around their own bodies, not off-the-shelf models forced to fit.
That realization became the seed for a workshop she later built together with Vu Xuan Quang, producing vehicles for people with disabilities, each one customized to its user’s needs.
A “Second Pair of Legs” Opens New Paths
What drew Nối Trọn Yêu Thương to Nga’s story was not only her journey from hardship to entrepreneurship, but the way she turned her own search for mobility into an opportunity for others with disabilities to move forward with confidence.
At her workshop, a number of workers with disabilities now have steady jobs and income. Having once known the sting of stigma and the difficulty of finding work herself, Nga says she understands each employee’s limits and strengths well enough to match them with tasks that suit them, helping them rebuild their confidence along the way.
“Once they’re confident, if they find that the work here no longer suits them, they’ll also be confident enough to go out and find work that suits them better,” she says.
For Nga, neither a vehicle nor a job is really the end goal. What she hopes for is that people with disabilities can move independently, work, earn an income, and make their own decisions about their lives. Once they have that independence, she says, they change not only their own circumstances but gain the confidence to take part more fully in their communities.
Passing Resilience Forward
Meeting Nga through the Nối Trọn Yêu Thương program, Vũ Phương Thanh (also known as endurance athlete Thanh Vu), a representative of Tân Hiệp Phát Group, says what the company admires most is Nga’s spirit of gratitude and her instinct to keep giving back.
According to Thanh, the people the program features keep creating value for their families and communities even while facing hardship of their own. That, she says, is the spirit Tân Hiệp Phát wants to support and spread by backing the program: a person’s worth lies not only in what they receive, but in what good they are able to pass on to others.
Nga has come to see the “gifts” life gave her as complete only once she passes them on. Having once longed to find her own “legs” again, she has become someone who opens that same path for others facing similar circumstances.
That, too, is what Nối Trọn Yêu Thương has pursued for more than seven years: not only supporting people in difficult circumstances, but spreading stories of people living responsibly, so that those who are helped today might go on to give back to their communities in the future.
About the program: Nối Trọn Yêu Thương is a humanitarian television program produced by the Center for Humanitarian Television, in partnership with Tân Hiệp Phát Group. For more than seven years, it has told the stories of people who have overcome adversity, lived responsibly, and created positive value for their communities.
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/doi-song/tung-di-tim-doi-chan-cho-minh-nu-giam-doc-giup-hang-tram-nguoi-khuyet-tat-buoc-tiep-20260808100244665.htm