Former prisoner becomes “upper class man”

Dong taking care of his cow

From his bare hands, he has built up a great estate with a large farm, and earns hundreds of millions of VND per year.

It is not easy to make an appointment with Dong due to his busy schedule.

His small house, built on a sand hill, is full of certificates, granted by Police agencies at various levels.

He told his story: He was born from a poor family, so he had to quit school at very early age.

When he grew older, he trained in repairing scooters, and thanks to supports from his parents, he managed to open a small scooter maintenance shop in Phong Dien town. When his small business went well, he committed unintentional killing of a woman in a road accident and was sentenced 18 months in prison.

When serving his sentence, he did penance for his sin everyday even though it was an accident. He also worried  and thought a lot about his parents.

Dong was released from prison in May 2011. But it was hard for Dong, an ex-prisoner to rehabilitate in the community. At that time,Dong had no friends. So he spent all his time on his family’s paddy field.. Dong then managed to borrow money and bought a tractor. With the tractor, he worked restlessly from dawn to dust, changing wasteland into cultivated farms.

Thanks to his all efforts, the first rice crop brought him 8 tonnes of rice (or about VND 50 million in value at that time).

Encouraged by the initial success, Dong continued expanding his rice production field by 14,000 square meters. He used the knowledge and experiences he had learned from others at the prison to invest in building livestock and poultry farms.

He also invested in producing cajuput oil for commercial purposes in the town. His cajuput plantation created jobs for ten local workers, with a daily pay of VND 200-300 thousands.

In 2016, he was heard about training courses on the asparagus cultivation model held in the nearby town. Dong decided to follow the instructions and invested in growing asparagus. He received supports of nearly VND 30 million for seeds and irrigation system from the local farmers’ association, and he then self-learnt the growing techniques and experiences from the Internet.He boldly started planting 1,000 asparagus stalks in sand dunes and luckily 700 ones have survived till now.

According to Thai Ngoc Thao, Chairman of the Phong Dien Town People's Committee, Dong is the first successful asparagus farmer, bringing economic efficiency to the sandy local area.

Thanks to his achievements in local socio-economic development, Do Dinh Dong was presented a certificate of merit by the Director of Police of Thua Thien-Hue province and the Central Committee of the Vietnam Youth Union.