COVID-19 hit the restaurant industry in Vietnam hard. With lockdown and no international tourists, we sadly had to close the doors to KOTO Training Restaurant at 59 Van Mieu. However, we're going to come back stronger than ever. We're fundraising to purchase much-needed items for our new restaurant. The KOTO restaurant is the training grounds for our trainees. It's here that they make mistakes, learn to work with one another, develop new cooking techniques and practice their customer service.
In Vietnam children who live or work on the streets are often called "Bui Doi", which means "the dust of life." Right now, there are millions of children in Vietnam who will go to bed hungry after working a gruelling day of work. They are relied on to support themselves, their families and have limited access to education. With little avenues of help and support available in Vietnam, they are at risk of being exploited for hard labour joining criminal activity or being sexually abused.
In 1999, Vietnamese-Australian & KOTO founder, Jimmy Pham, opened a hospitality training centre in Hanoi, providing at-risk and disadvantaged youth the opportunity to break the poverty cycle by forging a better future for themselves, their families and their communities. Today, KOTO provides 200 [per year] at-risk and disadvantaged youth in Vietnam, an opportunity to undertake a 24-month holistic hospitality training program to end the cycle of poverty and empower them to realise their dreams
The program is entirely free. With a rate of 100% job placement after graduation, our trainees who are now KOTO alumni, are able to support themselves, their family and the community. Without this life-changing institution, at-risk and disadvantaged youth will not be able to grow to their full potential. When we reflect over the past 20 years, there are now over 1,000 graduates whose job titles now include executive, sous chefs, hotel and resort general managers and business owners.
