In a country where orphans are abandoned by the state at age 16, Yoko Funasaka found her life's work in helping the underprivileged.
"The name Vietnam used to remind me only of green rice paddies and wattle hats," the smiling former Japanese-language teacher said, reminiscing on the days before her first tour of Vietnam in the late 1990s.
"I really didn't know anything about the country then." Early this year, Funasaka, 31, was appointed project coordinator for Youth House, a facility run by the Japanese nonprofit organization Kokkyo Naki Kodomotachi (Children Without Borders) to provide vocational training to Vietnamese orphans.
While government facilities care for the country's estimated 25,000 orphans until age 16, after that they are on their own.