In a 180-seat restaurant and training center near Hanoi’s Temple of Literature, young cooks and servers practice a trade that can lift them out of poverty for good. They are trainees at KOTO — short for “Know One, Teach One” — a social enterprise that has spent more than 25 years turning at-risk youth in Vietnam into hospitality professionals. The idea is simple but powerful: pair vocational training with a stable, supportive home, then send graduates into one of the country’s fastest-growing sectors.

Jimmy Pham, a Vietnamese-Australian who grew up in Sydney, founded KOTO in 1999. Returning to Vietnam in his twenties, he met street children who told him they wanted skills to find stable jobs. He opened a small Hanoi sandwich shop and hired nine street kids as its first crew. The venture puzzled local officials, who had no category for a business built to serve the poor — KOTO later became the first legally recognized social enterprise in Vietnam. The shop drew global attention in 2000, when U.S. President Bill Clinton, the first American president to visit Vietnam after the war, made an unannounced stop. RMIT University awarded Pham an honorary doctorate in recognition of his work.

The Model: Skills, Stability and a Second Family

KOTO runs a 24-month hospitality program for young people 16 to 22 years old, training about 150 each year. Trainees choose front-of-house service or commercial cookery and earn an internationally recognized certificate through Australia’s Box Hill Institute. Crucially, the program is entirely free: KOTO covers food, health care and accommodation in a family environment, so trainees can focus on learning rather than survival. Alongside cooking and service, instructors teach English and life skills such as personal hygiene and money management. When trainees finish, KOTO places them in their first hospitality job.

The scale of need explains why the model matters. Vietnamese call children who live and work on the streets “bụi đời,” which means “the dust of life,” and in Hanoi alone an estimated 19,000 young people live on the streets. Many support themselves and their families through hard labor, with limited access to education and real exposure to exploitation and abuse. For at-risk youth in Vietnam, a steady wage often stands between them and those dangers — and the skills to earn one are exactly what KOTO provides.

Breaking the Cycle

The results suggest stable employment can break cycles of poverty within a single generation. KOTO reports that 100% of its trainees secure a job, 33% move into managerial roles and 78% contribute financially to their families. Graduates staff five-star hotels such as Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton and Sofitel, and alumni mentor newcomers so closely that the industry jokes about a “KOTO mafia.” Over 25 years, more than 1,700 graduates — including chefs, managers and entrepreneurs — have come through the program.

Nguyen Thi Thu’s story shows what that can look like. She met Pham at 16, while selling candy to support her mother and siblings, and joined KOTO’s second cohort. Today, she heads training at a multinational corporation, and her sister is a personal chef to an ambassador in Vietnam. Thu calls Pham her “moon” — a source of light and guidance. Pham frames the mission in larger terms, saying he wants to build the next generation of Vietnamese leaders in the industry.

KOTO is now expanding. The Kind Heart Foundation of the Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup is helping fund a new training center in Bac Ninh Province that will double KOTO’s capacity to 300 trainees, up from 150. To stay sustainable, KOTO funds its work through restaurant revenue, grants, corporate sponsorship, fundraising and alumni-run services, which reduces its reliance on any single donor.

Looking Ahead

The self-renewing design is the point. For at-risk youth in Vietnam, KOTO offers more than a job — it offers a stable income, a marketable skill and a community that expects each graduate to lift up the next. In a country where tourism keeps growing and skilled hospitality workers stay in demand, that combination can turn a vulnerable childhood into a durable livelihood, and often pull an entire family out of poverty along with it.

– Jen Phan

Jen is based in Hanoi, Vietnam and focuses on Good News for The Borgen Project.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons