Special literacy class empowers ethnic minority women in northwestern province

Deep in Son La’s Ta Xua special-use forest, the road to Lang Sang village is barely wide enough for a motorbike. But each evening, the forest comes alive with the sounds of H'Mong ethnic women learning to spell and write for the first time. For years, the village’s brightly lit literacy class has offered new hope to women long accustomed to holding hoes in the fields, not pens in a classroom.