358 accounts for children who have never touched a learning app

I grew up in Hanoi, where school tablets and Wi-Fi passwords are ordinary complaints. So I wasn't prepared for what Chiềng Sại felt like. The road in from the highway takes a while, and when you arrive, the school is quiet in a way that city schools never are — not because nothing is happening, but because the things happening here are different. Children in Hmong-embroidered uniforms walking between low buildings. A teacher erasing a board by hand. A library shelf with a small stack of books.

On 30 August 2026, TenGo donated 358 learning accounts to Chiềng Sại Primary School in Sơn La — one account for every pupil from Grade 1 to Grade 5. About 85 percent of the children here are from Hmong, Thai and Muong ethnic-minority families. The principal, Nguyễn Đình Hân, told me that for many of them, avab.vn would be the first structured learning platform they had ever used. I had built avab.vn thinking about the learner on the other side of a screen. Standing in that courtyard, I finally had a face to put to that.

The thing that stayed with me is this: the gap is not just about money. A family in the highlands may have a smartphone but no habit of using it for learning. A child may be brilliant at mental arithmetic — several I met could outpace me — but have never seen a multiple-choice question on a screen. The platform I gave them doesn't close that gap on its own. But it opens a door that was simply not there before, and I think that matters, even if I can't measure it.

On the way back down the mountain, I kept thinking about a phrase in the school's certificate: 'helping to narrow the digital divide and spread learning opportunities to ethnic-minority children in remote and highland areas.' I didn't write that line — the principal did. But I was glad someone said it out loud, because I think that is exactly what TenGo is for: not just building a product, but deciding who gets to use it.