For most students, completing forms, such as the financial aid application for college, is a daunting task. But Jeremy Bui ’13 (BUS) coped with a mountain of paperwork before he even completed high school, when he and his two brothers established an educational foundation to benefit children in Vietnam.
Together with his twin Zachary ’13 (ENG) and older brother Timothy ’10 (CLAS), Jeremy established the Viet-Sun Foundation Inc., a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide educational opportunities through academic scholarships and other resources to impoverished village children in Vietnam, where his parents lived until they immigrated to the United States.
“I took a lot of pride in putting the Viet-Sun Foundation filing together without a lawyer’s help,” says Bui, an Honors Scholar. “It’s what got me interested in accounting. I eventually want to get into corporate law so I can gain knowledge to benefit the Foundation, which provides education for the children of my parents’ homeland.”
Bui’s decision to enroll at UConn helped put him on the fast track toward his goal.
“I chose UConn’s offer over an Ivy’s – what really won me over was the Honors Program and the Special Program in Law,” says Bui. He’s among the first group of students in the combined undergraduate/graduate program, which guarantees acceptance to UConn’s School of Law for those who meet certain requirements while earning their bachelor’s degree.
Bui’s experience as president of the foundation he founded with his brothers may inspire his Honors Scholar project. “I’d like to expand the Foundation by researching the accounting strategies that make nonprofits most effective,” he says.
Bui and his siblings co-founded the Foundation in 2008, a year after a family trip to Vietnam, where his parents wanted their sons to see that country’s beauty. “But when we met our grandmother in Phan Rang Village, in southern Vietnam, it was very run-down,” he says. “We saw kids running the streets, and we learned that they forgo education to help their families, working on farms and fishing boats to put food on the table.”
The family immediately donated cash and food, but with a long line of people seeking the handouts, the brothers decided that mitigating Vietnam’s lack of public education was crucial. “Our parents had already proven to us through their own lives that education will help people pull themselves out of poverty to better their communities and lives,” Bui says.
Upon escaping Vietnam during the war years, his father had earned his GED and worked as a janitor at a college to pay for his education. “He always told me he’d see the students in the classrooms and want to be in those seats. My father now has a doctorate,” Bui says of his father, a flight safety manager for Hamilton Sundstrand Space System International in Windsor Locks, Conn.
His mother, who left her family of 14 siblings and was placed in various foster homes, eventually became a chemist, earned a master’s degree, and today is director of laboratory and quality assurance at Aero All-Gas Company in Hartford. She also is CEO and president of her own company, Sons Specialty Gas LLC in Enfield, Conn.
“I consider my parents my heroes,” Bui says.
Elder brother Timothy, a math and chemistry major and UConn Honors Scholar, chaired the Foundation – although now that he’s in medical school, Jeremy Bui’s management role has increased. Jeremy’s twin brother, Zachary, built the website. The Foundation has raised $10,000, a start that has the potential to help hundreds of young people, since it costs $20 to $50 annually to educate each student.
“To further the whole nonprofit cause, I’d like to become a consultant for young people, helping them pursue their passions by starting their own nonprofits,” Bui says. “‘Be of benefit to others’ has always been a motto of mine.”
This article was published in the Spring 2011 edition of UCONN Magazine.
