Awesome story!

Some quotes from the article:

Strolling into Donkey Bakery and into the café section, I didn’t realise anything extraordinary about the waiting staff. As the waiter followed me with a confident strike, we exchanged niceties. He politely handed me a menu and I quickly chose my order. It wasn’t until I looked up that I noticed the milkiness of his eyes.

Tran Quoc Hoan was born blind. A customer service officer at Donkey Bakery, Hoan is one of the bakery’s first staff members, having started a year after it opened in 2009. His colleague, Nguyen Tuan Huy, who is deaf, brings my food to the table. Below is Hoan’s story.

“I love learning English and working in customer service and that’s why I chose this job, because many foreigners come here. I take their orders by phone, from the website and email. We use a software program with a screen reader.

I was born in Ha Tinh province, in the middle of Vietnam, near Hue. I’ve been blind since birth. I’m the youngest of five children, and my parents are farmers from the countryside.

I completed a Bachelor of Music at the National Conservatory of Vietnam and play the Đàn bầu, a one-stringed instrument.

For deaf and blind people, the biggest challenge is to find work. Society doesn’t know how to use these people. Many work in organisations for the blind or deaf. The choices are limited. I graduated in 2003 and it took five years to find a job doing administration for a company.

But I wanted to work in customer service. I’d been going to an English club run by foreign volunteers to learn English, and I was a friend with an Australian who worked at a NGO. She knew Luyen (Donkey Bakery co-founder), and she connected me. I successfully applied for a job at Donkey Bakery and started as a phone operator on a part-time basis.

Working at Donkey Bakery has given me more confidence in life. We were given two or three months for training. I never knew about customer service before I worked here."