"When official Xong Ba Cha speaks, the villagers believe him."

Helping the villagers escape poverty.

Xong Ba Cha was born in 1984 in Huoi Moi village, Tri Le commune. In 2006, following the Party and State's policy, his family, along with many other households, moved down from the mountains to establish a new village and community in the Minh Chau Economic Zone, Tri Le commune. Coming from a poor family, from a young age, Xong Ba Cha worked hard to build a life and career, escaping poverty. He recounted: "During my high school years, every week, I diligently walked more than 40 km from my home, crossing the Pu Chong Cha mountain range to Kim Son town to attend school. Then, in 2006, I passed the entrance exam to Nghe An College of Education, becoming a great source of pride for my family and relatives..."

In 2009, after graduating from Nghe An Teacher Training College, Xong Ba Cha returned to his hometown, aspiring to become a teacher and bring literacy to his village. However, in those years, Nghe An province had no need to recruit secondary school teachers to teach Math and Physics. Undeterred, Xong Ba Cha and his wife decided to build their family's economy. He thought, "Since I have education and knowledge, I must have new, effective ways of thinking and doing things." So, Xong Ba Cha and his wife worked tirelessly, reclaiming land day and night to cultivate sugarcane, passion fruit, peaches, rice, and raise livestock... Thanks to applying new techniques and their hard work, their average income from farming brought his family tens of millions of dong per year.

Seeing Xong Ba Cha's family prosper, the Hmong families in the Minh Chau Economic Zone admired him greatly and sought to learn from his experience. He was completely open and shared everything he knew with the villagers; if he didn't know something, he would ask the commune and district officials for guidance. Following Xong Ba Cha's example, many families learned how to do business and gradually accumulated wealth. Everyone praised Xong Ba Cha as a good and capable person.

During those years, the Hmong people in the Minh Chau Economic Zone were still not settled, constantly moving back and forth to their old lands to clear land for farming. The practical need was to create stability in this area. The Minh Chau Economic Zone needed to establish villages and hamlets. In agreement with the Party and State's policy, in 2011, D1 village (now Na Nieng village) in the Minh Chau Economic Zone, Tri Le commune, was established. Xong Ba Cha, "well-educated, skilled in business, and enthusiastic towards the people," was unanimously nominated and elected by all 74 households in the village as the first village head of D1.

As village head, Xong Ba Cha dedicated himself wholeheartedly to community work; together with commune and district officials, he sought ways to alleviate poverty for the villagers. Xong Ba Cha actively guided and encouraged households in the village to establish cooperatives, actively reclaimed paddy fields, applied scientific and technological advancements, and implemented models for growing rice, corn, sugarcane, passion fruit, bananas, peaches, raising chickens, and raising cattle... Following the general policy, under the leadership of village head Xong Ba Cha, the households in D1 village gradually prospered and settled down.

Besides leading the villagers in production, Xong Ba Cha, along with the Party branch committee and the village management board, worked hard to propagate ideas to help the villagers abandon outdated customs and adopt a new lifestyle, such as: family planning, hygiene and disease prevention; promoting education and talent; standards for culturally exemplary families; exemplary adherence to the Party's guidelines and the State's policies and laws; and actively participating in local emulation movements such as the mass movement to protect national security...

Preserving the lifestyle of the highlands.

Having left his position as village head and become a commune official, Xong Ba Cha devoted even more effort to leading and directing emulation movements, especially the "All People Unite to Build a Culturally Rich Life" movement. As a young, energetic official with great prestige in the Mong community of Tri Le commune, he was entrusted with leading Mong villages such as Huoi Xai, Nam Tot, and Muong Long – the most remote and difficult areas in the commune. In these villages, the lives of the people are still fraught with difficulties: no electricity, no internet, no health clinic, and rough, muddy dirt roads that are prone to landslides.

The road from the commune center to these border villages is about 30 km long, extremely difficult to travel, requiring climbing steep slopes, crossing forests, and wading through streams. Yet, every month, Xong Ba Cha visits the villages 4-5 times, sometimes staying for a whole week to educate and encourage people to comply with legal regulations, implement economic development models, and build a new cultural life. Whenever an incident or event occurs in these three villages, Xong Ba Cha, a commune official, immediately rushes there.

Mr. Va Ba May, head of Muong Long village, said: “In these border villages, conflicts between families and clans, land disputes, and disputes over cattle are common occurrences. When the village cannot resolve the issues, Mr. Xong Ba Cha steps in to mediate. His method is to clearly explain the problems to the villagers in a reasonable and empathetic way. With Mr. Xong Ba Cha acting as a mediator, the villagers trust and listen to him, resolving their conflicts and returning to harmony and unity.”

In 2021, in some highland villages of Tri Le commune, a "strange religion" infiltrated, bringing with it alien and contradictory ideas and culture that harmed the good traditions of the Hmong people and the Vietnamese nation. The root cause was that some people working away from home brought this "strange religion" back to the villages, recruiting others to join. Faced with this situation, the Party committee, government, and functional forces in Tri Le commune actively propagated and encouraged people to comply with the law, abandon, and not follow the "strange religion" that was harming their lives. Xong Ba Cha was a pioneer and actively involved in preventing illegal religious activities. As a result, within a short time, the "strange religion" was successfully contained and expelled.

Xong Ba Cha is particularly passionate about preserving, conserving, and promoting the culture of ethnic minority communities. Together with various departments and agencies, he actively promotes and organizes cultural events in the locality, selecting skilled dance troupes and traditional flute players to participate in the Nine-Compartment Temple Festival and folk art performance festivals at the district and provincial levels. Through these cultural activities, Xong Ba Cha hopes to educate the people to adopt a new way of life while preserving, inheriting, promoting, and enjoying the beautiful traditional cultural values; and to inspire the younger generation to respect, cherish, and preserve the cultural identity of their ethnic group. It is known that Xong Ba Cha has won numerous high awards at provincial and national cultural and artistic festivals and has been awarded a Certificate of Merit by the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism for his outstanding achievements in the "All People Unite to Build a Culturally Rich Life in Residential Areas" movement.

In 2025, when the two-tiered government system was implemented, Xong Ba Cha was entrusted by the Party Committee with a new nhiệm vụ: Permanent Vice Chairman of the Fatherland Front Committee of Tri Le commune and Chairman of the Farmers' Association of Tri Le commune. This was a new task, yet one he was very familiar with. Receiving this new assignment, Xong Ba Cha was very happy to contribute his strength to the common cause using his "specialty." Xong Ba Cha recounted: "For the past two months, I've been very busy. I've been busy mobilizing and helping people overcome the consequences of storms and floods, and implementing highly effective production models. It's busy, but very enjoyable..."

These days, Xong Ba Cha is actively working in the fields and villages to spread awareness and guide the people on effective farming and livestock raising, in accordance with the commune's guidelines. He said: "We are guiding the people to cultivate crops and livestock suitable for the area, ensuring high yields. For example, in the highland villages of Pa Khom and Huoi Moi, we guide them in planting forests, medicinal plants, bitter bamboo, and growing grass for raising cattle and buffalo for commercial purposes; in the central area of ​​the commune, we cultivate cold-resistant rice varieties and specialty sticky rice; in the former Nam Nhoong commune, we grow sorghum, cinnamon, and raise black pigs and black chickens... In the future, we are seeking and inviting businesses to invest in agricultural processing plants for the people to overcome the problem of 'bumper harvests leading to low prices,' agricultural surplus, and to expand the market."

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Comrade Xong Ba Cha is an official who rose through the ranks from the grassroots. Throughout his career, he has always been energetic, enthusiastic, and has excellently fulfilled all assigned tasks. For a long time, Comrade Xong Ba Cha has been a respected figure and a leading example among the Mong ethnic people in Tri Le commune; he is a role model for the patriotic emulation movement in the locality.

Comrade Pham Ngoc Nghia - Secretary of the Party Committee of Tri Le Commune