With the desire to help Van know how to share and understand life values, Van’s parents sent her to Nguyen Dinh Chieu School for Blind Children to help the blind. 
In 2012, Van and her friends established a 5,000 VND restaurant for poor workers, patients, students, etc. Overcoming many difficulties, Van has mobilized many people to provide fresh vegetables and meat in order to bring good and safe food for the poor.
 

Mai Lan Van (right)

During staying in UK as an international student, Van was also an active member of Connecting Vietyouth Running Award – as well as the Head of Organizing Committee in the Connecting Vietnamese Youth Program. After coming back to Vietnam, Van has established “Tourism Volunteer – Volunteering for Education” (VEO) – a non-profit organization that supports education in Vietnam as well as a social enterprise holding tours along with volunteering programs to remote areas.
 
From 1/2015 to now, VEO has run many charity trips to Lac II village (Mai Chau, Hoa Binh), Coi village (Thanh Son, Phu Tho), Ta Van village (Lao Cai), etc. in order to donate blankets, books, clothes and stationery. That is the reason why so many young people and their parents participated in such creative activities from VEO.
 
Mentioning about how the organization operates, the founder as well as chief finance officer of VEO – Lan Van said that, with only a hundred thousand Vietnam dong and tourists can do something meaningful to community, VEO has attracted participation and support from young people and their parents. The enterprise is growing rapidly with more than 3,500 volunteers. Recently, Van has expanded her activities towards the West.
 
Although Van is a young girl, she has gained a lot of experience in organizing events for young people, such as Asia-Pacific Conference on Social Enterprises (WEF) attended by 100 young leaders from 40 Asia-Pacific countries. She also used to be the president of Vietnamese Student Association in the UK (SVUK). Thanks to those efforts, Van has been honored by Forbes Vietnam as one of 30 talented youngsters under 30 years old in 2016.
 
As the Community Development Director of UP Co-working Space and the planner for VEO’s projects, Van has to solve more difficulties. However, the 9x girl is still optimistic because she believes that volunteer spirit always receives the attention and support from the whole society.