5/10 NGO Day: Healing the Wounded Heart Future School by Robert

NGO Day is an addition to the Vietnam program, inspired by our Peru itinerary. Our tour operators were able to connect with three NGOs that have 6 different sites. In Seattle students read about the different options and chose what was most interesting to them.

Here were the students' 6 options:

Option 1) Friends of Hue: Their mission is to promote positive aspects of humanity by providing assistance to the people and empowering them in their efforts to improve their lives, communities, and cultures. Friend of Hue Foundation is a nonprofit foundation that supports a children’s shelter in Vietnam to give children who are abused or abandoned a place to live.

Option 2) Healing the Wounded Heart: Working with 17 deaf children. Healing the Wounded Heart is a humanitarian aid project of the Spiral Foundation provides vital assistance to children with disabilities and/or sickness and their families in Central Vietnam and the Central Highlands.

Option 3) Healing the Wounded Heart Future School: a semi-boarding model for about 50 children with mental retardation between the ages of 6 and 25. Healing the Wounded Heart is a humanitarian aid project of the Spiral Foundation provides vital assistance to children with disabilities and/or sickness and their families in Central Vietnam and the Central Highlands.

Option 4) Healing the Wounded Heart Duc Son Orphanage: there are more than 200 orphans raised in the center. In addition, there’re also 2 special education classes for 15 mentally disabled children at the center.

Option 5) Healing the Wounded Heart Farms for disable people: established to educate about 20 children with mental retardation from 16 years old, doing daily tasks like raising livestock and planting crops. Healing the Wounded Heart is a humanitarian aid project of the Spiral Foundation provides vital assistance to children with disabilities and/or sickness and their families in Central Vietnam and the Central Highlands.

Option 6) PeaceTrees Vietnam: Their mission is to heal the legacy of war by removing dangerous explosives, returning land to safe use, promoting peace and cultivating a brighter future for the children and families of Vietnam. Their vision is: A Vietnam completely cleared of dangerous unexploded ordnance and communities fully supported in their goals for safety, education and economic success. PeaceTrees Vietnam is a shining example to the world of how tragedy and conflict can be transformed into peace and partnership.

 I took a group of 4 students to Healing the Wounded Heart Future School. Future School was founded in 2001. It  was the first school for the disabled in the city of Hue. Hue has a super high rate of physically and mentally disabled students, being so close to the DMZ (Hue is just south of the 17th parallel, the border between North and South Vietnam during the American War), which was so heavily bombed by the United States, including the use of Agent Orange. 

The Future School  has 56 students and 5 classes. It received no government funding, and is totally dependent on private donations. We went into a number of different classrooms, dividing students by  ability level. 

Then students from another classroom joined us. They were much higher functioning. The boy in the red took charge.  I showed him how to use my camera, and he quickly became a master. The next five pictures are his. 

He gently removed her hair from her ear and gave her a kiss.

Here he is looking clever. He was quite a ham.

In another classroom, he organized a game where we all put a feet in the middle of the circle.

At the meeting tonight, students explained the work each NGO does, and shared their the best part of their experience. It was heartwarming to hear so many stories of connection. I have been talking to the students about the connection between adversity and personal growth/appreciation. The students have gained such insight about all that they have in their lives (things they have taken for granted) by witnessing others that have dealt with or are dealing with such adversity. But so far, it has been others' adversity. The next step is to be able to grow from the adversity in our own lives. Today we talked about how stuff happens that is out of our control, but the power that we each have is how we respond to it. We can either be victims of our circumstances, or we can grow from the experience. We will continue this line of thought in the days to come.