Blogs

From January 20th to 25th 2010, HueHelp and Thua Thien Hue’s Union of Friendship organizations collaborated to organize a social activity for 15 students and teachers of the Realms of Inquiry (American) in Antay orphanage, Hue city, Vietnam.

The students and teachers worked together to build a playground and teach English to the children in the orphanage. As well as this, they visited and exchanged with handicapped children at the Hope Vocational Center; visited sights and landscapes and enjoyed Hue’s special cuisine.

This is a meaningful social activity and a good opportunity for the youth of Vietnam and America to interact and learn in order to develop the relationship between the two countries.

Khanh Truong, Hue Help representative in Hue

After more than a year of construction, on January 10th teachers and children of Home of Affection orphanage visited the new two-storey building in An Hoa Ward, Hue City with the participation of leaders Thua Thien Hue Department of Labor, Invalids and social Affairs and representatives of Hue Help .

The new building comprises 2 floors with bedrooms, classrooms, a dinning room, a library and another functional rooms to serve the education and the entertainment of the children. The building was built from the local government fund. Hue Help hopes to support a fund to purchase furniture in bedrooms, classroom and functional rooms.

The children will live in the new building from the end of May 2010 - after the children finish the school year 2009-2010.

- Khanh Truong

Last night we help a brilliant Christmas party for the children in Home of Affection..

The party opened with music acts performed by children as the best wishes for a healthy Christmas and a happy new year. These are acts that the volunteers of Hue Help helped teach the children over the last few weeks. And then Santa Claus appeared with gifts and that children made wishes for the coming year.

Then, the children participated in games like attaching a tail for reindeer and another traditional games. This is really a memorable Christmas night for children.

On this occasion we would like to thank Sarah, Keith, Eddy and two friends from France who helped make the party successful.

- Khanh Truong

Our group volunteer placemement with Singapore Management University has just finished, and an article has been published about it in the Tien Phong online newspaper. You can view the article here.

Singapore volunteers to care for children
TP - 17 volunteers of the Singapore Management University, including three Vietnamese students arrived in Hue to take care of the children in Thuan Loc Kindergarten in the past week.

The Singapore Volunteer painting Kindergarten fence

Trieu Thanh (students),saying : "I find this activity through the blog, along with Huehelp, we build ideas, outlined a plan to volunteer in Vietnam. Although hard work hard, everyone are eager, enthusiastic.
Using sand papers to clean walls manually, mixing paint, matching color, scanning lime ... after a hard week working, the school become bright.

Fu Meibao (Singapore Volunteer), exciting: The children are very cute. At first they are afraid to contact, but now children is attached us, to learn together, play together ... ".

In the framework of cooperation program of international volunteer, from 4 to December 11, 2009, Hue Help in collaboration with Union of Friendship Organizations Thua Thien Hue province, will organize for 17 students of Singapore Management University to work at a kindergarten in Thuan Loc Ward, Hue city.

The group will paint the kindergarten, build a garden, make a dome for the class room and teachEnglish for children in kindergarten. In addition, the group will exchange with the Faculty of Business Administration-University of Economic Hue; Youth Union in Thuan Loc and visit Hue.

This is a meaningful humanitarian activity, and also strengthens the relationship between students of Vietnam and Singapore.

Learn more about our previous collaborations with similar groups here

- Khanh Truong, Representative in Vietnam.

Hue Help has partnered up with Diak Polytechnic of Finland to provide a very different kind of Volunteer programme.

Diak offers a variety of different degree programmes such as nursing, education and media but it is with the social welfare students that Hue Help has started to work. As with the English teaching programme, the social welfare students will be bringing useful and beneficial knowledge to the youth of Hue through carrying out interactive life-skills workshops. Hue Help, The children’s centres and the social workers are working together to come up with suitable topics for the social workers to teach such as road safety, diet and the importance of teeth brushing. The workshops are to be highly interactive- incorporating role-play, drama and art to ensure that the kids have fun as they learn. If you would like further information on this programme, please don’t hesitate to contact me on joshuazukas@huehelp.org

We currently have four enthusiastic Finns participating in this programme- Minna Hekkala, Saila Ohranen, Henna Hiitola and Aino Uitto- and we hope for a sustainable programme and long-term relationship between Hue Help and Diak Polytechnic.

Although Typhoon Ketsana passed over a month ago, there are still many families still deprived of the basic ammenities that they need to exist comfortably as a result.

That's why on the 26th of October, we teamed up again with the Red Cross to carry out a further relief operation for twenty two ethnic minority families in Van Kieu, Hong Tien commune, Huong Tra District. The families received blankets, mosquisto nets, rice pots and bowls. In addition, we were able to provide stationary supplies to children to help them get on with their education.

We would like to thank everyone who has generously supported our appeal, as well as our local partners who have worked tirelessly to minimise the impact of the Typhoon for thousands of people across the province.

You can now download a full report on our relief work here! (.pdf)

On behalf of everyone in Hue Help, I would like to express our sincerest gratitude to everyone who supported us. Over the past couple of weeks, we have been working closely with the local Red Cross in Vietnam to provide assistance to some of communities that have been most severely affected during Typhoon Ketsana. Some of the things we have provided include...

- 50 blankets
- 50 mosquito nets
- 50 rice pots
- 500 bowls

In addition, we have worked to re-roof houses in severely damaged areas. A total of 54 metal plates were used.

We are working with the local authorities to consider the possibility of any further measures we may take to provide further assistance.

Graham Buckley
Chair

One of our current volunteers in Hue, Max, has kindly put together a small video showing some of our efforts in central Vietnam.

You can watch it right here...

Our work on providing relief to those affected by Typhoon Ketsana has been a success so far. With the first stage complete, we are moving to re-roof houses in badly affected areas.

You can download the full report by cliking here (.pdf)

We still need your support! Any donations can be made here.

Thank you to everyone who has supported these efforts so far!