Blogs

It is nearly a year since Hue Help started its medical care program, serving for more than 4,200 poor children and elderly people in remote areas of the Thua Thien Hue province.

This success is to thanks to the help of our enthusiastic team of volunteers, including one pharmacist and nine doctors. The doctors all have obtained high qualifications in their fields, have worked for many years in Hue Central Hospital, and are now retired. For example Dr. Lap is the former Vice Chief of the paediatrics Dept in Hue Central Hospital, and Doctor Tung was chief of Thua Thien Hue's Officer Hospital. Most of the team trained in the North of Viet Nam before 1975 and participated in treatment teams for Vietnamese soldiers in the War; so they are not only colleagues and teammates, but also old friends together. Therefore, each medical care trip is an opportunity for them to see each other and to work together to help poor people in the remote areas of the province.

On behalf of Hue Help, on the occasion of New Year 2009, I would like to wish all our doctors good health, prosperity and happiness for the coming year.

- Khanh Truong

Learn more about our mobile clinic by visiting the project page here

We've managed to put together a few clips of the Home of Affection kids singing at La Residence Hotel on Christmas Eve!

We have also opened a YouTube channel, so there will be many more clips to come.

We hope you enjoy it!

An Interesting Christmas Night!

Perhaps this is the first time that the children in the Home of Affection Orphanage will remember a night full of Christmas fun after Santa Claus (Graham and Khanh), paid a surprise visit on Christmas night. Hue Help prepared elaborate gifts for the kids, appropriate to their ages of course!

In addition, a load of games and activities were organised for the children by Hue Help volunteers, and new sets of blankets and pillows were provided to keep the children warm as the temperature continues to fall.

- Khanh Truong

Last night, the children from the Home of Affection Orphanage were given the opportunity to sing at La Residence, a prestigious Hotel and Spa located on the banks of the Perfume River.

The children sang several different Christmas songs to entertain the guests at the Hotel. Staff from the hotel have been supporting the children to learn the songs for quite some time now, and there was considerable improvement on the previous years performance!

We would like to thank everyone at La Residence Hotel for giving the children a chance to develop their music skills and perform publically. The kids love to sing, particularly for other people!

Watch this space for video clips of the performance in the coming days!

Our new English Teaching Volunteer Program is here!

After a year of planning, and several volunteers later, we're happy to announce that our English Teaching Program is finally ready. We are currently seeking out qualified teachers, or people who are willing to become qualified, to work at the Home of Affection Hue orphanage, a vocational training school for disadvantaged young adults, and a community school.

Volunteers for this program will have to pay their way - that is, they will have to pay for flights, food, accommodation, and all other associated costs with living in and working in Vietnam. But we aren't charging any fees at all for this program. In fact, we've negotiated discounted accommodation and food at a hotel in the city for successful applicants - an airconditioned, single room with three meals a day, for only ten US dollars per day.

What's more, this program actually generates money for the orphanage, and we will usually give the volunteers a little bit of cash to help them cover their living costs in Hue. Hoa My school will pay Hue Help half of what the students there pay to join these additional evening classes - this is then halfed again, between the Home of Affection Orphanage, and our volunteers.

So, not only do both the more affluent members of the community and those who are less so (our orphans and the vocational training school) receive the same high quality, qualified English tuition, but this process actually transfers money from the private school to the orphanage, in a controlled way.

We plan to use the money that this program makes for the orphanage to build a fund for the older children who live there. They will be able to apply for a grant from this fund in the future, to perhaps fund a higher education course, or help them by a uniform for their first job... something to get them started on the right foot when they leave mainstream education.

Since we started our work at the Home of Affection nearly a year ago, we’ve worked with the staff to bring a lot of changes to improve the living conditions for the kids who live there. One of the more obvious ones is the food that the children eat. It was often commented on by visitors to the orphanage that the children looked undernourished, and those that took the time to visit them at dinner times would see why. The food was not only small in quantity, but severely limited in diversity and nutritional value; primarily very small portions of low quality meat or fish with plain rice.

The kids now have a menu planned out at the start of the week. Our cook, Miss Loan, has tried to diversify the range of food offered to the kids, thanks to an increased budget for food. Here are some typical meals that the kids were offered last week…

Breakfast: Sticky rice / Beef Soup / French bread with Eggs
Lunch: Braised Fish or Pork / Fish or Vegetable Soup / Fresh Vegetables
Dinner: Fish, Pork or Chicken with Rice / Vegetable soup

Not only are the meals more diverse, with the options changing daily, but we’ve made great efforts to ensure that the food is as fresh and of as high quality as possible.

Previously, meal times weren’t really scheduled, and the children would often fill their bowls and eat wherever they chose – out on the street, in the classrooms, or perhaps on the floor! Now, the children have scheduled mealtimes where they all eat together in a dining area. At the weekends, Miss Loan tries to make something a bit special for the kids, often offering some of the meals that are traditional to Hue!

"Life is sweet when we can do something to help other people who really need help"

I first knew about Hue Help through Huyen Tran, my English speaking teacher. That was when I was a fresher at university. At that time, I joined Hue Help just because I was eager to know how an NGO works and what was the feeling of a volunteer and, more over, I could contact with many foreigners – I’m a student at Hue College of Foreign Languages, so this is quite understandable!

I still remember the time I met the disadvantaged children at the Home of Affection (HoA), sponsored by Hue Help. That was also the first time I decided to do volunteer work. It brought about many changes in my life. “Joining extracurricular activities not only do good things for the communities but also improve us ourselves” as my father said. I, to tell the truth, have found this during the time I volunteer for Hue help.

The start

We have a blog! Our blog is just one of the features of our new website that we've established to enable our members, donors and the general public learn more about our work with disadvantaged children in central Vietnam.