A unique experience in Huong Xuan...

There hasn’t been much activity on our blog recently, but that’s just because we’ve been so busy carrying out a Youth Expedition Project (YEP) in the rural area of Huong Xuan with students and teachers from Ngee Ann Polytechnic (Singapore).

We work with a few groups of students every year to carry out programs similar to this. The purpose of these projects is for students to get some experience of another culture and the ways in which other people live, whilst also doing practical work to benefit the communities they stay in. This project sent a team of thirty two students (17-20 years old) and two teachers to build a playground and fence system for a small kindergarden in the rural settlement of Huong Xuan.

It is always going to be a tough week for students who participate in these programs, but this trip was particularly so. This was the first time we had organised such a project in the countryside, which posed a lot of challenges in itself. The students, and teachers, were provided with a few rooms above a doctor’s clinic with only a couple of toilets and cold showers. Every morning, some made the hour walk and back to the local market to buy food for the entire group, which they also had to prepare and cook themselves. Others made the 45 minute walk to the kindergarden, to carry out manual work on the project site – with high humidity and temperatures in excess of 30 degrees, manual labour is certainly a challenge for the inexperienced.

Overall though, the project has a great success. These projects are supposed to be difficult, but this one was a little more so than we had planned! We would like to thank all the students and teachers involved in the program for your endearing positive attitude and unwavering dedication to the project.

You can learn more about this project by downloading our full program report here. However, some of the students feedback pretty much speaks for itself…

“I thought the bugs and cold water gonna spoil my trip here. But guess what? Every actually turns out awesomely fun. The friendly greetings from every Vietnamese makes my day. Not only that, this trip taught me so much more I didn’t know in S’pore. I guess, I live well too good already…”

“Hue, when I got here, it almost like a nightmare. Dim lighting, cold water, and bugs everywhere… My first few days in Hue weren’t enjoyable for me, it showed me how pampered I was. But I got used to it… Now I realise that I’m going to miss this place…”

“When I first came I thought ‘Oh no’. But after 10 days, ‘oh no’ evolved into ‘oh yes!’"

“… Basically, this two week duration and experience gained this community service has served me with much enrichment and understanding towards the differences in the backgrounds and lives of the people in Vietnam. Singapore’s way of living is so comfortable and convenient, whereas here all is manual methods and means of transportation are simple and fundamental. It has taught me to appreciate the comfy life that I have all along and learn to not take things for granted…”

“No amount of reading can substitute the authenticity of the real thing, which in this case refers to experience… I am thoroughly humbled.”

- The Hue Help Team