Volunteer work has no boundaries

Last March, Hue Help welcomed one volunteer from America. Her name is Barbara Kernochan. Seemingly we volunteers and the children at the orphanage are used to calling her with the informal name “Barbara”. As usual, she is responsible for teaching the children English and we volunteers also contribute a small part to helping her with translation work. Due to many years of experience working as an Alternative Education and Work Center Coordinator and Outreach Consultant in Venice Skills Center (California), Mrs Barbara seems to get acquainted with teaching with ease.

She teaches the children basic and necessary skills to make sure that they can express their own feelings and have a basic conversation with foreigners. She noticed that the “s” sound was hard to pronounce at the end of words to Vietnamese people; thus, she practiced it with the children lots of times. She tried to shorten the distances and differences between the two people from two countries Vietnam - America by making an effort of speaking Vietnamese whenever she can. Despite simple words like “xin chao” (hello) or “cam on” (thank you), these things show her enthusiasm, care and love to the children at the orphanage.

Her work here, to tell the truth, brings new power to the children to keep on studying, and a desire to try and be successful on their way forward. What she has done makes me think of the sentence “Volunteer work seems to have no boundaries”.

- Nguyen Hoang, Hue Help Volunteer