Community Impact in Vietnam

Late upload (4-3-2010)

Our first “official day” in Hoi An was blocked off for community service. The whole delegation took up 3 buses and one mini-van (the van carried the “Mobile Library Team” where I was a part of!) that drove us to rural schools. Three big groups were to work on renovations and gardening (painting, minor repairs, gardening) and our small group of 12 people were to facilitate the library workshops.

I have to thank my baby who brought me to the mobile library team! Not everyone can choose teams, but because I’m pregnant, I was assigned there by default. I missed storytelling and kids – very reminiscent of my AFI and UWP days.

We worked with an NGO called the Global Village Foundation, which focuses on sustainable community development projects emphasizing education and peace building at the grassroots level in Vietnam. You may read more about the foundation here: http://www.globalvillagefoundation.org/. The foundation brings this portable, wooden, suitcase-like container of books to schools so that the kids can experience them. On regular days, the foundation will just stay for a few hours and pack up. Well, I’m happy to share that our company bought two of those “suitcases” so we can leave the portable libraries with the schools we helped that day. The cases probably contained around 60 books (it was heavy!)

Our assignment for the day: in a span of one hour, we had to interact with the kids, show them the books, and tell them that they will be put at a designated place where they can borrow them and read. Each small team was composed of 3 people – two foreigners and one Vietnamese-speaking colleague. I worked with Nhan from Vietnam and Wang Jie from China. We had 3 classes in the morning, and another 3 classes in the afternoon.

Our first class was (almost) a disaster. I was looking forward to an hour of storytelling .. but… we had no idea that the students (around 12, 13 years old) did not speak much English (or were probably too shy to speak it…) and that the books we were bringing were almost all in Vietnamese! The ones with translations were all so basic for the 6th graders. We tried alternating English with Vietnamese translations but it was just too boring.

We altered our strategy in the afternoon and made it interactive. Most of them have never encountered foreigners before, so we did introductions in our own language and made them guess. China was so easy for them, but it really took a while for them to guess Philippines (I was sometimes from Singapore, HongKong, and even Germany haha!). I did a game using basic English words (Stand up and make some noise if you are a “girl”, a “boy” , wearing “red” , have a “dog”..) , it was fun. We also taught them the song, “Row, row, row your boat” while doing some actions and drawing pictures on the board.

And, I can’t believe I was able to do it because I used to hate it when I was in UWP – I taught the kids “Stomp!” – Stomp was a routine we learned in UWP which involved clapping and stomping of the feet to a certain rhythm. To my delight, the kids loved it! Much to the horror of my colleagues who asked me, is it okay for pregnant women to stomp??? Oh well, I felt okay. Then another colleague from the US asked me if I was a cheerleader. Hah. I wasn’t, I’m just … cheerful. Then, as a reward for being so participative – we opened the box of books for them (where they oohed and aahed!) and left it to our Vietnamese colleague to explain the importance of reading to them. She then reads them one book and encourages them to browse the collection for a few minutes. After that, we say goodbye to the class. I taught them to say “Paalam!!!” which is the Filipino word for good bye.

It was a hot HOT day , and some of our colleagues who were doing the outdoor jobs gave up and chose to return to the hotel after lunch. We were also given the option, but our small team decided to continue. By our last class in the morning, a lot of kids were also peeking from outside the classrooms, so we didn’t want to disappoint them by not going to their classes!

We finished up at around 4 in the afternoon… hot, tired, dusty – but happy! And this was the best part of my Hoi An trip ;-)