This following article will be published in the May 2011 edition of Singapore American School's community magazine Newsflash, regarding the recent HS Outreach Vietnam service club trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Bringing Service to Vietnam
Most of us are familiar with SAS service work in places like Cambodia or the Philippines. However, one place – just two hours away from Singapore – we often forget to mention is Vietnam. With 90 million people and the fastest growing economy in the Indochina region, Vietnam has lifted millions out of poverty. However, millions more have also been left behind in an unbreakable cycle of poverty.
Outreach Vietnam, a new high school service club, was founded under the single premise of education. In Vietnam, there are no scholarships or sliding scales. Most families cannot afford to pay public school fees, and their children have little hope for a future that is anything different than continued economic and social deprivation.
Over Spring Break, 15 students and two teachers travelled to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Vietnam to work with the Anh Linh Free School, a local primary and middle school catered to Ho Chi Minh City’s poorest and most disadvantaged street children who otherwise cannot afford to attend local public schools. Most of Anh Linh’s students come from troubled family backgrounds of prostitution and abandonment, and over half are ineligible to attend local public schools because of their age.
Over the course of four days, trip members taught English, setup a computer lab with donated laptops, taught computer lessons, doubled their library collection with books including those graciously donated by the PTA, visited local families, assembled care packages consisting of cooking oil, chicken stock, and rice, distributed backpacks, donated sports equipment and presented red packets to each Anh Linh student.
As one member commented: “Interaction with the Vietnamese students required a lot of work on our part, but was very meaningful. The language barrier was intimidating at first, but I realized language was not an issue at all. I learned that service is making an active effort to give back to those less fortunate than us, and I look forward to next year’s trip.”
The firsthand experience that members experienced with the Anh Linh kids will be memories that will be forever remembered.
Special thanks to Bridges to Learning, Inc. for your continued support and PTA for sharing the gift of literacy to the Anh Linh students
Your parents and school community should be so proud of all of you! This just popped up on Google Alerts 4/04/2011 so it is reaching us all over the globe. Thank you for your hard work and for being such amazing role models for the young people at Anh Linh School who are dreaming of a better tomorrow. You are all helping to make it come true. Your commitment, all of those meetings, all of that planning, all of your efforts greatly impacted the children at Anh Linh, and all of us around the world as we watch you, the dedicated students of the Singapore American School invest in hope. Thanks a Million! With kindest regard, Peg Thomas Bridges to Learning
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