Today we started off the day with a lecture introducing us to Buddhism. We learned about its history and how it’s practiced in Vietnam. An aspect of Buddhism that fascinated me was how it can coexist so well with other religions because it doesn’t matter whether you believe in a god. It’s more focused on how people should stop worrying about what they want, as this causes sorrow. Next, we visited a Buddhist temple and also visited the street corner where a famous photo was taken of a monk who burned himself alive. I remembered seeing this photo in the Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary, so it was interesting to see this corner and visit the statue honoring the monk. During the afternoon we headed back to VinaCapital and had a presentation about both the company and the foundation. VinaCapital is an investment firm that uses its money to help fund the VinaCapital foundation. They cover all the overhead of the foundation so that 100% of the donations recieved will directly help a cause. This gives the foundation a great advantage over other charitable organizations. One of the main projects of the foundation is Heartbeat Vietnam. This project helps provide heart surgeries for poor children born with congenital heart defects. They provide about 1000 free surgeries a year and they help with more than just the surgery. They are usually in contact with the family many months in advance to make sure the surgery goes well and that it helps the family’s future. While the company wants to help all the children it can, it also has to balance the surgeries with buying medical equipment. This may lack the personal aspect of paying for surgeries, but it saves more lives in the long term. The foundation finds the government to be very helpful and 2/3 of the cost of each surgery is covered by the government.  That leaves the foundation with only 1/3 of the cost it’s needs to raise, which is $1200. In addition to heart surgeries, the foundation also gives scholarships to ethnic minority women who live in the rural areas of Vietnam. Taking a broad perspective on the foundation, it’s main goal is to grow the middle class in Vietnam. It does this by choosing projects that they think will be the most effective at helping people get out of poverty. Once the people are out of poverty, they are now part of the middle class and this is very good for the economy. A good economy helps VinaCapital and allows them to help more Vietnamese, so it turns into a cycle that has great potential accelerate the development of Vietnam. Also, when people donate to the foundation and it’s successful, the people who are helped will remember which companies made the donations and they will be loyal to those companies.  An interesting point that was brought up was expansion into other countries. The foundation is considering helping out Laos. Vietnam believes it can help Laos the same way other countries like America have helped Vietnam in the past 20 years. I was very impressed with the work of the foundation because it makes sure that Vietnam’s development benefits all of its people. After the VinaCapital visit it was off to the Ben Thanh Market to barter. It turned out to be a much more crazy experience than I initially thought it was going to be. The very first deal ended up with me getting chased away and hit with a calculator. However, I was determined to get a pair of chopsticks without having to buy 5 pairs and a box to put them in.  It took a bit and it seemed like the entire market laughed at me and said I was crazy, but I eventually got a single pair. It was a pretty tiring experience, but a great way to see an aspect of Vietnamese culture that is very different than America. Later that night for dinner, I found a great pho place and my stomach started to feel a lot better than yesterday