Today we started off a little differently with our company visit in the morning. This time we visited the Vina Capital Foundation which is a nonprofit organization that has numerous programs to better the women and children of Vietnam. One of their main programs is helping children with congenital heart defects get access to life-saving heart defects. Mr. Kivette mentioned that before his organization started operating in Vietnam a big issue was the lack of capacity to perform these surgeries and not the quality. He said that he had a partnership with Harvard at one point which helped to train and educate the surgeons in Vietnam. So once they were able to increase the capacity for treatment, Vina Capital Foundation (VCF) could send more children. This reduced how many children died each year from heart defects.
He also stressed the program he runs which educates women in rural areas about how they can become educated and not be stuck in the same cycle of being forced to get married at 13 or 14 years old and have kids for their husband. With this program he does get a lot of push back from the men and from the village elders because they do not want the system to change when it works in their favor. After hearing about this it, I was truly moved because I did not realize that is how it is for some people in these rural areas. That is truly terrible, but it is good to hear that VCF is working to change that and create a better life for these women and their children. Overall, I feel that when compared to developing countries, the methods used here are a lot simpler. When talking about social programs in the US they are usually a lot more complicated and often have a lot more people working for the organization. This makes it sophisticated and sometimes hard to get things done. Here in Vietnam they seem to be really good at using their small team effectively to do a lot of people a lot of good.
After the site visit at VCF we went to the UEF campus to have another language class and a class on the history of Vietnam. Today’s lesson was on numbers and how to tell time. I’m pretty sure I was able to make sense of everything, but it is so much to learn in so little time that I feel like a good deal of the knowledge gets lost. However, I will continue to try and do my best to remember what I can and soak in the rest of the language during our last class tomorrow.
In the history session we learned about the ancient mythology behind Vietnam as well as the history of the country. Over their thousand year plus history, they have been invaded by so many different countries that it is almost hard to keep track of. However, one of the students said that the country is like bamboo. It is tall and strong, but it is flexible. This represents that no matter what the Vietnamese people are going through they will always bounce back stronger than ever.
