Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh Community Involvement

The students of the English club in Ho Chi Minh were extremely accepting of the volunteers. Their motivation and excitement to learn are admirable. My time in Vietnam was beyond my expectations, and I hope I can come back soon.

I can’t believe it went by so fast!! This is such a great program, the kindest organization, really. I signed up to participate with the Kindergarten but a mistake happened where they were on a 1 week break the same week I signed up for! So I chose to teach English to a wide range of students. And might I say; the best kind of mix-up because I ended up falling in love with the field. Teaching and gaining huge gratitude from the students are the things most valuable in life. I loved it. Thank you, GoEco, for all of your help, this unforgettable experience could not of been done without you.

I'll just mention that I felt very well taken care of by the staff at our accommodations in Ho Chi Minh City. The room and board were excellent--no complaints there--and the staff were very attentive to the needs of the volunteers, who must have felt as grateful as I was to arrive in a strange city and find such a friendly well-organized system in place to help us get started. During my 4 weeks of volunteer work (teaching English) I heard only one mild complaint from a volunteer in food outreach who had expected to be serving the poorest of the poor and was disappointed that the food distribution wasn't reaching those people. "We need to reach deeper," he said to me, referring to a level of need more desperate than what was then being targeted. Of course finding such desperate need and then putting together a program to address it cannot be an easy matter. But perhaps it's something to think about.