Hanoi.

Mentally Disabled Children.

The project is aimed at providing volunteers an opportunity to be involved in a social work with a specific targeted group as mentally disabled children, and at enabling Morning Star Centre and its staff and beneficiaries to exchange with people from different cultures who are willing to share with disadvantaged communities.

Morning Star Centre is a non-profit day care center which provides early diagnosis, care and rehabilitation to mentally disabled children in Hanoi and surrounding areas. It also aims to help parents have better understanding on how to take care and educate their disabled children and raise awareness among society about the issue.
Morning Star Centre was founded by the Association of Handicapped Children of Vietnam. The Center has a staff of caretakers, teachers, cooks and doctors. Being a very caring group of people, they work long hours with little pay for the sake of the children.
The Center is providing early diagnosis, care and clinical intervention, special education and vocational training for children along with counseling service for parents.

Morning Star Centre is located in the outskirt of Hanoi. Located in the north of Vietnam, this capital city has over 3.5 million people and is the second biggest city in the country.

Volunteers should like to work with handicapped children and maturity and initiative spirit.

Volunteers with background or experience in medical work or disability. However, volunteers without experience or background will still be able to join in different work as children are very excited with foreigners.

Volunteers will help with different work in the centre, mainly as follow...
- Assisting local staff in providing rehabilitation exercises and therapist treatments for children.
- Playing with children and entertaining/educating them with games, music, arts and other exercises.
- Helping on fund raising to support the children.
- Collecting useful information and documents from different sources.
- Teaching English for local staff.
- Typical working hours will be from 8am–4pm. Lunch along with a short nap will be between 11am–2pm.

Ongoing project. Minimum period of stay - 2 weeks.

Volunteers will stay in a dormitory with rooms shared with other volunteers. Living conditions will be Vietnamese standard with separate bathroom, single bed with mattress. Food will be provided at the accommodation. Meals will be mostly local food, which vary from the daily cooking schedule. Volunteers, especially those who are vegetarian may be required to do some cooking by themselves.

VPV fees are as follows...

200 Euro.

300 Euro.

400 Euro, each week after: 50 Euro.

200 Euro/month.

Hai Duong, Hai Duong Province

Disabled/Disadvantaged children.

The centre aims to provide obligatory education and vocational training to create employment opportunities for the children.
Furthermore the centre is interested in bring forward the relationship between local people and foreign volunteers.

Established in 1982, the centre takes care of more than 1000 mentally or physically disabled children aged up to 18 years.
It provides compulsory education for the younger children and offers vocational training for the older ones.

The centre is located in Hai Duong, a town with about 170,000 inhabitants, 58 kilometres from Hanoi and 80 kilometres from the coast.

The volunteer should...

- Be flexible, creative and patient.
- Have experience with children.
- Be ready to work with heavily disabled children.
- Know activities, games, songs that disabled children can enjoy.
- Appreciate to live in the countryside.

The volunteers will help the disabled children in their daily activities by organizing leisure activities and trying to encourage them to communicate with others. Volunteers also join painting, drawing classes for the children at the centre. Besides, they can organize English classes for the staff at the centre, communication classes for the people living nearby welfare centre or students studying at some universities.

- Helping children with daily activities.
- Organizing leisure activities.
- Join painting and drawing classes.
- Organize English classes for the staff.
- Organizing communication classes for the people living nearby the centre.

Ongoing project. Minimum period of stay - 2 weeks.

Volunteers will stay in an accommodation in the centre. They should expect a Vietnamese standard, which means sleeping on dormitory beds or on the floor and sharing bathrooms with the children. The centre does not allow hotel-stays; the volunteers are expected to live in the centre.

VPV fees are as follows...

200 Euro.

300 Euro.

400 Euro, each week after: 50 Euro.

200 Euro/month.

Separated into two locations in Ba Dinh and Dong Da districts of central Hanoi.

Mentally Disabled Children

The centre's mission is to provide opportunities for children with mental impairment to receive an education, and to feel included with their local community. In particular, the centre provides assistance for those children suffering from developmental disabilities including Down's Syndrome, Autism and Cerebral Palsy. As well as early grade academic learning, the education programs include physical education and therapy, yoga, painting and poetry.

The Hope Centre is a non-profit, non-governmental day care organization based in Hanoi for the care of mentally impaired children. Separated into two locations in Ba Dinh and Dong Da districts of central Hanoi, the Centre currently provides care for around 60 children (approximately 45 in Ba Dinh, 15 in Dong Da) between the ages of 3 and 12, cared for by a total of 16 staff (10 in Ba Dinh, 6 in Dong Da).
As well as early grade academic learning, the education programs include physical education and therapy, yoga, painting and poetry. In addition to the staff, there are also frequently volunteers from the local University that give up their time to assist at the centre, providing volunteers from VPV with even more opportunities to make friends and gain knowledge of Vietnamese culture.

Both of the centres are located close to the centre of Hanoi.
Located in the north of Vietnam, the capital city has over 3.5 million people and is the second biggest city in the country.

Volunteers should like to work with disabled children and show maturity and initiative spirit.

Volunteers with background or experience in medical work or disability. However, volunteers without experience or background will still be able to join in different work as children are very excited with foreigners.

With professional experience or qualifications in the field of care for children with learning difficulties, Down's Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy or Autism, a volunteer will be able to help staff with clinical and special educational assistance, however those without will still have a full day between 8am and 4pm; assisting with classes, organizing activities, and providing the love and care that the children of the centre need.

Ongoing project. Minimum period of stay - 2 weeks.

Volunteers will stay in a dormitory with rooms shared with other volunteers. Living conditions will be Vietnamese standard with separate bathroom, single bed with mattress. Food will be provided at the accommodation. Meals will be mostly local food, which vary from the daily cooking schedule.

VPV fees are as follows...

200 Euro.

300 Euro.

400 Euro, each week after: 50 Euro.

200 Euro/month.

Around 15 kilometres from Hanoi.

Mentally and physically disabled children and war veterans.

The aim of the program is to provide an opportunity for the children in the village to open themselves with the community, especially with foreign volunteers. This will also enable the volunteers to learn about the continued consequence of the war which ended 3 decades ago to give a hand to heal the wound.

Vietnam Friendship Village opened its doors in 1993 to treat children and veterans suffering from the effects of Agent Orange (which was used during the US-Vietnam War). The children, whose fathers or grandfathers were exposed (causing chromosomal damage) or who were contaminated from their mother's milk, suffer from a range of difficult conditions. While at the Friendship Village, children and veterans are nourished and are provided with free medical care; the children, who may be there for a period of years, receive their basic education as well as some forms of job training.

The Organic Gardening Project was launched in 2004 with the goal of creating islands with an harmonious approach to agriculture within areas of environmental and human devastation - increasing awareness of the consequences of war and, at the same time, demonstrating positive strategies for healing and living. The farm now is providing about 60% of the vegetable for the Village. It is hoped that it will be able to cover all the local need and to sell out some of the products to get money for the children.

Vietnam Friendship Village is located in Ha Tay province, just 15km from Hanoi Capital.

Volunteers should...

- have high motivation for helping people.
- be open to work with local people of different backgrounds and levels of cultural understanding.
- be prepared to work with high level of activeness and creativeness.

Volunteers will be expected to help with the following...

- Assisting farming work.
- Organizing games and other activities for children.
- Teaching English for some children.
- Joining vocational training classes.
- Assisting rehabilitation work.

Normally volunteers will work about 20 hours a week.

Ongoing project. Minimum period of stay - 2 weeks.

Volunteers will stay in a dormitory with rooms shared with other volunteers. Living conditions will be Vietnamese standard with separate bathroom, single bed with mattress. Food will be provided at the accommodation. Meals will be mostly local food, which vary from the daily cooking schedule.

VPV fees are as follows...

200 Euro.

300 Euro.

400 Euro, each week after: 50 Euro.

200 Euro/month.

Hanoi.

Working with disabled children.

The project is aimed at providing volunteers an opportunity to be involved in a social work with a specific targeted group as children victims of Agent Orange, and at enabling Thanh Xuan Peace Village and its staff and beneficiaries, to exchange with people from different cultures who are willing to share with disadvantaged communities.

Established by a German non-profit organization, the Thanh Xuan Peace Village provides supervision and care for over 110 second and third generation children who are victims of Agent Orange, a herbicide and defoliant used by the U.S. Armed forces in its herbicidal warfare program during the Vietnam War. The centre has about 50 staff members amongst which are caretakers, physiotherapists, massage therapists, teachers, cooks and doctors.

Exposure to the dioxins released by Agent Orange (though never officially recognized by the U.S. Government) has caused severe effects ranging from genetic defects to increased risk of cancers. Currently many hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese still suffer the consequences of the use of Agent Orange, the disabled children of Peace Village representing a mere fraction of that number.

Facilities at the Peace Village include dormitory residence, two physiotherapy treatment rooms, an aqua-therapy pool, a playground, a communal dining hall, classrooms, technical training workshops, computer lab, and health clinic.

Peace Village is located in the outskirts of Hanoi. Located in the north of Vietnam, the capital city has over 3.5 million people and is the second biggest city in the country.

Volunteers should like to work with handicapped children and show maturity and initiative spirit.

Volunteers with background or experience in medical work or disability. However, volunteers without experience or background will still be able to join in different types of work, as children are very excited with meeting foreigners.

Volunteers will help with different work in the centre, mainly as follow...

- Organizing games and other activities with the children.
- Joining daily activities with the pupils including assisting with exercises.
- Caring for the children and helping with rehabilitation exercises for them.
- Helping the villagers to improve their English.
- Helping staff with general housework.
- Assisting in fundraising activities.

Typical working hours will be from 8am–4pm. Lunch along with a short nap will be between 11am–2pm.

Ongoing project. Minimum period of stay - 2 weeks.

Volunteers will stay in a dormitory with rooms shared with other volunteers. Living conditions will be Vietnamese standard with separate bathroom, single bed with mattress. Food will be provided at the accommodation. Meals will be mostly local food, which vary from the daily cooking schedule.

VPV fees are as follows...

200 Euro.

300 Euro.

400 Euro, each week after: 50 Euro.

200 Euro/month.

Thuy An.

Mentally and physically disabled children.

The end goal of the Thuy An centre is to help children reintegrate into society, insofar as this is possible. The means for achieving this is by providing vocational training that will enable financial
independence in the future, but also by giving them confidence in themselves and if possible, teaching them English.

Founded in 1976, the Thuy An centre for disabled children is located approximately 50 km West of Hanoi, in the Thuy An commune. The centre originally opened its doors to disabled children of Vietnam war veterans, their disabilities often having been caused by the U.S military's spraying of ‘Agent Orange' during the U.S-Vietnam war. Over time, however, the centre has opened its services to all disabled children.
The Thuy An centre is a ‘campus' housing up to 150 children and 50 members of staff. The children, aged from new-born babies to 18 year old young adults, suffer from mental and/or physical disabilities and are helped in any of three ways, depending on the extent of their disability, they receive:
1. Rehabilitation, consisting of physical therapy, orthopaedic surgery (Galvanic electrolysis, ultrasound, laser acupuncture), backbone relaxation treatment and the provision of and assistance with the use of aid equipment.

2. Education/Vocational training, consisting of special education, integration education, vocational training, sewing, wool knitting, embroidery and computer teaching.

3. Upbringing and care: The children are looked after well by staff members whose lives require extraordinary responsibility and self discipline.

The centre is located in the commune of Thuy An, approximately 50 kilometres west of Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.

Volunteers should be able to work with disabled children and have maturity and initiative spirit.

Volunteers would be able to assist the staff in their work with the children by helping with rehabilitation, organizing sports and / or extra curricular activities, or by teaching English to staff members and, if possible, to the children.
There are also plans to begin an organic farming programme, to grow fruit and vegetables for those volunteers happy to get their hands dirty!

Ongoing project. Minimum period of stay - 2 weeks.

The volunteer will live in the centre in a room of Vietnamese standard. If more than one volunteer is in the centre they will most likely share a room. The volunteer will eat with the staff.

VPV fees are as follows...

200 Euro.

300 Euro.

400 Euro, each week after: 50 Euro.

200 Euro/month.

Ho Chi Minh City.

Children with Disabilities.

The aim of the centre is to provide care for the children who have mental and physical disabilities. They provide physical and mental therapy to try and give them some skills to move them as close as possible to independent living.

Thi Nghe is located in Binh Thanh District in Ho Chi Minh City. From 1875 to 1976 it was a refuge for the homeless, the elderly and those suffering from incurable illnesses. In 1976 the Social Welfare Department of Vietnam assumed control and is now exclusively for the care of abandoned, handicapped children. It is a large centre which is currently caring for over 400 abandoned children. Nearly all of the children here have disabilities, with about 150 suffering from cerebral palsy. When arriving at the centre most of the abandoned children are also malnourished.
There are around 230 staff working at Thi Nghe, who welcome both local and international volunteers to help care and play with the children.
Thi Nghe Centre facilities include a fully equipped physiotherapy area, an infirmary, laboratory, 12 classrooms, a sewing workshop and a domestic science class.
In 1994, a teaching farm was set up in Bao Loc, 200km north of HCMC for young adults. It currently has 67 young people learning and receiving training in how to cultivate tea, coffee, vegetables and fruit, as well as working with farm animals. They also cook and do general housekeeping.

Thi Nghe is located in Binh Thanh District in Ho Chi Minh City.

No experience is necessary but any time spent working with children or disabled children does have a big advantage. Volunteers should be patient, adaptable and have the ability to accept that conditions and practices may be different in Vietnam. Lots of energy is also needed.

Volunteers at this center have a choice of working with different ages of children. There are various different rooms which the children stay, and are divided into similar ages. Time can be spent going from room to room but most volunteers usually choose a room to work for the duration of the time so they can understand the children and better facilitate their needs. Rehabilitation is mostly done by qualified physiotherapists working at the center but there is various equipment available for volunteers to help the children, as well as sensory room which can be used for a few children at a time. Feeding is a slow process and with many children to feed this is an important part of the work as different methods are required to feed each child
At the center there is a morning session (3 hours) and afternoon session (2.5 hrs) returning to the accommodation over the lunch period.
Working days are from Monday to Friday with Saturday and Sunday free.

Ongoing project. Minimum period of stay - 2 weeks.

Volunteers will stay in a dormitory with rooms shared with other volunteers. Living conditions will be Vietnamese standard with separate bathroom, single bed with mattress. Food will be provided at the accommodation. Meals will be mostly local food, which vary from the daily cooking schedule. Volunteers, especially those who are vegetarian may be required to do some cooking. During working-days food is provided by the host placement.

VPV fees are as follows...

200 Euro.

300 Euro.

400 Euro, each week after: 50 Euro.

200 Euro/month.

Ho Chi Minh City.

Children with Disabilities.

The aim of the oprhanage is to provide care for the children who have mental and physical disabilities. They provide physical and mental therapy to try and give them some skills to move them as close as possible to independent living.

Ky Quang Pagoda was built in the early part of the 20th Century in 1924 and is quite famous in Ho Chi Minh City. The pagoda is now a place of charity for unlucky children and also helps treat diseases. Now, the pagoda is taking care and bringing up more than 200 children in the South of Vietnam. The children here have unfortunate backgrounds as many have been abandoned by their parents and relatives. It is not uncommon for children to be found left outside the pagoda, or for them to receive a call from the hospital with the request to accept abandoned babies. At the moment, about 200 people are living in the Pagoda, their ages ranging from 5 days old to 40 years old. 90 of these are orphans that are suffering from a wide range of disabilities including cerebral-palsy, blindness or Down's syndrome.
At present, about 30-40 local children have a chance to study at Ky Quang as some local teachers teach Vietnamese for them in the morning.
The Pagoda Orphanage is founded and run by the Bonze Thich Thien Nhan. It has 25 staff members who stay at the Pagoda to take care and bring up these orphans. A French organisation has recently been given permission to work alongside the monks here.

Ky Quang Orphanage is located in Go Vap District.

No experience is necessary but any time spent working with children or disabled children does have a big advantage. Volunteers should be patient, adaptable and have the ability to accept that conditions and practices may be different in Vietnam. Lots of energy is also needed.
For teaching volunteers should be confident, resourceful and adaptable to student behaviour and classroom atmosphere. No prior teaching experience is needed, but is very useful.

Volunteers can be placed here for either teaching English or orphanage work.

For teaching English we have arranged classes with local children from the area who do not have such good opportunities to study at school. They come to the pagoda to join our English classes, which have proved very popular. The classes are open to all so attracts many different ages and English levels vary from child to child. The content of the class follows a book, and lessons are to be prepared before hand by volunteers. Local Vietnamese volunteers from VPV also join the volunteer in every class to provide translation, support and control where necessary, and to also to make our volunteers more comfortable especially when first starting.

For orphanage work the volunteers will work mainly in a day-care room inside the pagoda that rehabilitates, takes care, entertains and feeds disabled children. The children all live at the pagoda but are brought to this room in the morning, and returned in the evening, and it is this room that volunteers will spend most of their time. The main focus of the work is to help the children to develop with constructive activities, helping them to walk/stand/catch as well as playing. A large majority of time is spent feeding the children, as some children take a lot longer than others.

Ongoing project. Minimum period of stay - 2 weeks.

Volunteers will stay in a dormitory with rooms shared with other volunteers. Living conditions will be Vietnamese standard with separate bathroom, single bed with mattress. Food will be provided at the accommodation. Meals will be mostly local food, which vary from the daily cooking schedule. Volunteers, especially those who are vegetarian may be required to do some cooking. During working-days food is provided by the host placement.

VPV fees are as follows...

200 Euro.

300 Euro.

400 Euro, each week after: 50 Euro.

200 Euro/month.