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| Alan Brooks: Vietnam Volunteering Is a Family Affair May 2007
With two of their three children adopted from Asia, MITRE Senior Software Systems Engineer Alan Brooks and his wife Sheri make maintaining ties with their children's cultural heritage a priority. "My oldest son was born in Korea, my second son was born in Massachusetts, and my daughter was born in Vietnam," explains Brooks. Brooks and his wife keep their children in touch with their birth-countries' traditions through culture camps, travel, celebrating the Asian New Year, and contact with their daughter Katie's birth family in Vietnam. It was at a Catalyst Foundation culture camp for children adopted from Vietnam that the Brooks family first learned about the group's humanitarian aid expeditions. They decided to add a volunteer component to a trip to visit Katie's birth family. In addition to organizing culture camps, the Catalyst Foundation provides educational scholarships and direct relief to orphaned, abandoned, and homeless children in Vietnam. Without support, these children are extremely vulnerable to exploitation by human traffickers. Every two years, Catalyst organizes a humanitarian aid expedition to Vietnam for volunteers to meet and provide assistance to the children and families that the organization reaches. Last March, Brooks, Sheri, and their then 15-year-old daughter Katie set off on Catalyst's week-long Vietnam Aid Expedition. "Catalyst does ongoing humanitarian aid work in Vietnam, and we were tying in with that work during our trip," Brooks says. "For example, Catalyst has partnered with two extremely poor villages in the southern area of Vietnam—where the average annual income is about $370 a year—to provide families with better housing." Brooks and Katie spent most of their volunteer week helping to raise and paint houses for needy families. The houses they built are simple pole constructions with tin siding and roofs, but they provide more permanent and protected shelter than the thatch huts they replaced. Sheri, a former registered nurse, worked with the Catalyst medical team providing basic medical and dental care and medicines for intestinal parasites and other illnesses to some of the nearly 500 children treated during the trip. Other families on the expedition, particularly those with young children adopted from Vietnam, participated in cultural and gift exchanges at local elementary schools. The group's work attached a friendly face to the ongoing support that Catalyst provides in Vietnam, including its scholarship program for girls. Because families must pay school fees for even primary education in Vietnam, schooling is out of reach for many poor children. Due to economic constraints and cultural bias, young girls are even less likely to be educated than boys. To help remedy this disparity, the Catalyst Foundation provides scholarships that allow girls to complete primary school. During the expedition, members of the team visited some of these scholarship recipients, delivering locally manufactured bikes to enable them to get to school. The expedition also visited a Catalyst-supported orphanage, and took all of the children—approximately 150—for a day at the beach. "These are children who never have a day to just play. It was really fun to see the kids running on the beach and in the water," says Brooks. "A number of them had not been around water much before and were a bit tentative, but they eventually got up the courage to jump in and have fun." Hard Work—and Snake for Dinner Volunteers on Catalyst aid expeditions are responsible for raising funds to cover their own airfare and in-country expenses, as well as to cover a portion of the overall expenses of the trip, including gifts to the schools, orphanage, and local families. Although the trip involved much hard work, there was time for fun as well. Brooks recalls sampling cobra at a restaurant and going out with and without translators to explore and interact with people. Showing people pictures of themselves on his digital camera was something he found to be a great icebreaker and a way to bridge the language barrier. "People were always thrilled with the pictures because there aren't that many cameras, or even mirrors, in the really rural areas of Vietnam," he explains. The experience had such an impact on the Brooks family that it won't just be a one-time event. Katie and one of her brothers will participate in the next Catalyst Foundation Vietnam Aid Expedition in 2008, and Brooks will be part of the 2010 trip. "I still grapple with the difference in my lifestyle here and the poverty that I saw there," he says. "I'd encourage everyone to get engaged in some form of humanitarian work, whether it's a soup kitchen in downtown Boston or whether it's going overseas."
Page last updated: May 3, 2007 | Top of page |
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