DukeEngage | Duke Center for Civic Engagement

photo by Eric Van Danen

Molly Belkin joined seven other Duke students volunteering with organizations in Ho Chi Minh City focused on work with children's issues, the environment, and teaching ESL.  She describes below what compelled her to get involved in this diverse DukeEngage experience.

1.  What drew you to this particular program or project?

I was drawn to this program because it was one of the few that focused on children’s issues.  For the first part of the program, I will be working at a shelter for young girls.  During the last four weeks, I will be traveling with my group to Ben Tre Province where we will be working with the Vietnamese Youth League’s Green Summer Campaign.  This program appealed to me because I will be able to work with children, as well as collaborate with Vietnamese students similar in age to myself. 

2.  What excited you about working with your community partner?
I was really excited about working with both of my community partners because they are so different.  At the Little Rose Shelter, I had the opportunity to work with young children and adults, while the second half of my program is exposing me to a national movement that was started and is maintained by Vietnamese university students. 

3.  What benefit do you hope your service will have for your community partner and your host community?

I hope that my service benefits my host communities in providing a new and different perspective. While it would be great if my service left tangible and sustainable improvements, I know that this is not necessarily going to happen.  My only wish is that my participation has allowed for collaboration across culture and language barriers.

4.  How do you hope to put into action what you learned through your DukeEngage experience once back at Duke?  

I plan to continue doing community service in Durham during my remaining years at Duke.  I am certain that my experiences in Vietnam will enhance my understanding of children with different backgrounds than my own and my ability to help them.  I also think that the experience of interacting and understanding people of different cultures--but with the same fundamental needs--will help me foster a more compassionate and knowledgeable world perspective. 
 

Throughout the summer, DukeEngage is featuring 18 students participating in both group programs and independent projects.  Check back weekly to view the latest student profile.

Chào ahn!. My name is Kendra and I’m a rising junior. I am majoring in psychology and French as well as pursuing a certificate in human development. With this I hope to someday become a cross-cultural psychologist. Enter my interest in engaging across cultures.

In just over two days I will board a plane which will take me on a 20-some hour journey that will eventually lead me to Vietnam. As the time has drawn closer to departure, the emails between my group members have grown from a trickle to a flurry. As we prepare to leave, the queries have shifted from largely philosophical in nature to the minute pragmatic details necessary to prepare for a trip. Packing can be an important way to process before a trip––to organize your thoughts and expectations as you organize the possessions that will keep you company during your trip. This process is filled with elusive questions such as “to pack it or not to pack it.” Will you truly need that second long sleeve shirt in case the first, which you might not even wear given the blissfully breezy temperature range of 80-85 degrees, has a tragic encounter with a precarious glass of punch?

What might we be doing on this DukeEngage project you ask? Well, over the course of this blog I hope to inform you of this, hopefully in not particularly painful detail. But now for a bare bones overview: 7 other Duke students and I will be spending 9 weeks in Vietnam. The first five or so weeks will be spent in Ho Chi Minh City, more commonly referred to as Saigon, a city in the Southern region of the country. During this time each of us will engage in internships in three different tracks: the environment, children’s issues, and ESL. I will be participating in the children’s issues portion. As of now, I believe that the internship will be at a shelter for sexually abused girl. However, I’ve been told that things in Vietnam are often fluid, and that I should prepare myself for the possibility of an entirely unexpected project. The final portion of our project will take place in Ben Tre province, in the Mekong delta, and we will be renovating schools and running camps for local children.

As we prepare for departure, many questions swirl in our heads. Some of these questions are specific to the project while others are age old questions all volunteers as well as travelers to other countries ask themselves. Yet, one thing is certain. We will not be the same people after these 9 weeks. Some may change in big ways while others in more subtle ways. Regardless, each one of us will in someway be forced to examine ourselves, our own culture, Vietnamese culture, as well as our larger world-views.

Through this blog I hope you can follow our adventures and get a sense of what life is like on a day-to-day basis. I have also created a group blog at http://dukeengagevietnam.blogspot.com/ . This blog will give you a chance to hear the voices of the others in the group as well as access more detailed entries. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and decide whether or not to pack that second long-sleeve shirt.

As part of a joint project, students from both Duke University and Hanoi University have recently completed teaching at the American English Summer Academy, a free three-week course for high school students at the Institute of International Education (IIE) in Hanoi.

Read the entire article here.