Ky Quang Pagoda: Volunteering with Vietnamese Orphans

Maddalena Ohrbach Start Date: Aug 3, 2019 - End Date: Dec 2, 2019
  • Educational/Research Trip
  • Missionary Service
  • Volunteer Trip
  • Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

My Travel Story

by: Maddalena Ohrbach Start Date: Aug 3, 2019 - End Date: Dec 2, 2019
  • Educational/Research Trip
  • Missionary Service
  • Volunteer Trip
This winter, I’m going to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, through Volunteers For Peace, a humanitarian nonprofit dedicated to building international peace through cultural understanding. I’m working with Ky Quand Pagoda, an orphanage for abandoned children—literal “babies in a basket”—as well as physically and mentally disabled children that the local schools aren’t equipped to teach. Volunteers teach English, play games, cook, clean, and care for these children—and of course, as a voice major in college, there might be some impromptu acapella and campfire songs. Hehe.
Being raised in the Buddhist faith, I carry a daily intention to see not just people, but their spirits: the most innate, primitive human nature and how it’s shaped by the world around us. We all want happiness, safety, and the feeling of being enough. Our hearts are far more tender and impressionable than we often allow ourselves to realize, because realizing this means acknowledging that we are all searching for a home, whether it be physical, emotional, or spiritual, but may not have the tools to build this home for ourselves.
I'm also a voice major aspiring to a career combining music and social activism, so I’m curious whether the free, portable instrument we all have could be a tool for acceptance and safety, of making a home inside one’s own body first, of coming to terms with our individual worth as well as our collective power.
I chose Vietnam, partially inspired by a recent book on Vietnam War PTSD and a desire to see the Vietnamese as they are, in their element, and entirely inspired by the prospect of working with kids. As the glorious Toni Morrison said, “What you do to children matters. And they might never forget.” I deeply want to teach these children that they are beautiful, they are wanted, and they are valued.
I’m planning on filming a documentary in Vietnam to explore a foreign country’s approach to early childcare in traumatic situations as well as how it effects children and their caretakers. Hopefully, this project will shine some light on our interconnectedness as humans, and international efforts for peace and understanding.
The inevitable catch: VFP doesn't cover airfare.
Would you be willing to donate? Even $10 would be immensely helpful.
Infinite gratitude to you all :)
  • Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam