More and more Vietnamese children are getting HIV-either their mothers are infected or they become the part of sex trade. Migrant workers spend long periods of time away from home, frequently visit sex workers and transmit the disease to their spouse who passes the virus to the unborn children. Society doesn’t accept them and many of those children are abandoned by their mother, they are often neglected and denied opportunities in their daily life. Now these kids are living in a HIV/AIDS Center and nuns are taking care and teaching them, Asia Horizon works with multi-sectoral approach in this project: providing basic safety and protection, psychological support, food, security, economical assistantship and access to basic health service and education. This program aims to help the kids who are infected by HIV/AIDS. There are nearly twenty kids and fifteen adults staying in the Center. Every day, the teachers come and teach them in the morning and afternoon. The adults make garden, plant flowers, raise hens, ducks and make small toys from artificial pearl; the nuns help them to sell those toys to the shops. They live as a big family; love and care together. There are five nuns working as nurses and one doctor. There is a small Laboratory to do testing. Volunteers who want to study and research HIV/AIDS disease are mostly welcome to this project in Vietnam. Your support can be the reason of strengthening the capacities of those vulnerable children, prevent the spread of HIV AIDS and care the vulnerable kids infected with HIV AIDS.
Volunteer’s Activities
As a volunteer working with the HIV/AIDS Kid-patients in Ho Chi Minh City, you will take care of the kids, play, teach English, and make friend with them. You will make the kids happy and their days will be shorter and more interesting. Moreover, you can help them in drawing, painting, dancing and singing. If you apply for studying and researching HIV/AIDS, you will be assisting the doctor and nurses. Your working schedule includes a half-day or all day work, from Monday to Friday.
Project Skills Required
No specific qualification is required for the volunteers working with the HIV/AIDS Kid-patients but it would be good if you have experiences of working in this field, you can protect yourself and people around. Furthermore you need to be above 18 years of age and other requirements you need are loving, flexible, unbiased, learning and having genuine interest and commitment to the people and culture of Vietnam.
Arrangement of Room/Food/Supervision
We will make an appropriate provision for food, room and supervision for its volunteers from the very beginning of their arrival to the country to the end of their project. You will get a brief orientation about the premise and the schedule of the program, living with the Vietnamese host family is a great opportunity to understand the Vietnamese life, language (especially vietnamese), culture, tradition and people. A typical Vietnamese meal (lunch or dinner) will include steamed rice or noodles, a soup dish to eat with rice, a meat (chicken, duck, beef or pork) or fish dish, and a vegetarian dish. Spring role is the most popular Vietnamese dish either deep fried or served fresh with raw vegetables, grilled prawn, crab, pork or chicken. Volunteers are also equally encouraged to make some dished of their hometown. You can get the breakfast at morning where as lunch will be prepared in 1 pm, you are allowed to take the readymade lunch packet in the project if you want and dinner is served 7 or 8 at evening. You can also get the food from outside if you wish; there are numbers of affordable restaurants and hotels in Philippines. You can’t expect a luxurious bedroom while staying with the host family. However, volunteers joining Asia Horizon-Vietnam’s orphanage program stay with the children in a hostel. Asia Horizon arranges a separate room along with a communal bath with cold water and fan for volunteers in both the host families and hostel accommodations but sometimes they may share the room if the number is large. Volunteers are expected to share same life style while staying with the host family; they may join the daily activities such as cooking, cleaning, washing and so on. Though the local fare will be provided twice a day, you will really enjoy the way of Vietnamese hospitality and generosity to the guest.
Project Location
Placements of our primary school volunteers are located in Hanoi. Hanoi, a city between the rivers, built from lowland, has many scenic lakes and sometime is called "city of lakes”. As the capital of Vietnam for almost a thousand years, Hanoi is considered the cultural centre of Vietnam, where every dynasty has left behind their imprint. The city has many interesting cultural and historic monuments for visitors. With the rapid growth of population, an abundance of shopping centers has been built in Hanoi.
Visa Information
Citizens of certain countries can visit Vietnam (for less than 30 days) without an Entry visa, those countries include: most Asian countries, Korea, Japan and Scandinavians. Citizens from all of other countries are required to get an entry visa before departure or you can get the visa upon arrival to Vietnam. But we strongly recommend you to get a tourist visa prior to your arrival. It saves time and hassle of filling out the form in the airport, making sure you have all the documents required, and queuing up to apply for the visa. But if there is no Vietnam Embassy or Consulates in your country, then we recommend visa upon your arrival to Vietnam.
Project Information
Program Date: Asia Horizon volunteer Program begins with your arrival at the Hanoi Airport in Vietnam on Sunday, the day before of your project. A one-day orientation about the program including project sites, types of work, local food, climate, safety issues, health issues, culture people etc. will be provided in Manila office before you start the project.
Program Fees: Our program fee is 80-100% less than most international volunteer organizations. |
Living, Working and Safety Issue
Living and working in a poor and developing country is really challenging. It demands courage, some experiences and the ability to adapt. It can be overwhelming to adjust in a completely new environment. The climate, food, and atmosphere – everything is different than your hometown. You will be faced with a harsh social reality every day of your volunteer work and experience things a tourist never sees.
Independence, maturity, flexibility and the desire to do social work are required if you want to take part in the volunteer work program. Asia Horizon takes full responsibility for your safety and tries its level best to bring sense of security and peace of mind in you from the time of your first arrival to the completion of your project in a host country. When we receive your flight information, we will make the necessary arrangements here for your airport pick-up. Generally, volunteers arrive on Sunday. Our country coordinator will be there to welcome you at the airport, to pick up and take you to your accommodation, and you will receive basic orientation about your itinerary and placement along with a comprehensive briefing on the country and specific locale by the coordinator and transfer to the project on the following day or after the one week orientation. The staff/ coordinator will accompany you until you have a sense of complete safety. You are allowed to contact 24/7with an assigned person directed by Asia Horizon during your stay. We will be fulfilling our additional duties such as monitoring, guiding and counseling. Our staff/ coordinator will be there all the time supporting, assisting and coordinating you. |
