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September 18, 2005

'chao bo'

Former Badger, Minn., resident volunteers in Vietnam, becomes godfather to child

By Tu-Uyen Tran

Herald Staff Writer

When Corey Christianson was growing up in Badger, Minn., population 470, he watched movies of the Vietnam War with his dad and remembers wondering what the story was there.

He never thought he'd actually end in that country, picking up a little of the language and even becoming godfather to a Vietnamese child.

Christianson recently returned from a yearlong stint as a volunteer and then a director with a nonprofit organization. This month, the 28-year-old is returning for another yearlong stint.

Vietnamese friends he met at the University of Minnesota got him started volunteering with humanitarian groups there. Soon, his wanderlust led him to volunteer to go to Ho Chi Minh City with nearly 70 pounds of medical supplies for a needy orphanage. That assignment was only for 10 days, but it paid for his trip allowing him to find a longer assignment with the Hanoi office of a Minnesota charity that helps impoverished families.

Christianson spoke of a country in the throes of modernization, with familiar tales of boomtowns and of those left out of that boom.

"They're poor people and it's heartwrenching," he said. There were families that couldn't afford to send children to school, he said. There were gangs that trafficked children and forced them to beg, he said.

The orphanage he first visited was full of girls, age 11 to 18, who had been rescued from sexual slavery in Cambodia. There were some medical personnel at the facility, but they lacked basic supplies such as gauze and latex gloves. Shipping all the supplies risked holdups at customs, according to Christianson, so the Catalyst Foundation, which sponsored the trip, found it easier to have travelers bring it all with them.

"They're really tough girls," he said, remembering his time spent with the orphans. "For one thing, we weren't sure how they would react with the men. But they opened right up ... . They looked to some of the volunteers as big brothers or big sisters."

But it was with Humanitarian Services for Children of Vietnam, based in the capital of Hanoi, that Christianson really got to know the country and its people.

His job, he said, was to conduct interviews with needy families and figure out how Humanitarian Services could help them. To some families, the group distributed rice. Seventy pounds of rice cost $10, he said, but that's double the monthly income of such families. Other families with hard-of-hearing children might get fitted with hearing aids.

It was during these interviews that he met Tuyet (Snow), an 11-year-old with a potentially fatal heart problem. Humanitarian Services paid the $2,500 needed for the surgery. The family came to see Christianson as one of their own and he became Tuyet's godfather.

He still remembers how she greeted him "chao bo" - meaning "hello father."

For more information on the charities Christianson was involved with, go to www.CatalystFoundation.org or www.HSCV.org.

The Catalyst Foundation, based Northfield, Minn., is focused on the plight of girls being sold into sexual slavery. It has scholarship and microloan programs to help better the life of girls and their family.

Humanitarian Services for Children of Vietnam, based in Prior Lake, Minn., has a variety of programs to help children, from finding sister schools in the United States to providing medical assistance.

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