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Hanoi Update

August 14th, 2005

I’ve been promising to write an update from Hanoi for the past four months. I’ve had every intention send many updates, but I find when I sit in front of my computer I’m so tried and drained that I have a hard time to writing a quality update. Today I have been on the computer for a few hours, replying to emails, updating reports, planning the schedule for the upcoming work week all while listening to a replay of the Vikings first preseason game. So I figure this is as good a time as any to sit down and write an update….

In the past year HSCV has been going through many growing pains. We have expanded many programs, created new ones, and researched the possibility of many more. The number of children we are assisting has more than tripled.

Heart Surgeries

The biggest expansion in the year of 2005 has been with open-heart surgeries. In the last few months of 2004 HSCV sponsored it’s first two open-heart surgeries. This week HSCV will sponsor its 16th and 17th surgeries. Of these 17 children, one child did not recover from the surgery and died in the hospital. All the other children are doing well and are expected live normal lives. Working with these children is truly one of the hardest parts of our job. We have the pleasure of telling families we can sponsor them. We have all the emotions of checking the children in, waiting for the surgery, having the surgery, the recovery, and the checkout. But what is even harder is the constant flow of patients introducing themselves to us. We are very well known at the hospital and in the communities that we work. As soon as we sponsor a child the word gets around of HSCV sponsorship of heart surgeries. I've sat in a room at the hospital while visiting one of our children and at least 3 different families came to us to explain there situation and how much they need assistance. Nha Trang has to deal with this the most. It's not unusual for her to receive requests from 5 families in one day. The cost of these surgeries range from $2300 to $3000, this is a large amount of money for HSCV. We have been forced to create a waiting list of children seeking sponsorship. New children are added to the list weekly. The hardest part is that all we can tell them is that we are unable to sponsor any more children. We have to look them in the eye and tell them we can't help them. This list will continue to grow until more funding can be located. We are now only taking the most serious cases. These surgeries tend to cost more than less serious cases, so we can help fewer children, but these are children who have been given only a few months to live.
It’s one of those situations that I don't think there are ever a right answers or a solution for... We just continue to help those that we can.

Van Anh
Van Anh is a beautiful young girl who was born with serious deformities in her legs. I was first introduced to her in March of 2004. Ever since the day we met I have sought some kind of solution for her situation. We spent a lot of time visiting hospitals and numerous doctors. Many of the doctors refused her case, because of how complicated it is. In addition to the orthopedic issues she suffered with a small hole in her heart. After about six months we finally convinced a doctor to operate on her heart. In January of 2005 she finally had open-heart surgery (HSCV 3rd child to have open-heart surgery). Next week Van Anh is scheduled to have the first in a series of surgeries on her legs. She will have to travel to about 2 hours by bus where Dr. To, the leading Vietnamese orthopedic surgeon will operate on her legs. I have been working towards this moment for over a year and half and I am so completely scared. I can’t imagine how Van Anh and her family are feeling at this moment. Her surgery is so complicated, and so many things could potentially go wrong. I only hope we have made to right decision. I want so badly for this surgery to be a success. Please keep Van Anh in your thoughts this week.

Sponsorship
HSCV has created a sponsorship program that encourages individuals and families to sponsor a child. There are ways to sponsor these children:

• Send a child to school for $30 a year
• Purchase a new bicycle for $37
• Provide a year’s supply of rice for a family for $90
• Provide a hearing-aid and speech therapy for $150
• Build a compassion home for a family for $1400
• Sponsor an open-heart surgery for $2500

Many of these programs are designed to work hand-in-hand. For example, many of the families receiving rice also have children in the school scholarship program.

A sponsor will receive a short biography and photo of the child/family. The sponsors also have the opportunity to exchange letters with children. This program has proven to be a very satisfying endeavor on both sides of the sponsorship.

Sister School Program
The Sister School Program is at risk of dieing out. We are in desperate need of foreign schools to participate in this program. It’s a very simple program where students in Vietnam share letters and pictures and drawings, with students in other countries. The foreign students are then asked to raise money in order to purchase need supplies for the students in Vietnam. A few hundred US dollars can go a very far way with program. In the past schools have received items such as; notebooks, pens, book bags and blackboards.

If you know of a school or organization that would like more information about this program please let HSCV know. We will happily send brochures and a video further explaining the program. When possible an HSCV representative will happily visit the interested school or organization.

Soup distribution program and centers for children
HSCV has been invited by Children of Vietnam (A NGO that works in Central Vietnam) to participate in a soup distribution program. This program involves receiving a cargo container of vitamin and mineral enriched soup from USAID. This container will provide enough soup to feed 20,000 people for 9 months. Everyone who is a recipient of the soup must be documented and verified to be poor. As you can imagine this is a daunting task. Over the past 3 months HSCV has been seeking and visiting centers for children. In this time we identified over 3,000 eligible people. During our research we located many centers we previously hadn’t known about. Most of the centers have a large number of children, some are handicapped, and some are healthy, some are true orphans while others are fostered children. The needs of these facilities are great. They are in need of support in a variety of fascists. Items such as clothing, laundry soap, shoes, blankets, feminine products, as well as food items such as powdered milk have been requested. Currently, HSCV is sponsoring only one of these orphanages with a monthly allotment of powdered milk, at a cost of $200 per month, this donation fulfills about half of monthly milk needs at orphanage, which has 70 children.

Thanks for reading…
Well that’s a quick summary of some of what HSCV has been up to over the past few months. I’ll do my best to write another update soon.
If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me anytime at annettadevet@hscv.org.

Annetta De Vet
Vice President
HSCV