Vietnam 2010: The Project

Mar 15th, 2010 | By art rogers | Category: Vietnam

A group of seven people from Skelly Drive in Tulsa are headed for San Sa Ho in Lao Cai Province. In last year’s trip, San Sa Ho was one of several places we stopped to work. While there, we installed a “computer lab,” consisting of 2 networked computers and a printer that Skelly Drive had purchased.

When last year’s group returned and reported first to Skelly and then to our Engagement Administration Team, the consensus was that San Sa Ho should be the primary focus of our efforts in Vietnam for the future. In the past, we’ve split time between Hanoi and the Sapa areas and last year participated in numerous projects in those areas. These included working with orphanages and teaching at the Hanoi University of Education in Hanoi, and installing computer labs at a couple of sites around Sapa.

It was our evaluation that, while our impact had been broad, it had also been shallow. What impact we had was small for each area and there was no follow up. It came to our minds that good engagement practice would be to focus our efforts on one context and develop the quality of life and relationships there with larger projects and effort.

This year, Skelly has raised money to provide clean drinking water by purchasing a UV filtration system for the San Sa Ho community. We have also raised enough money to pave the courtyard of the school. A concrete courtyard will dramatically increase the hygiene for those attending and working at the school. We’ve raised some additional funds that can be distributed later toward nutrition programs and clothing/blankets as we direct.

The majority of our week will be hand mixing the concrete on the ground, spreading and smoothing it during the day. Smarter people than us will install the filtration system. We will also check in on the computers we installed last year to see that all is functioning well there.

We are hoping to begin a long term relationship with the Black Hmong people group that lives in the San Sa Ho area and improve their quality of life tremendously over the next several years.