When I was a little girl, I dreamt of being an architect. I used to spend endless hours drawing sketches of houses. I wanted to use architecture as a means to helping the disadvantaged. One of my designs was of an orphanage that houses and teaches children to make a living of their own. Another of my ambition was to build innovative and sustainable houses for low income people using low cost materials.
Later on, my architecture dream did not materialize simply because very few architecture schools in the US offer scholarships. I then turned my efforts in doing nonprofit and charity work such as working with autistic children in the UK, volunteering to help victims of hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, raising money for scholarships for school children in Vietnam, doing conflict resolution in Sri Lanka. Through these experiences, I understand how difficult operating an NGO can be, and how meaningful the job of a social worker is. A social worker has to endure hardships without fame or money to create and impact on the lives of people around them. Somehow, I also realize that this type of work is not suitable for me. I wanted to create changes from top down and hoped to influence policy to solve bigger issues. I toyed with the idea of even doing a PhD in Public Policy.
Things didn’t go as planned. After returning to Vietnam, by accident, my friend and I opened a wedding planning company (http://WedinStyle.net). Never before have I imagined myself doing business. But our long term plan is to turn our business into a social enterprise that employs underprivileged women and develop a fund from the company's profits to serve under-privileged children. We are still a long way from achieving this goal, but at least now, I believe I have a concrete and feasible plan of helping others, after many broken dreams of becoming an architect, a social worker, and a policy maker.
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Let’s talk about volunteering. This Sunday a group of friends and I are going to Fukushima to perform bamboo dance and distribute food to 1000 Japanese living in a shelter because they had to evacuate from their homes near the nuclear plant. I am very excited about this.
My few months in Japan have been fruitful. Not being able to speak Japanese, I was very lucky to get the chance to do many volunteer works with my school such as raising money for earthquake victims, serving food to homeless people, working with autistic children. We even had the chance to experience being disabled and old to see what it’s like. Though I have done many similar volunteering activities like this before in the UK, US, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, being able to do such volunteer work in Japan was a valuable experience to understand the realities Japan life. It was also interesting to compare and contrast on how the same activities performed by organizations in Western countries, Asian countries and then in Japan are so different in approach and mentality.
Japanese people in the Tohoku area are still in need of assistance. I am hoping this summer I might be able to travel there to volunteer with the relief efforts. It would be like traveling back time when I was in Sri Lanka in 2005 after the tsunami.
Disclaimer: My blog is for entertainment purposes only, please do not take it seriously or personally. Thank you!
Chị ơi nếu được chị viết 1 bài so sánh về NGO ở Mỹ, Nhật và Việt Nam nhé :)
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