This past May term, a group of students took Elizabethtown College’s “Educate for Service” motto and applied it to their lives by attending a trip to Vietnam. The trip explored both North and South Vietnam within a 19 day time frame, featuring four in-country flights, two overnight train rides and a lot of commuting via buses. Some of the areas visited were Ho Chi Minh City, Nha Trang, Da Nang and Hoi An as well as the Vietnam War museum and the Cu Chi Tunnels used in the Vietnam War. In attendance were 11 students, two faculty members and 11 other adults, including alumni and two representatives from the Brittany’s Hope Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Elizabethtown.
The trip was sponsored by a partnership with the College and Brittany’s Hope Foundation. This organization was founded 13 years ago and was named after Brittany O’Connor, who passed away from a car accident during her senior year in college. She was studying to be a social work major and hoped to help orphaned children find loving families. Before her passing, her family remembers Brittany saying she “dreamed of a world where all children know the peace and love only a family can provide.”
This organization not only raises grant money for trips to places like Vietnam, but it also runs a sponsor program where anyone can sponsor a child living in an orphanage for $35 a month.
Since the organization is a nonprofit, all of the money goes directly to the children to help provide resources to aid in their development. While serving as a financial sponsor to their children, donors are also encouraged to communicate with their children via letters, webcam meetings and trips to meet them in person. The organization not only gives the children financial grants to children living in these orphanages but also gives them love and hope for a better future.
During the presentation, a few students who were involved with the trip recalled their unique experiences in Vietnam. One student recalled the hustle and bustle of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. Motorbikes were a main form of transportation and made up a lot of the traffic, which she likened to the modernism of New York City.
For most of the trip, students visited many different orphanages around Vietnam and performed any deed from raising money to doing service jobs to just being with the children. In one experience, students had raised enough money to help build a classroom for the Hunh De Nhu Nghia Center for the blind in a small village. Filled with gratitude, the children performed for the students doing the service work, which was enjoyed by everyone. In another experience, students helped to hand out bicycles bought by their sponsors for children in these orphanages.
Several students toured a few different orphanages for disabled children and were given an opportunity to interact with these children. While there, children flocked to meet the students who were handing out toys, vitamins and milk. Senior occupational therapy major Jaqueline Nunn recalls how some children couldn’t walk and were confined to their beds, unable to greet them despite their excitement. She remembered picking up one blind girl who immediately clung to her and would not let go. “We don’t think of holding children as a big deal,” Nunn said. “Small things like these mean so much to them.”
Most of the students in attendance on the trip had majors in occupational therapy, education or social work. These students were able to utilize what they had learned in the classroom to better relate to both the children in the orphanages and the country of Vietnam. Despite their language barriers, students felt connected to these children. With their experiences, most students felt they were able to grow as a person.
Senior early childhood education major Elizabeth Felcone highly recommends the experience to any major. For anyone feeling anxious about going abroad, she said to “throw all of those fears away.” One of the adult participants, Elizabeth Braungard, executive director of marketing and communications, also is a great proponent of the experience. “Vietnam was not on my bucket list, but after I have been back, how could it not have been?” she said. “It reminds us why we do what we do at Etown. I was the best out students had to offer. Experiences like this differentiate how different an educational experience at Etown is.”
