orphanage volun-tourism

Hi,

That's the fact. Unhappiness of children is used for earning money. Just want to blame for parents who dont take responsible for having babies and the society isnt generous enough to adopt those children.

mark stutley wrote:

The ABC in Australia presented a program Wednesday night (Head First by Sabur Bradley) about the abuse of children in Cambodia, basically the story showed how, a great many volunteer NGO,s were exploiting the generosity of the west, I have found, in my attempts to do volunteer work in this field most organisation want the worker to pay, generally around $1600 for 2 weeks some times the time is longer, none that I have applied to, when I mention no fees, will reply to me. The program also showed the manipulation that occurs with children being CONTRACTED, through their parents, to reside in orphanages to appeal to the western tourist or pedophile in an attempt to get money. my question is, does this occur in VN? and to what extent? The "convoy for babies" orphanage that we visited in 2013 exhibited some of the traits of the Cambodian ones shown on TV, with no papers being required from us but having said that don't know what association Tran Hung Dao had with those people, but there was a steady flow of buses coming in. Can anyone of you who have had personal experience with this please advise, Mark.     The program is available on Iview

Not anything about the orphanage scheme.
I have read about the 'volun teaching' programmes promoted in VN.
Young and with it western UNI grads have the opportunity to volunteer teach at VN schools and centres.
They  just apply and pay the application/registration/paperwork fees and viola!
They receive a special allowance of $200 a month to pay for their accom. and food.
AND they get the wonderful opportunity to work Mon-Sun.Full time.
I did read this on a forum,however the source cannot be recalled.

There are US (NGO) sponsored projects in the Mekong and they expect the volunteers to PAY. Pay their airfare, their transportation to the sites, their food, their accommodation (in wooden huts on the sites). Airfare plus around USD$2000 for two weeks.

Then there is a New Zealand based group around the Da Nang area running a similar racket except they have hotel accommodation.

Paying to volunteer seems more like a business to me. They are selling you the opportunity to tell people you were a volunteer. A friend of mine volunteers teaching English at an ophanage in Da Nang. He provides all the materials and teaches 20 kids 3 hours twice per week. Half of the students are better clothed than their peers because they are the children of the staff.  Are there 10 more orphanes that could benefit?  Yes but the staff assignes who sees him.

It is all scam of sorts with people jumping on the bandwagon because they can see a way to make money out of these volunteers. No one benefits but the groups who profess to a charitable organisation looking after the poor and underprivileged.
If people would do more due diligence when researching these outfits before committing themselves to coughing out money then these outfits would die for lack of enthusiastic volunteers.

This is what I'm starting to see, Iv'e been so focused on doing some good there, that iv'e not seen the deeper picture,there are some people who , it seems, are without self-intent. The org's who charge fees for things like accom', food and rego' with local authorities it seems are legit, what gets my goat is paying for the "privelege", but if those vollun-tourists want "bragging rights" its their loss. I have a friend in the tourism ind' there and she is pretty switched on as to where needs are, she is very much children focused. It has also occured to me that a Perth based police clearance for working with children would be a good idea. Thanks guys for your insight, Mark