Monthly UN Volunteers Meeting

65 people staring at me, waiting for me to speak. Some of them in Vietnam to volunteer their services, others here to work in human resource development within local NGO's, but all were at this meeting to share their experiences and network.

How had I been chosen to host this UNV meeting? Volunteers for Peace Vietnam, the organization which hosts me and provides me with a roof and bed somehow felt it appropriate to ask me to Chair the monthly United Nations Volunteers meeting held at the UN building in Hanoi. Floored, I readily accepted.

However, the night before the meeting, I felt a little less enthusiastic.

I had suggested that I write a short speech on volunteerism, sort of to break the ice during the meeting. At one of the previous meetings, I had been quite insulted by one man's insistence upon drawing a line between 'backpack volunteers' and 'Professionally trained' volunteers. He basically said that the former were not worthy of the term 'volunteer,' and that those who were paid by a host organization should be unacknowledged as 'more important'. Though I myself am sponsored and fit into his 'higher' level of volunteer, I had been insulted at his narrow-sighted opinion. This was about a month and a half ago... and when I was presented with the opportunity to Chair the meeting, I quickly jumped on the chance to counter his comment (because I knew he'd be there) with a 15 minute speech on why he was wrong.

I wrote the speech in 25 minutes, after having consulted with a few other volunteers at VPV. The next morning, I rehearsed it furiously, making sure that I could deliver this speech with precision and passion.

Suddenly, as if time decided to skip the whole morning, I found myself sitting at the head of a table full of people from all over the world. Many traveling and volunteering their work for a week or two in different countries, others were full time interns or project staff at the UN, and then there were those like me, in Vietnam to work and gain valuable experience while being sponsored by a host organization.

After I asked everyone in the room to give a brief introduction of themselves, Cuong, VPV's vice-president, gave a very short introduction to VPV and what we do. His planned 10 minutes quickly turned into a shaky 3, and I was handed the mic much sooner than expected.

I introduced myself, shuffled my papers around, and explained that I had written a short speech about volunteerism, and promised that I wouldn't bore them.

I think this was a mistake... even though I delivered the speech without any hang ups (and even received a surprising round of applause afterwards) promising anything to the audience will only generate blank looks that carry higher expectations. I think that if I were to do it again, I would keep them in the dark over the details of my speech, and to allow them to decide for themselves whether or not I am putting them to sleep.

Again, I don't know how I ended up at the front of that table that day, nor do I know how I pulled off a speech that I had written at 10:30 the night before, but somehow things went smoothly... and the meeting was actually quite enjoyable! I felt good about it, I made my point in revenge for the comment that set me off (and yes, the man was there, and no, he did not respond), good discussion was fueled, and a lot of networking took place.

And I discovered something that day, I like to be in positions of authority... is that bad?



Here is a copy of my speech (rough notes that I used throughout):

Speech Notes

Seeing as Volunteers for Peace Vietnam is chairing this meeting today, I would like to take this opportunity to talk about –what other than- volunteerism!

I would like to focus on two aspects of volunteerism:

One being,

- The seemingly inherent division between “professional” volunteers, and “backpack” volunteers.

And second,

- I’d like to shed light on what I think to be the fundamental aspect which unites these two despite their differences, as well as the guiding source which inspires our choice to volunteer.

But before I begin, I would like to start with a problem I once encountered.

That being the idea of a truly selfless, non-selfish act.

The word “volunteer” is described as follows by the Webster Dictionary:

“A volunteer is a person who performs or offers to perform a service out of his or her own free will, often without payment”

The ideal volunteer is one who performs his or her service knowing full-well that they would not benefit in any way from their efforts. However, I have often wondered: is this truly possible?

Can a human being knowingly dedicate a part (or even all of) his or her life to others, without receiving anything in return?

You might be thinking, the gratification that one receives from the smiles and grateful gestures he or she is the true reward… but that is exactly my point. The satisfaction of knowing you made someone happy is a form of ‘return’ on ones invested time, therefore there exists a form of expected reward.

Is a completely selfless act possible?

I will not answer this question just yet. Rather, I would like to come back to it at the end.

------

Living at VPV with many volunteers from around the world has given me the benefit of seeing many different aspects and perspectives behind the volunteer movement in Hanoi.

I myself am on a professional internship, volunteering my services while gaining much in the form of professional experience in the field of International Development.

Others at VPV are quite different, as our dorm like living arrangements not only resembles an ‘international ghetto’ of sorts, but is also home to many different volunteers who do different kinds of work.

Some of us are her professionally to work with local organizations,

others are students, here during a gap year between semesters, teaching English, French or both for children or adults

some are fresh graduates from high school looking to fulfill necessary social services

demanded by their government,

and then there are well established professionals looking to spend a few months learning a new culture and working either with disabled orphans or something to that effect

It had once been brought to my attention that a careful division should be made between these volunteers. What I understood was that the younger “backpack” variety, here for a matter of weeks or months, should not officially be referred to as ‘real volunteers’.

In a sense, I had agreed with the basic argument that was being made. Indeed, there are differences between the two.

- On one hand, you have people who are coming to Vietnam to travel, interact with the locals, and leave back to their respective lives.

- And on the other, you have professionals who have worked hard to get to where they are, and who are not necessarily volunteers per se. This is due to their annual stipend which formalizes them not as paid employees but as generous contributors to a higher cause.

That cause being the development of a modern infrastructure within Vietnamese organizations, to advocate for human rights, or other social issues.

However, I couldn’t help but find this argument unsatisfying, and I felt that it missed the point of what it means to be volunteer.

I would like to give two examples from two different types of volunteers to explain my point. Both are long term volunteers who live at VPV and work outside at their respective jobs.

1. The first was an experience described to me by a professional intern who is sponsored by the Canadian government to work at The Light Foundation, a local NGO.

- She is in the process of writing a grant proposal for a project which means to empower female Vietnamese Sex Workers to stand up for their own human rights.

Almost immediately, she runs into two problems:

The first:

Sex Work is illegal in Vietnam, therefore convincing the Government or police to respect their rights isn’t very easy to do. Such a project may not seem plausible to a would-be sponsor, seeing as the goal of the project is a tad ambitious and perhaps unrealistic.

Secondly:

The term human rights can be quite ambiguous, especially in a country where social movements are quite difficult to start and effect actual change.

These are technical problems experienced by a professional volunteer. They are very difficult to deal with for someone who is used to a more forgiving infrastructure.

She has experienced frustration at having to work around a technically stifling bureaucracy, and has been hard-pressed to come up with a solution.

2. My second example comes from a volunteer who works at an orphanage for disabled children.

- This volunteer has complained of having seen instances of abuse by the staff unto the children themselves.

One of her examples stuck with me quite strongly:

- She witnessed a child being let out of a small, black closet after having been locked in for misbehaving.

Here we have a different kind of problem. This has nothing to do with logistics or an under developed infrastructure… this problem affected the very base of her moral instincts.

What she saw she knew was wrong, but how was she to proceed?

I would like to clarify that these instances are not unique to developing countries or to Vietnam. They are very likely to happen in our own countries, and I don’t want to seem like I’m blaming these problems on under-development specifically.

It is obvious that these different volunteers faced two very different problems in two different areas of work. However, who is to say that one is more difficult than the other?

Is the professional who faces the bureaucratic red tape of a developing nation truly distinguishable in her efforts over those of the orphanage worker who has to deal with acts that make her sick to her stomach from her inability to effect change?

To me, the answer is quite clear.

To distinguish the professional from the non-professional is an erroneousness mistake:

it is purely a superficial way of creating a distinction between similarly challenging jobs.

The truth is that the depth of the problems faced by the volunteer who is working at the orphanage is the same as the professional working at the NGO.

---

This brings me to my own problem which I began with.

Is there such a thing as a truly selfless act?

What makes us worthy of the title ‘volunteer’ in the first place?

The answer came to me from a person who is very important to me:

She said that:

The fact of the matter is that this is a question which also misses the point. The goal of volunteerism does not revolve entirely around the attainment of a final goal, but it is part of a whole which includes the very real ideal which inspired it.

All of us in this room are driven by an ideal, be it to improve the English of 50 screaming children in a classroom, or to improve the human resources at an organization.

We know that the Ideal can never fully be reached, however we strive to touch and perhaps get a glimpse of it,

and the consequences as well as the honest intentions of those efforts become self-evident in their final result.

This is what unifies us as volunteers, it is what has brought us to this very room here today! It is also the philosophy of VPV, which is why, despite their flaws, I am happy to represent them here today and everyday.

I feel strongly that we all have good, albeit different, intentions. And if we do not manage to lose sight of the ideals that drive us, we will reap invaluable benefits no matter what sort of volunteer work we are doing, or what their practical results.

Thank You

Food for thought

Every once in a while I will run into something worth while on the internet. It doesn't happen often, mind you, but here is an article that I highly suggest for those of you interested in the current scientific research and philosophy of the mind:

http://www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-out_mind_0930sep30,0,4908398.story?page=1


It's interesting because the very aspect which gives birth to our consciousness is a complete mystery to scientists everywhere. Philosophers and mystics seem to come up with good answers, despite their being unable to ground them in practicality.

I tend to agree with the final part of the article, which says that our mind is a combination of multiple composite parts. You could compare it to a projected image being shot onto a white backdrop by a old reel-video projector that you see in museums these days. The image, say of Charlie Chaplin dancing around in silence, is not something that you can touch, grab, or put into your pocket for future viewing (though this is quite possible with those fancy new iphones, but that is another story altogether). The image can be compared to our conscious minds, whereby it only exists because of the reel which contains the images, the projector that displays them, the backdrop which houses them, the electricity which powers everything, etc. Without all those factors, the image could never come up on screen, it simply would not exist.

In this sense, our minds are the final product of the many separate functions that our bodies (primarily our brain) take on. The varying senses, the analytical capacities of our brain's composite parts, and the physical reality which provides us with a stage and with energy to get the system going... without them, the mind would not exist.

So what does this tell us? Not much, to be honest. It is quite obvious that the mind more complex that a series of moving frames which imitate real life. Our minds produce our 'selves', and though we don't know exactly what causes 'us', we know damn well that 'we' exist.

If anyone ever reads this the whole way through, I'd be interested in hearing what others might think of this phenomena we call the mind.
nk

a tale from the third storey

One of the most difficult aspects of writing a compelling blog entry is finding where to start. Life in a foreign country usually exposes you to so many new things that you simply want to describe everything in maximum detail in order to get as much across as possible. For instance, I could describe where I am presently writing from, 3 stories above one of the busiest veins in Hanoi, Kim Ma street. I could concentrate on describing the purple sky, and the tall, skinny buildings which poke their heads towards the setting sun. But then I'd be neglecting the flurry of activity below, how the street-side restaurants are slowly beginning to fill their empty, foot high seats designed for Western children but that somehow manage to suit 95% of the adults in this country. I could elaborate upon the incessant traffic which keeps this city bustling, alive with the simultaneous roar of the hundreds of thousands of motorbikes and scooters of all shapes and sizes which run through the street like little gas-powered amoeba. Their collective purr can be felt three stories above, all the way into this very seat in which I relax after a long day at work.

At a certain point in anyone's long term stay as an ex-patriot in a foreign country, one begins to feel the wear of being an outsider. To some it may hit sooner than others, but for myself it has been slowly creeping in after the 1 month mark. I'm beginning to feel an absolute longing to participate in the world around me as more than a silent observer. As the cultural practices and actual language are quite new to me (at least, in their absoluteness in my all encompassing surroundings), I am feeling the frustrations of being unable to penetrate beyond the canvas which separates me from this mysterious world.

To put it in more practical terms, I feel like I'm trapped inside my own head, looking at the world as if I was in some sort of inescapable museum, only capable of interpreting the images that I see through my own determinations. I want to jump through the wall hangings and say hello to the moving still-life people that are illustrated beyond.

Unfortunately, this is one of those 'requiring time' things, where my immediate problems cannot be solved by any other means than simply waiting and making an effort. The real beauty in exploring foreign lands is not only that they mimic a foreign planet with its own gender of alien species to interact with, but that, as a human being, I can learn to speak their completely Martian tongue, to make myself understood, and to take away more from a tiny exchange about something as silly as the weather than I would in my own language.

And herein lies the true satisfaction of life: not gaining wealth, power, or recognition by the masses... but rather in simply sharing your thoughts and receiving mental feedback from another. To open yourself as a human being, and be touched by others in the process. This is why traveling for long periods of time in foreign countries can be quite difficult: you are simply deprived of this during your day to day activities. In work, at restaurants, even between friends that you have made in this new world... unless you are a master at learning languages, there will always be a massive gap that separates you from your immediate surroundings.

It is an amazing moment when you realize that you are almost completely separated from the reality in which you stand, because of your immediate inability to reach out beyond your body, to send your words out with meaning to make your life meaningful, so to speak.

Times like these must not be squandered on frustration though, as being pushed so deeply into the depths of one's self allows for a wonderful amount of introspection to take place. Constantly, the limits of my patience, energy, and mental sanity are tested by the driving forces of this country. The insane habits of motorbike drivers on my to work, the network of thieves who occupy the buses and pray on innocent fools like myself, being regarded as a moron for simply not being able to respond to something as simple as 'how was your day' when spoken in a foreign tongue... these are but to name a few, believe me, I could go on, but I would be missing the point that I began this tangent with the intention of finishing with. All of these events which frustrate the balance of my life, they happen to me not only as passing moments, but as events that will mark my character for the rest of my life. I carry them, sort of like scars, in my persona and psyche, I will take them with me as I grow and age, and ultimately, the age old adage applies perfectly: what doesn't kill me can only make me stronger.

Life here in Vietnam, though difficult at times, is certainly not boring. I leave my room at 8 am and most of the time do not return till 10 pm. At that point, I'm usually too tired to stand straight, which makes my uncomfortable bed that much easier to bare. Not only my bed, but the lack of comfort which accompanies our daily lives in the developed world.

Believe me when I say that, though the basic human interactions which define my day remain the same as if I lived in Canada, the daily grind itself is something entirely different. Never has the act of 'taking the bus' been such a chore. I call it my 'daily test of patience', as each time I seem to be pushed closer and closer to that very fine fault line which prevents me from splitting heads. But, again, it is all part of the experience, and deep down, even when it has pissed me off to the point of no return, I can still calm myself down, smile internally, and even break out into a fit of joyful laughter, simply because I know that I actually love being pushed out of the zombie mode which can take a hold of us in such a powerful way.

It is indeed difficult to pin-point what to start a usual blog entry with, which is why today, I decided to start with everything. The now darkened sky beckons: I have an event that I must attend tonight that may or may not be the topic of another blog entry... after all, who is to say where time will take me?

Dreams can lead to real thoughts, who'da known?

I had a weird dream last night, and I felt like I had to write about it.

I was invited to a sort of convention for the poor and homeless. The organizers of the event thought it would be a good idea to invite all these underprivileged people from all over my dream-scape to a 'special' location, one where they would never get a chance to go to otherwise.

The day of the event arrived very quickly, almost 2 seconds after I get the invitation. I suddenly found myself walking through crowds of homeless people, eyes caved in, faces wrinkled and worn by a lack of proper sleep and shelter... they look at me with deep, penetrating stares, and I have trouble shaking off the feeling that one woman, clearly addicted to morphine, has given me by simply making eye contact. Do you look at the homeless when you are awake, do you make eye contact with them as they ask you for crumbs? If so, it was akin to that feeling.

I wonder why everyone is so solemn, the mood is supposed to be cheerful and uplifting at this event. I look around my surroundings, and am quickly answered by what I saw. The location, thought fit for the occasion by the organizers, actually turns out to be Disneyland. I am perplexed by the idea of trying to provide one day to experience what most think to be a 'happy place' to those who simply could never afford to go there ever again.

I woke up thinking all kinds of things about this dream. It made me think of my own situation here in Vietnam, and about developing nations all over the world. Why do we think that we can make the lives of the so-called 'underprivileged' better by giving them tastes of what we can live every day? Where is the charity in having them realize that we do indeed have it better? These raise a greater question: What good can come out of giving someone a taste of a life that is so much better than the reality they will continue to face once that 'taste of the better' is gone?

The people in my dream were miserable, not because of their lives living as homeless refugees from society, but rather because this 'good cause' only caused them to feel even more secluded from the world.

What exactly are we Western volunteers doing in Dev. Nations? We come here, work long hours without reward, show our intent and willingness to participate in the local culture, learn more about the limits of our nature and being, and gain infinitely by adding this experience to our resume. Then, what do we do? We leave. We go home. We leave the hard lives which we have come to experience for the better world which waits for us back home.

I'm sorry if this sounds like a pessimistic view on international volunteering, but I can't shake the feeling that there is something morally ambiguous about the whole thing. Certainly, the most honest intern or volunteer knows that he or she cannot seriously affect the '3rd world' country that they enter... anyone who does is either a fool or a religious zealot. So we leave for our 'experiences', fully knowing that the experiences we will live can only provide us with nothing more than our own 'taste' of another's 'lesser' reality. We know damn well that we're coming back to our privileged worlds, which makes leaving all the easier.

On the other hand, to put a bit of optimism into my own view, I can say that sometimes the help we provide is needed. We can do good, we can make good friendships in foreign countries, and opening our own minds brings us closer to understanding the true plight of people in countries that are seriously in need of our recognition. But to say that we are volunteering for a better world, giving our services in exchange for no 'material good', may be a little misleading and perhaps a bit dishonest...

The word 'volunteer' is described as such by the Webster Dictionary:

"A volunteer is a person who performs or offers to perform a service out of his or her own free will, often without payment."

The term 'free will' comes up in this definition, which I found to be quite interesting primarily because of the implication of choice which comes along with it. People choose to volunteer, usually to help those who need it. Free choice implies an active will to accept the consequences of that choice, but in the end, everyone is simply human. Can a human being 'volunteer' to act in a way that is benefits only others and not themselves?

This raises another very important question: If the volunteer is to represent a symbol of selflessness, yet intrinsically benefits from his or her labours (be it knowingly or sub-consciously, directly or indirectly), can we say that there truly is such a thing as a 'completely selfless act'?

For instance, on Wednesdays I teach English to a class of disabled Vietnamese College students. I go voluntarily, and do not take anything in return for my services. However, I can admit that my reason for going is not even close to being selfless. I go because of the feeling I get during and after a lesson is finished. Teaching and interacting with the students brings me incredible personal joy and satisfaction. I simply love going to this class, I could never get enough of the laughs and lessons that I share with these students, and perhaps I am guilty of selfishly continuing these lessons for myself rather than for the overall benefit of the students.

I'm not going to pretend that I am here in Vietnam on some sort of mission to save the world. I am here to learn about myself, Vietnamese culture, and to open my self and mind to new possibilities. This experience will invariably benefit me in the long run, and I am very aware of this. Because of this, I would like to reconsider the meaning of the term 'volunteer', as it wrongly implies that those doing international volunteer work do so in the name of bettering the world, while knowing that there is always personal gain to be had from their (our) seemingly selfless actions.

ps:
In the future I promise to write more specifically about my observations on Vietnam, rather than focus on meaningless rants about the nonsensical such as I have above!

Time and time again

We plan for the constant 'now' by projecting our thoughts forward into a string of interwoven and unclear futures. We clear the many paths of the foggy unknown with the cognitive capacities of our mind's eye, deciphering a real path for the present to follow where at first it did not exist.

We constantly thrust ourselves into this future, where multiple paths lead to singular destinations. Where we go is always where we are, but how we choose to get there is up to how our minds decide to see the future.

With all that could possibly become, at every instant I'm left with these simple questions: what now, and when will that be?

In a meeting...

SHAPC, the NGO for which I work for here in Vietnam, is involved in all sorts of HIV/AIDS awareness building projects. I am currently working on a project which would bring some 300 trained Peer Educators to 3 different universities. Our target group is first year students, and we plan on implementing our project this coming November.

Right now I'm sitting in a meeting, and there is a lively discussion concerning the layout of our project proposal. This proposal is what will get us funding from PACT International, for the total of $100,000 USD. I have so many ideas to help this project move along. I even created an a schema of how I think the proposal should be laid out (based on the criticisms of their last proposal from PACT). I know what their problems are, how to get past this meeting, and to get some actual progress done in defining their strategies, goals, and necessary actions and activities in a comprehensible fashion.

I know all of this... but I can't say any of it, because I don't speak their language. The meeting is going on completely in Vietnamese, and I hardly know more than 'hello, my name is.' The PACT Proposal was written in English, and the meeting we had with PACT was held in both languages with good translators. Right now, however, sitting here in SHAPC's third floor office, I find myself feeling helpless and almost completely useless, despite the fact that I have many answers to their questions and frustrations.

I'm sure that they are discussing things which I might not have the answers to, but whenever I'm told what they are arguing, I get frustrated because it is usually the exact same solution which they were originally criticized by PACT for. It offers no improvements what so ever.

When I explained the amount of work necessary in creating a proper proposal to the one who can speak English, she sort of frowned and muttered 'that's a lot of work'. But that's what is necessary! I'm frustrated, because if I was the manager of this project, I would know exactly what needed to be done, and I would proceed by distributing the workload so that we could build a working proposal that had all of the requisite details to make a functional, logical document!

Okay, I know this is a rather boring blog entry, but damn it do I ever need to vent!

I've joined the digital revolution

Today I have joined the millions of people who have caught onto the power of digital media. I have posted a short video that I shot, edited, and posted on youtube!

Okay, so my video is actually a little lackluster. It's boring and doesn't really show much of Hanoi, but it will be the first of other videos that I plan on posting for my friends and family to see.

Here it is, my first video: