Final Thoughts and Sincere Thanks!

The 2010 March Vietnam Aid Expedition is officially over (although we have a few hundred pictures to post still). The team this year is amazing - we all worked really hard before the AE to raise money for the projects (a total of $26,330!) and collect clothes, toys, arts and crafts supplies, tools, stickers and everything else we brought! And of course they worked even harder during the AE - everyone woke up early and worked hard in the heat. Everyone worked "above the line" and met our expectations of being excellent representatives of Catalyst Foundation and all our supporters around the world.

Often people ask what they can really do to make a difference - and the Aid Expedition is certainly an answer to it. Poverty is extreme in the community we work in but we just are lucky enough to help open the door to...hope. The joy of the children, the connection with community members and the perserverance of the human spirit motivates and inspires each of the volunteers. At the very core - we are all the same - we love our children and want the best of them - a home, an education, and good health.

We are so thankful for our amazing volunteers, their family and friends who support them. The work never ends though..we still desperately need funding to continue the projects in Kien Giang and Dong Thap. AE funds are specifically for AE projects. If you can hep us continue our work - and be a catalyst for change, please consider making a donation!

Celebrating Khmer Tet in Kien Giang

From Nelson Family's blog:

This evening we had the most amazing Cambodian New Year celebration at the school — Chol Chnam Thmay. As we are so close to Cambodian many in the community are ethnically Khmer. The Catalyst community spent the entire day cooking for us and prepared an abundant feast.

It was such a wonderful sense of community as our team and the Catalyst kids gathered together to share some amazing dishes. Grace and I were most fond of the duck curry which had simmered for six hours (and I think the ducks had been wandering the courtyard not long before). Watching the joy of the kids enjoying these special dishes was such a delight.

After dinner there was a ceremony to honor the winners of the Little Red Fairy art contest, for which the 5 top artists received scholarship money, followed by performances by each of the Catalyst teams and then some performances by the Catalyst community. It was a wonderful party, so great to spend some relaxing time with the Catalyst kids. They are so full of joy, smiles and hugs, which made it so very hard to say goodbye.

*Caroline's notes:
This was the second year in a row that we celebrated Khmer Tet. The community loves to say thanks with food and song - and it was fabulous! We had some special VIP's from nearby provinces and the Political Officer & Deputy Consul General of the U.S. Consulate office in HCMC even came to see all the fun! It truly was one big happy family - even though the U.S. team left a little early - the Kien Giang families stayed all night - eating the food, dancing and singing Khmer songs! Each one of our teams also sang some fun songs...we'll post the lyrics soon! Tomorrow morning we all go our separate ways - most of us are going via long bus ride back to Saigon.

Medical Team - Last Day

From Nelson family's blog:

The medical clinic was open for a 1/2 day today, but it was a tough few hours. We saw some patients who didn’t get seen on the prior days and a very special group of girls (who Catalyst supports in the scholarship program) who had suffered sexual and physical abuse. We hadn’t used even close to all the fluoride treatments so we started the day by treating kids whose families didn’t get numbers to be seen that day. It’s not much, but at least their teeth have a bit more protection. Each day has ended with having to turn people away, but today being the last day it was so much more difficult. I can’t explain the emotion of having to deny someone even the most basic of medical care. You so want to take just one more, but there is never just one more and where do you draw the line. Yesterday there was a father who came with his two young boys, barefoot and unbathed, asking for help for his son who had been having stomach pains for days. As a parent, I cannot fathom how he must have felt to arrive too late.

After the clinic closed and the construction work was done, the medical and building teams visited the dump. It was the most humbling experience of my life. Here are a few more photos. The baby in the photo was brought to the clinic yesterday – he is 3 months old, but was born 2 months premature. To see him the next day in the dump was heartbreaking. The fact that he is alive shows that his family is doing absolutely everything they can for this child under the worst possible circumstances.

It’s hard not to question whether the work we have done will have enough of an impact in light of all that is left undone. I thought a lot about that on the drive back to the hotel. The only way I can reconcile at this point is to focus on what was accomplished. Approaching such poverty requires empathy with action and without judgment.

Building Team - Last Day

The goal of the day was to get the playground installed and "fixed" into our newly cemented play area - all by 10 a.m.! Originally I had said Noon - but the families from our community were coming to prepare food for the Khmer Tet celebration that we really needed to get out of the way.

Our team leaders on the previous day figured out how to weld a steel plate to the playground base so then it could then be bolted into the cement. That would be needed as 40-50 children are going to jump on it at the same time! One of our Building team members also bought rubber mats to be placed in some "key" places and of course no playground is complete until we have a ship's wheel installed! We also put up some very cool "sail" shades over the area. We could probably use 3 more but it was enough to keep the parts from getting too hot in the sun! Our kids absolutely loved it - there were some that just went up and down the slide for a few hours and couldn't stop smiling! Thanks so much!!!!

The house is well on its way to completion in the next 10 days. Unfortunately our team couldn't finish it in our four days. But we left it in good hands with the construction workers. The roof work is more detailed and then there will be stucco added to the outside of the house. The building team has worked so hard in the heat - no one volunteered to "switch" to the team, but a true testament was that no one was asked to be off the building team either! Everything was done by 1:00 p.m. and there was definitely a sense of accomplishment!

School Team - Last Day

This day was meant for fun - for all of our kids. The only job the Catalsyt AE Kids had was to play and play hard with the Catalyst Kien Giang kids. It was of course the hottest day, someone said 107', someone said it was "only" 102'...it was hot - I believe we have wiped out the supply of Aquafina in the Mekong Delta! Everyone has exceeded their 15 bottles of water a day rule!

Here's some more info about the day from various blogs:

From McFarlin family's blog:
I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to watch our VN American kids interact with the VN Catalyst kids. Not only was witnessing that exchange extremely insightful, but the interactions between our VN American kids amongst themselves was also very meaningful. Again, I don't have the energy and mental ability to post all that I want to on this subject, but thought I would share some of the quotes/sayings I heard during the Aid Expedition... some make me smile... some make me think:

"We don't do the 5 second rule in Vietnam!"

"Team USA... come on kids, we can do this"

"Be the chicken... "

"Be the clay pot..."

"Count off..."

"Well... we gave her 27 cents... and some shoes..."

"Fresh garbage comes in at night..."

"Try not to react..." (In response to our visit to the garbage dump)

"Big Sale" (On our hygiene kits and toothpaste)

And of course our song (Sing to the Tune of Down By the Bay):

Down in Kien Giang
Where the Temperature Grows
Back to Saigon
We Dare Not Go
For When We Did
Caroline Has Sang...
"Have you ever seen a stack of clothes
as big as Rose?"
Down in Kien Giang...

The quote part changed for each time the chorus was sung.

Medical Team - Wednesday

From DeWitt Family's blog:

We left on the bus every morning at 6am, ate breakfast and then arrived at our medical site by 7:30 to begin working. The gates opened at 8am and there was always a long line of people waiting. I began most mornings with a ca phe sua and a French baguette, usually accompanied by pho or beef stew.

Some of the many patients, lined up when we arrived in the morning. Crowd control was an issue. Without any barriers to keep people at bay in the open air market, we relied some rather inexpensive strapping rope to keep areas off limits. With so many people needing care, it did the trick for awhile each day, although we still had gate crashers and line jumpers. Most people saw our rope barrier as a challenge, or invitation, depending on how you look at it, to step over, under, walk through, play with, stretch, you name it.

There was a little guy was all smiles until he needed to get blood work. Although he was relatively robust and healthy, it took a few tries to get the sample. He wanted nothing to do with giving up his blood sample and his pitiful wails brought tears to my eyes. Once the traumatic event was over, he was all smiles again and got a mother lode of plastic dinosaurs and stickers for his trouble.

We drank A LOT of Gatorade. I'm sure I drank more this week than in all of the last 10 years. Brenda and Catherine were in charge of painting fluoride varnish on teeth. And boy did those teeth need it! Judging by their reaction, most of the kids we saw have never had this. There was much spitting and rubbing off of the newly applied varnish. Win some, lose some.

*We saw 220 patients on Wednesday.

School Team - Wednesday

From Wylie Family's blog:

Today we had food distribution. Each month Catalyst distributes food to people in their community. The food consists of rice, beans, oil, sugar, noodles, milk and formula. The amount given will last a family of 4 for one month. Many people from surrounding areas arrived, thinking they would also be receiving food. We said we could give them all but rice and oil, they were not happy about that. One mother with a 9 month old and a 6-7 year old was in tears, she just wanted to feed her children. It's hard to watch.

If we give food away for everyone, the program doesn't work. The idea is to educate the children and teach the parents, for that they earn vouchers for food and other items. If a child scores well on tests and gets good grades, they get vouchers. If parents attend special trainings on the weekend, participate in community events, they get vouchers. If they don't do any of the above, no vouchers. It's the give a man a fish, eats for a day, give a man a fishing pole he eats everyday philosophy. Even knowing all of that it's hard to watch a mom have nothing to feed her children.

*Caroline's notes:

The afternoon was spent with the last of the activities and crafts we had planned for the children. Lots of stickers, card making, soccer, feathers, masks and piggy back rides. Mimi, Shelby and Haley did an amazing job organizing our 10 activities for the week...and it was so nice to "delegate" that task to the teens! Our kids couldn't get over how much bigger they were to the children in Kien Giang so it seems even our youngest kids were still bigger and stronger. As one of our Catalyst kids said, "It's because we eat fast food all day, and they have pho!". That probably 1/2 true :). The painting crew is really hard at work painting the outside of the school and library building. The quality of paint is not great, but that just leaves us something more to do next time!! It's hot...103' on the thermometer today!

Building Team - Wednesday

From Susan's blog:

Another day at the work site. Load the bus at 7:30 for breakfast – “same, same” meaning same time, same restaurant, same breakfast. That is one of the few disadvantages of traveling with a large group instead of on my own as there are not that many restaurants that can fit 80 people and get everyone served in 30 mins. Therefore, there is not much variety.

Our job for the day was similar to the first day but more cement pouring then shoveling and grading. The team got 3 squares of cement poured the first day, but it was slow as we were mixing the cement by hand. The Vietnamese would mix the cement on the ground and then we would shovel it in to the wheelbarrows and pour it. We were able to get a cement mixer from somewhere but the town had a power outage for most of the afternoon so we could not get any electricity. We started the day off by laying out the shade sails again to figure out where to put the poles. Before we could pour more cement we needed to know where the poles needed to be placed. The poles are 5 meters high and will be used to tie off the sun shades. Hard to describe, but if all goes well there will be photos to explain in a few days. Funny thing was that they didn’t seem to fit the same way that they had the day before. Odd. So, we moved them around until we found a configuration that we thought would provide shade for the yard and leave an opening for the towers of the playground. Once we had the pole locations identified several team members dug 4-5 foot deep and 2 feet wide holes. That was tough work.

I got put to work building the forms for the cement sections. This involved a lot of measuring, plumb lines and hammers and my tendency to want perfection and precision was appreciated by Dave S who is one of our team leaders. He also strives for the best we can do. We got 2 and a half rows completed. With the cement mixer working today, it was a challenge to keep up the forms with the cement making team. We had a limited amount of material for forms so we would have to wait for a section of concrete to form enough to be able to pull out the used form and put the form in the next section. Besides building forms there was still a lot of digging, weeding and grading the rest of the yard to prepare for cement. Our team put in three of the four poles and angled them so that we would have the proper angle for tension of the shade sails.

Sometime during the day someone was instructed to go buy rope to attach the shade sails. They came back with rope that was about 2 inches in diameter. Humph….something did not translate well on that request. I think asking for strong rope without also clarifying that it needed to be thin rope to fit through the eye holes, was the mistake. So, we knew there would be a few more hardware store runs tomorrow. Of course there is nothing like a Home Depot or Lowe’s here. We have found some small shops that have supplies with the help of the Vietnamese local students.

We finished pouring concrete for two and a half rows of the yard, which is about 1/3 of the yard. We quit at about 4:30 so we would have time to go back to the hotel and shower before dinner. This time I was smarter and took my shoes off before I went in to the hotel so I did not dump sand and dirt all over the hotel room.

Medical Team - Tuesday

From the Peterson Family's blog:

Tuesday started and ended similarly as Monday. We ate at a local Vietnamese restaurant which was very good. It is all very exhausting. We have to meet at 6:30 am and go eat. Then we take a bus to the restaurant and eat and then go to the medical center. We set up all of the stations (everything and I mean everything must be removed and taken away in the evening so it will not be removed during the night) and then the people are allowed to come through. They go through various stations with nurses (after registration) and then doctors if necessary and flouride treatments for the kids and hearing and vision test and then blood draws and vaccinations (if they have been tested).

The police came today and took some medicine but left it when they realized there was no profit. One of the translators I was with was so mad but there is nothing you can do. As it was when I was here the last time, the people seem to work around the system and seem to have a lot of spirit. They are very nice overall and love the children.

Anyway it was a very long day and now we start again on Wednesday. Hopefully it will go well and it will definitely be hot.

*Caroline's notes:
The volunteer Vietnamese doctors from the hospital are no longer with us so our numbers have drastically decreased. But now we have an actual "line" of patients instead of a mob of them waiting for us. Now at each table there's a care provider, a translator, and a patient - and most importantly breathing space. We would LOVE to have a dentist or a whole bunch of them for the next expedition. I think most of the children's ailments could be solved if we extracted their abscessed, infected teeth! On Tuesday we saw 229 patients!

School Team - Tuesday

From the Nelson Family Blog:

Today was a very busy day for Grace’s team. The kids started their day with a tour of the garbage dump where many of the Catalyst kids live, and work sorting through the trash for pennies a day. Caroline, Catalyst’s amazing leader, felt it important that our kids understand why they are working so hard on the Expedition, and what they did all that fundraising for. The kids had the choice of staying on the bus or walking through the outskirts of the dump (don’t worry – they wore proper footwear and were fully supervised). Grace opted for the tour and took all the photos above. I asked Grace if she would like to write something for this post, and she declined – it was just too sad for her to talk about much less write about it quite yet. I think the photos will speak for themselves. The teddy bear on the woven mats under nothing more than a tarp is what I thought about tucking Grace into bed tonight. It should be noted that this is the “new dump” – when the old dump closed many of the families who lived there moved to the new dump, and apparently the conditions at the old dump were even worse, which is hard to fathom.

After their visit to the dump, the kids returned to the school for arts and crafts with the Catalyst kids. There were stations for tie-dye, friendship bracelets, beads, sidewalk chalk and drawing, as well as a game of soccer. All the kids had a great time. After the fun and games, the team set up for a market in the school’s courtyard. All the donations the volunteers brought – clothes, toys, personal hygiene items – were available “for sale” to the school kids and their families. The kids earned “Catalyst Dollars” (although I guess it would be Catalyst Dong) by doing their school work and getting good grades, and their families earned additional coupons for participating in Catalyst activities. The items were priced and the kids had to pay 20% of the price marked – making both the school kids and the volunteers do some math to figure out pricing and make change. They were also able to use real money they had saved, which was given twice its face value. The toys were the most popular item, although some kids were apparently required by their parents to spend some money on personal hygiene kits (shampoo, toothbrush, soap, washcloth, etc.). There was also a housewares section and the ladies crowded around made it look like Black Friday shopping for the limited supply bargain. FCVN kids, your fun packs were sold at the market and I saw kids with your letters. It looked like the community had a wonderful time, and being able to shop for their items must have been empowering. Between the incentive it provided the Catalyst kids, and their families, the opportunity for our kids to organize the items and be the salespeople and the math lessons, it had to be the most rewarding shopping experience in history.

Building Team - Tuesday

From the Cohen-Conelly blog:

Work has been progressing along but with very little tools and no machines, everything is done by hand. I am on the house team. Yesterday we laid bricks in out 18'x6'' two room "house". Today we began the floor. We first stuffed rice bags with clay that was dug out of the ground from area that will be the latreen and carried it to the floors. The clay was then pressed down with a weighted hand press. Next step was to carry sand from about 500 yards up a narrow path in pails and rice bags to cover the clay and press that down. Next was to carry rocks in same manor....we finished the back room and were told to wait for the "inspector" before we continued further. Of course in the process, the front wall accidentally got knocked over. It was a labor intensive day to say the least. The heat is unbearable, I have never sweat and been so dirty at the end of a day as I have been the past two.

The other half of the building tram has 1/2 of the concrete poured for the playground, as well as two of the four pole cemented in for the shade covers. The means of measurements over here are quite something, we are told...about like this for everything, leveling is measure with string. Somehow it all gets pulled together.

School Team - Monday

From the Wylie family blog:

Today our team, the school team, made our way to the school to begin the monsterous duty of seperating art supplies, clothing ,shoes and a multitude of other items. We are a team of 29 children between the ages of 8 and 14, a group of teenagers and 4 adults. We then have our teams split into 3 groups. One group is painting the building. They consist mostly of the older boys. Then the other teams are sorting items for our market we will be holding for the people of a specific area. These folks will be given vouchures to purchase clothing, shoes and toys. The kids will be organizing and running the market. We are also preparing for a camp in the morning and another camp in a day or 2.

The kids will be running stations; tye-dye, beads, friendship bracelets and arts and crafts. All of the village children will come to enjoy, 300 kids to be exact! Should be fun, I think!!! Oh and did I mention how hot it is??? No, not in tis post you say? Well, it's HOT!!!!! 15 bottles of water per day per person. Even with that you don't find the need to use the rest room very often! It's also really humid. The sweat never actually dries to col you as it is meant to be! You just spend your day soaking wet! Always happy to see the shower at the end of the day!

The hotel we are in is fine. In the states it would rank maybe 1 star, here it's probably 3. After taking a shower we have a river running through the bathroom. If everyone statrts flushing our bathroom seems to collect all of the sewage oder, pretty I know, but I had to share! The gekos have managed to find other rooms to hang out in, thank heavens! We do have a flat screen tv, a fridge, wifi, a/c,hot water, and a lock on the door, so no complaints really!

Building Team - Monday

I've decided that instead of restating what some awesome ae volunteers have already wrote I would just quote them...much more entertaining then reading my random thoughts. So this is from Susan's blog - she's on the Building Team.

Today was our first full day at the work site. Our primary task for the day was to shovel out 3-4 inches of dirt from a 30’ x 50’ area which was the old playground. When we arrived, there were no shovels so we sent most of the people to the home to start laying brick for the house and a few of us stayed at the playground and strategized about how to put up the sun shades after the playground is assembled. It felt like a game of Tangoes.

But I get ahead of myself, we loaded the buses at 7:30am and drove to breakfast. There was a small menu we could order from and I ordered Café Sua (black coffee with condensed milk) and rice noodles with fish and shrimp. I think my body may go in to shock as I don’t usually drink caffeine or milk, and definitely not condensed milk. Oh well, I am doing ok so far. It is nearly impossible with our menus to not each breads either as every meal has noodles, bread and/or rice. I am trying to limit the breads intake but not completely as I would starve if I did that.

We arrived at the school at about 8:30am. The “shovels” arrived an hour more later and they had to be assembled. Hum….The shovel, hoe, pick parts were made of metal but they needed to be attached to the wood handles with screws or nails. I was desperately wishing for a Home Depot or Lowe’s at this point. Mental note – great idea for opening a new business in Vietnam. The tools lasted most of the day, but as they broke (handles snapped in half or shovels fell off of handles) we sent them over to the pile and the Vietnamese just put them back together again. Not a very efficient tool. After lunch, someone showed up with better tools (large Hoes). Yes, the quote of the day was “the large Ho’s saved the day”. Funny, but so true. Those hoes made the job so much faster!

As we dug out the grass and dirt we hauled it away in wheelbarrows and dumped it in a ravine near the school. As we got areas cleared and graded, then the frames for the cement areas were built by Dave S. We were able to get 90% of the yard cleared and two sections of cement poured by 4:30, quitting time.

Medical Team - Monday

So here's a look at each of our wonderful teams.

Our Medical team consists of 3 doctors, 1 student doctor, 1 pharmacist, 7 nurses, 13 "assistants".. and 6 "crowd control". The entire team had collected about 3 storage bins full of medicine, suture kits and fluoride treatments. But we were still quite low in a lot of medicines we really needed due to the natural disasters in Haiti and Chile. And going into it we knew we would really need a dentist for extractions.

On Monday we would be working side by side with 26 volunteer doctors, nurses, dentists and pharmacists from Trieu An hospital in Saigon. And we would need everyone as we approached the "clinic" we had set up and there was already well over 400 waiting for us. Unfortunately the patients were there way before we had any time to really set things up and then...chaos! It was a somewhat organized chaos but craaaazzzyyy most of the time!

Each table had a doctor or nurse and translator completing the medical history forms. Ideally it would have bee nice to have some breathing space but instead our patients who lived in the community were definitely anxious to be seen by someone, anyone who could help them; so each table had 10-15 people around it. Our doctors worked hard to diagnose the ailments and prescribe medicine and most important to see as many of the children as possible. Our non-nurse volunteers worked the hearing, vision, height, weight stations. And then some of them worked along side the dentists and hygienists to apply fluoride varnish on hundreds of little mouths. Our goal also was to get approximately 100 of "our community" (those that are living and working in the garbage dump and are active participants in Catalyst Foundation's community development projects) hep B tests and vaccinated.

After all was said and done, we saw 755 patients on the first day!

Day 1 - Ready, Set, Go!!

Sunday we arrived to our school in Kien Giang after an uneventful bus ride from Saigon (which is a major feat if you know what the traffic is like in Vietnam!) So before we post some pictures, imagine this - 80 volunteers, each checking 100 pounds of luggage, filled to the brim with medicine, construction tools, paint rollers, gently used clothing, toys, games, books, t-shirts, arts and crafts supplies, school supplies, drawings and even a few "flat stanleys" and "flat molly".

The luggage was brought down in 3 trucks and then put into two classrooms, it's about 90'F and 100% humidity but somehow felt "not as hot" because there was cloud cover. Half of us were still trying to adjust to the time difference and a little dazed and then Caroline (founder of Catalyst Foundation) says, "Welcome to Vietnam, I'll be your host! Now...ready, set, go!!!"

Within two hours we knew how much medicine we had, and an entire library full of everything else. The building team had surveyed their massive amount of work they would be doing and created their tool list and a game plan set for the next four days. We knew that Monday morning was going to be a challenge as we got started on our tasks but we were all excited to FINALLY start the 2010 Aid Expedition!

We're all here!

All 80 volunteers have arrived from all across the U.S and Canada over the last few days. We have enough luggage (donations) to fill up 3 trucks the size of a small UHaul. And we've just held our one and only press conference in Saigon. We leave bright and early tomorrow morning and we'll go directly to the school to start the massive sorting task.

Our work sites this year are only a few minutes a part from each other so I suspect that we'll all be able to help each other out when needed. The community is ready and I know we're ready to start the 2010 AE! Stay tuned for more info soon!

Packing Party

This past weekend in Minneapolis a few families gathered to split up all the donations into a few hundred pounds of luggage. The whole team now is busy into our last minute preparations. We're still gathering donations and cash to make all our projects a success! We still need your help!

March Goodness starts NOW on our online donation site! From now to March 30 Catalyst Foundation is competing for the most donors that donate a minimum of $10. If Catalyst Foundation wins our "region" we advance to the "Final Four" and compete for $10,000!

Three Weeks!

We have 80 volunteers, as young as 7 years old, traveling from across the U.S and Canada in March 28 - April 1, 2010 to Kien Giang (the southern most province of Vietnam near the Cambodian border). We will be building a home and playground, provide medical assistance to over 2000 people and reach out to the 300 children Catalyst Foundation serves in Vietnam.

We're excited to have many of our volunteers return for a second, third, fourth and some for a fifth time! We also have a few new volunteers that have never been this far from home before or returning for the first time since they adopted their child from Vietnam.

We're all very excited to get started but we still need your help! Help us reach our fundraising goal!

Please Donate Today!

We're also looking for any donations of the following items:

Arts & Crafts Supplies
Frisbees, game balls, temporary tattoos
Small toys - yo-yos, marbles, cards, jacks, matchbox cars, etc.

Stickers, stickers, stickers

Multivitamins
Toothbrushes/toothpaste

Travel size soap, shampoo, washcloths

Onesies- for infants under 12 months

Board games & coloring books