Morning Star Center

Today we got down to our first interviews with the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) we will be working with.

My first NGO was the Morning Star Center. The Morning Star Center is an educational, daycare, and treatment facility for children with autism, cerebral palsy, and other mental and learning disorders. It also provides education and treatment support for the children’s families.

This is a particularly important service in Vietnam, owing to the perceived increase in the number of children suffering from mental and physical disorders over recent years. It has not been possible to find reliable data on the number of children suffering from disabilities, but the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 6 percent of the Vietnamese population suffers from physical or mental handicaps. Similarly, there is conflicting evidence on contributing factors and causes.

The interview was at 0900, so I got up, got ready, and organized my thoughts before embarking on a morning rush-hour cab ride to the Morning Star Center in the downtown Hanoi area

 I wasn’t really sure about what to expect or how the interview would go, given the language barrier. But, our Volunteers for Peace (VPV) program coordinator, Ms. Mai, came along to fix any scheduling problems and help communicate. Vietnamese is a hard language to learn without an actual speaker to practice with or good learning software. Thus, our group knows only a few elementary phrases.

Well the interview ended up going quite well. The director of the organization was not there, so I interviewed her assistant. She wasn’t able to answer some of my questions, but we covered a lot of the essentials needed to draft a business plan.  The Assistant Director was open, and I felt very welcome to walk around, see what was going on, and so forth. One of the largest problems the Morning Star Center faces is a lack of personnel – teachers and staff - with enough training or the right specialized training needed to help the children. However, the overall ratio of staff to children was fairly decent especially considering Morning Star’s funding comes completely from donations, tuition, and limited grants. It is not directly funded by the Vietnamese government in any way.

Compared with some of the other organizations we are working with in Vietnam, (which frankly seem to be completely going in the wrong direction or are questionable in practice) the Morning Star Center has good infrastructure, a dedicated staff, and is making great strides to accomplish its goals in improving the lives of the children it reaches.

-Matthew Allen Stewart