Meet Thảo Le, an exceptional and compassionate leader

Thảo Le is another Cần Thơ University student who has devoted her summer to this program. She is exceptional! She is great with the kids and is a natural leader. Here she is leading a group of the kids through a fun arts-and-crafts activity (picture on left).

Thảo wanted to share some of her experiences and reflections with you via this blog...

What should I write in this blog? Too many feeling and too many things I want to say. So it would take a long long long blog. So, I just want to tell a story I’ve seen at Buu Tri Pagoda. It is what I really mean. Otherwise, my friends told lots of things before I do, so a real story sketches another image of what we are doing and why we do this.

It just happened last week, when I came to the pagoda at dinner time. I saw Quy (the one Thao Candy has talked about) crying, I didn’t know why so I asked Van Anh (the older girl) for the reason. Van Anh said that Quy was said because his father was going to leave after visiting him. I had a little surprise because I thought all the kids here were orphans but I didn’t ask more. I didn’t want to hurt them. And Van Anh continued saying, she pointed to Xuan Anh (a 6 years old kid, picture below) and told me that Xuan Anh’s father used to visited her but he was old and he died, so now, Xuan Anh had no one.

One more surprise to me because Xuan Anh was a 6 years old kid, so why her father was old and died. A voice stopped my thinking, that was of Xuan Anh, “ I am an orphan”. At that time, I felt embarrassing about my unintentional careless to let her recall her sad story. I was wrong. Because she repeated again, “I am an orphan” with a normal tone like “ I am Xuan Anh” with no sadness, no sorrow. I surprised by her normal tone so I asked her why she said that. And she showed me the board in front of the house, written by Su Co, “I am Budhist nun named Tam Niem, thanks for all the helpers to build this house for orphans…”. So I knew the reason why. She lived in this house and this house is for orphans so she was an orphan. So logical! At that time, I was touched by that simple thinking of Xuan Anh. She was too innocent to understand the whole meaning of the word “orphan”. I wondered when she grow up, can she say this sentence “I am an orphan” as easy and normal as she told me on that day?

And about Quy, a day after, I saw Quy was happy again. He said to me happily, “ Only three days more, my father would come to visit me again. (that days was the celebrated day in middle of July in Lunar Calendar). I slept one night and only two days more. And one more night, there was only one day left. And after that day, my Dad would come to visit me! I would sleep well so my Dad would come earlier.”

Several days after, I asked the nannies here and I knew that all the kids here are actually orphans. Some of visitors arrived and they liked the kids so they took the roles of God-fathers or God-mothers for some of them. The kids believe they are their real fathers and mothers so they are really happy when they come and of course, feeling sad when they leave. Some of them don’t have the one to visit or take them home in weekends like others. Quy and Xuan Anh are also these cases.

Thảo Le, Nhi, and Jack learning and having fun.

When I saw all the kids at HTT and Buu Tri Pagoda and all the things we shared together recently, especially impressed with the story I told you. I knew more clearly the reason why I am there and why I joined in this program. The program is going to end, but I am just in the beginning. Thanks to Kate and this program I got the chance to connect to these kids. It’s not only for the kids, it’s for me. And I learned from them a lot.