We have had a great conclusion to fundraising in very tough times recently and as always our supporters have been there to help people they will never meet, who face challenges we really cannot imagine. A supporter recently apologised for sending only $200, so it was clearly time to elaborate on our belief that there is no such thing as a little help in Vietnam – every buck works hard. $200 is magnificent.
I am obliged to Diana Tran for the video footage you can access below. She traveled with me to Vietnam as part of our effort to reach our local Viet community, a community I am happy to say that has been steadily coming aboard. Please bear with me as I explain a little about what you will see.
The short wheelchair video started when a Platypus school student up in the mountains told me about his brother who had been confined to a bed in a back room of his house for about 6 years as “his legs stopped working” at age 16. Long story short, a Perth couple had a wheelchair fall in their laps as they were heading to Vietnam to work on a project, but the airfreight cost was obscene. Undaunted, at Perth airport hubby hopped in the chair, was wheeled to the counter and helpful people pampered him all the way into the car park at Hanoi airport. Weeks later, Koony, who appears in the video and is in fact our Vietnam charity motorcycle ride partner drove us for about 6 hours to the mountains where the video presentation took place. The young man was practically translucent and a little dazed but we keep tabs on him and he hoons around the commune in his chair with a ghetto-blaster going and leads a very full social life. It is a long way from the dark and dingy room where his world was a 2 x 3 metre wooden board with no mattress. Kind people changing lives.
As happens in Vietnam, the story does not end there.
Kid brother graduated high school before we could offer him further support (he was a bright, exceptional lad). We located him in a sort of sweatshop, but he had been offered a university spot to study veterinary science. Money was a problem. Platypus started the Chris Rees Memorial Scholarship in memory of a fabulous supporter, and her widower Bob and his family approved Sung Thin Pha as the first Scholarship awardee!
He has completed his first year and we look forward to seeing him at our dinner in a few years so he can meet the Rees family. The Memorial Fund is maintained mainly by motorcyclists who have ridden with us in Laos and Vietnam. Platypus underwrites it.
The longer video gives you some idea of the terrain and conditions in Ha Giang Province, an achingly-beautiful place where the living is tough largely because of weather conditions. It is not unusual to see a young mother carrying a heavy load on her back, with a youngster by her side. That motivates us as education is a world changer for younger people, as micro-banking is for the older.
The featured ladies of Bat Dai Son lost all the pigs they were gifted. One hour away a lady who lost all 5 piglets from the first litter of her gifted pig did her homework and you can see some of the 11 piglets she would take to market a couple of weeks after the photo was taken. It gave the family the biggest payday of their lives and they will get that twice a year. She has branched out by exchanging some piglets for a half-share in a calf. The women are natural entrepreneurs.
The lady in the blue shirt was appointed leader of a micro-loan group. She was chuffed about that as it lifted her status considerably, so the village headman now deals with someone very different from the village pauper of times past. We deal exclusively with women and it is delightful to see the enjoyment, the benefits of their success.
The family group photo is of a Hmong family. Husband insisted on having a son, but 6 consecutive daughters put the wife under enormous pressure as it was of course her bad. Micro-banking saw them buy some pigs, then a cow appeared and things improved. Child number 7 was a son so Mother has fulfilled her obligations. Grandmother did not like the fuss of receiving foreign visitors but you could not keep her out of a photo shoot. The family home has been enlarged, food is not a problem, and the family should be fine.
There is a great deal more to the Platypus story but is essentially about generous people blindly handing over their hard-earned dollars to give strangers in a distant land a hand and that is pretty special.
Your bucks are carefully spent and hugely appreciated by deserving people.
Please call me if you ever want to know anything about what we do or why we do it.
Thank you for your support.
