The Next Stage: Hoi An

We made it to Hoi An and will be spending at least two weeks here on this trip. We decided to spend most of our time here because there are many organizations and NGOs in Hoi An that deal with children - particularly orphans, street children and disabled children.

Hoi An has some other advantages; it is centrally located, it is easy to travel to other areas, and it is relatively clean and quiet. The dining here is also great!

We've done a lot of research over the past year on many of the organizations here, and we are really looking forward to seeing them in action; how they operate, the challenges they face, and most importantly, the impact they make.

One of the main issues that we came across in our research is that it is difficult to evaluate the many organizations we came across. How can we help most effectively? Where are our resources best utilized? Which organizations have the best intentions, the best plans, and the capability to meet their goals? We suspect that many others also have similar difficulty in choosing which organization to support. Are some of the organizations too bureaucratic? Which organizations have high overhead and administrative costs?



How to Choose?


There are some great websites available for travelers who want to research restaurants, or hotels, or any other travel-related item - from beaches to zoos and beyond - with an abundance of critiques and reviews etc. We haven't found anything similar for NGOs. Our goal is to provide a blog which, in some small way, will be useful to others when they are trying to decide which organizations to help.

Of course, we will only be giving our own personal opinions about the organizations, our likes and dislikes etc, and we certainly aren't offering a professional evaluation. We will give organizations the right to reply to any of our posts, and all will be welcome to offer any further information and make any corrections etc. We also welcome feedback from any readers - either in the comments section of the blog, or via email. We are not associated with any organizations, we are not promoting or advertising any of them on their behalf, we will simply give our own personal opinions. Again, we are not professionals, though our opinions are based on some experience working with NGOs.




Our Objective


Our plan is to select some organizations for review here in Central Vietnam. For this trip (Part One) we will mainly focus on organizations that work with children, primarily orphans, street children, and disabled children.

We will try to learn about these organizations via various perspectives; information provided by directors, managers and employees, information from the beneficiaries of the organization, feedback from people in the local community, and interviews which we will post on the blog.

Last but not least, we will offer our own personal evaluation/perspective of the effectiveness of each organization - based on their goals, and their ability to deliver.

One of the most important elements in determining whether to donate time and/or money to an organization is transparency. All organizations tell a great story with their websites and other marketing materials, however it can be difficult for others to scratch below the surface and determine whether the organization ought to be supported. We hope to be able to take an extra step and take a closer look at the operations. It will be interesting to see how open and transparent some of these organizations are, and to what extent they will open their doors and let us see their actual operations so that we can evaluate them more fully.

We will contact our target organizations, explain our goals, and try to set up interviews and meetings. If we find that any of the organizations are not fully transparent, we'll report that too. We recognize that some organizations may not always be fully transparent to us for a variety of reasons, some more legitimate than others, so we'll simply report that.

We already have a list of five or six organizations that we'll start with, some of them have come through recommendations from other people that we have met and interviewed.

We are excited and very interested about this project. We'll keep you informed as to progress along the way. We will be here for another 3 weeks or so for Part One of our project which will mostly be focused on Vietnamese children. We plan to return to Vietnam for Part Two later in the year when we hope to expand the project to more areas and more organizations.

We conducted an interview yesterday with two volunteers, Bruce and Elaine, who have been here in Hoi An for the past 2+ months, their fifth visit to Vietnam. They worked with two organizations - Reaching Out and Global Village Foundation - and we'll post that interview shortly.


Here are a few touristy pictures from Hoi An to start with - we'll have some more soon.



The river and the associated hustle and bustle is the focal point of Hoi An

Delicious open-fire roasted corn offered by many vendors along the banks of the river

A typical cafe in the center of the town, housed in an old building; a great place to people-watch and sip Vietnamese coffee

One of many store-fronts in the town center - they are mainly fabric and tailor shops

Central Market, Hoi An - one section is dedicated to seafood, others are dedicated to vegetables, spices, clothing, and of course, souvenirs for the many tourists.