Volunteering in Vietnam – Exploring Ho Chi Minh

I spent three weeks volunteering at the Ho Chi Minh Community Involvement project and I can truly say that this was the best trip of my life. I got to meet a lot interesting people from all around the world who love to travel but also enjoy volunteering. The first week I was there all the newcomers had an opportunity to see HCMC’s main sights and learn a bit about Vietnamese culture. There were cooking and language classes, even towel folding and many more fun activities.

During the second week I volunteered at the school where I played with children aged from 2 to 5. The children there were happy to see you and wanted to play with you. A lot of them wanted to learn English so in order to achieve that they would point at different things and smiled when you told them what it was.

Thanks to the fact that during your stay you can change projects I decided to try out the food shelter. Your job there was to cut vegetables, prepare the tables and give out food when the customers came. This was also charity work because the food was given to the homeless, poor and elderly. After a whole morning of hard work, you always felt great satisfaction that today you managed to feed 600 people.

The great thing about this whole project is that on the weekends and in the afternoons during the weekdays you can travel around Vietnam or Ho Chi Minh. In my opinion you get to learn a lot more about the country’s culture by volunteering instead of just travelling.