Social Work Projects

The Touching and Helping Programs in Vietnam

The Touching and Helping Programs offer material and spiritual support to hundreds of communities in the poorest areas of Vietnam where education, development, social services and relief work are in great need to ensure healthy and happy lives for all.

For over 30 years we have provided material and spiritual support through financial donations and training in the practice of mindfulness for social workers, monastics and others in Vietnam. This supports their vital work of reaching out to all those in desperate situations and to improve the lives of many through education, development projects, and emergency relief from natural disasters.  As we are not a big organization with hired staff or administrative expenses, all of the money received goes directly to those in need in Vietnam.

Dear friends, at this time in our Western society, not only do we generally have plentiful material conditions but we also have the great gift of access to wonderful and profound spiritual teachings and teachers.  In other parts of the world there is a great thirst for the basic conditions of life and also for spiritual teachings that show us how to live our lives with greater peace and happiness.  Your offerings are like clear streams of water lessening the suffering of many people, and allowing them to feel the love and understanding of humanity.  Each small stream of water flows together to form the great ocean of compassion uplifting us all to feel our oneness as beings of one global family.. 

A blooming lotus we offer to you!

Sister Chan Khong and the Committee for the Helping and Touching program of Plum Village, Green Mountain Dharma Center and Deer Park Monastery.

Through our love and understanding, we are able to touch the suffering of others and help them.

During the last several decades, the Unified Buddhist Church in the West has implemented many social work projects to help relieve the suffering in Vietnam.  If you wish, you may join us in this work by sponsoring children, teachers and the elderly in Vietnam.  Currently we are involved in the following programs.  Here’s how you can sponsor:

Give a kindergarten age child a chance to be cared for and loved, for $5.00 a month ($60/yr). The child you sponsor will be able to go to a Day Care Center, where he or she will receive a nourishing meal at lunch time, a glass of soybean milk in the afternoon, and then be escorted home safely in the caring hands of adults.  In the remotest areas of Vietnam, there are very poor families.  The families who are able to make a partial or total contribution for the nutrition program for their children do contribute.  We sponsor only orphans or children of poor single-parent families.

Give a scholarship to an adolescent or young adult for $10.00 a month, ($120/yr) so that they can receive vocational training in traditional Vietnamese crafts of woodworking, embroidery, tailoring, carpentry, mechanics and electricity; or continue their education in a university.

Sponsor a Teacher or a Day Care Assistant for $25.00 a month ($300/yr).  In the remote rural areas of Vietnam, we have created many village schools.  We sponsor more than 560 local school teachers, who have educated thousands of village children in more than 1,057 classrooms over the years.

Sponsor an elderly person or an orphan under the age of sixteen, for $10.00 a month ($120.00/yr).  This program helps orphans, the destitute and elderly persons who have no relatives to support them, by giving them hope and confidence that they are remembered, loved and cared for.

Sponsor Community Development.  These projects assist in the development of poor remote communities in the areas of making roads, building bridges and schools, planting trees and digging wells, to support the environment, health and safety of these communities.

Sponsor Natural Disaster Aide by giving assistance to the victims of monsoon floods in central Vietnam so that  they can receive life-saving medical support, food, blankets, and other critical materials needed to rebuild their homes, as well as seeds to replant their crops once the floods have subsided. 

You can donate ONLINE or download WORD or PDF format and fax or mail in the SPONSOR FORM FOR THE TOUCHING AND HELPING PROGRAM.