In June 2011, an Association was registered, Friends of Hướng Phương Orphanage Inc., with the aim to:

Work in partnership with Huong Phuong Orphanage and village community, as well as surrounding villages, to achieve a better quality of life for all, with a focus on children with disabilities.

A note from Dr Peter Kabaila:

After I returned from volunteering at this orphanage in central Vietnam, I wondered how to gather Australian friends together to create assistance programs and collect supporting donations. The aim was to help the Huong Phuong community, focusing on the children with disabilities.

There was a lot of discussion with friends who wanted to contribute a donation, so we registered Friends of Huong Phuong Orphanage Inc. and opened a charity account (no bank fees) at St George Bank.

Unlike the big charities – that behave like faceless corporations with a lot of admin costs and charity collecting costs – every cent that goes into this orphanage fund will be taken to Vietnam and spent on direct assistance.

Each contributor is invited to provide exact instructions on how they want their money to be spent when they choose to donate.

When contributors travel to Vietnam, they can visit the orphanage and experience life in the monastic community for themselves. I found it wonderful and inspiring. The monastic community is always happy to receive and look after contributors.

If any of your friends is presently contributing to a big corporation-type charity, how about switching to our direct-funding charity?

If you don’t contribute to a charity, please consider a fortnightly contribution of a couple of dollars, which you could arrange with your employer as a direct debit into the charity account. A couple of dollars makes a big difference to the orphanage. Or fund a tertiary scholarship. This supports half of one uni student’s study cost at $20/fortnight. You might want to make a one-off contribution for a specific purpose, such as the new village medical centre. Or contribute to our general fund for small projects. These aim to develop community self-reliance.

Could you ask friends if they are interested? A contributions form with EFT details, details of student scholarships and my personal diary of visits to some of the students is on this web site.

Let me now introduce our Board to you: Peter Kabaila (Sec), Hung Nguyen (Pres & Vice Pres), Minh Tiep Tran, Loan Tran, Nam Long Quach, Clive West and David Braithwaite SJ. Hung has many years experience in managing charitable projects to aid development in Vietnam. Minh and Loan operate a local business. Nam works in the public service and Clive is a retired government lawyer. David organises Vietnam trips each year for Aussie volunteers. Our wide range of experience and shared concern for assisting development in Central Vietnam make us a good team.

Many charitable groups don’t manage their projects. They simply fund-raise, then hand money over for village communities to spend. This results in leakage and diversion of funds to unintended expenditure. Donated money paid in lump-sum is routinely treated as “play money” by village communities. This is because villagers often don’t realise the hard work and sacrifices made by people in developed countries to earn money. For villagers, foreign money seems to just drop out of the sky. In countries where there is a huge gap between rich and poor, funds are often splashed out on status raising projects, such as a new, showy and unnecessary buildings or equipment. Such communities become addicted to foreign donations, yet stay poor.

This is why Friends of Huong Phuong Orphanage Inc is NOT primarily a fund-raising group. It is a project management group. We aim for minimum leakage of funds. Our main concern is to make sure that every development project respects the intentions of donors by: careful design; good recording; funding by written contract; tracking in progress; then satisfactory completion.