Faith in Action

By Cheah Wui Jia

Photos by Lim Fei Xiang and Joanna Maria 

On Day Five of the trip, the students made their way to Chuong Trinh AIDS, a NGO that helps the HIV/AIDS patients of Ho Chi Minh city through multiple channels. Having ties with a number of organizations and sub-groups, we met Mr. Pham Thanh Van, the co-ordinator, whose organization liaises with community efforts to collectively come together as one and aid HIV/AIDs patients. It was into these community efforts that the students were then divided into for the day’s session. While some were assigned to visit the Pagoda’s community effort, others went to see how individual community members had taken on leadership roles to aid others within the community.

 The common thread binding all four groups is the social pandemic HIV/AIDS, showing just how ubiquitous the disease has become and how various walks of life have incorporated it into their community efforts to deal with it as effectively as possible.

This particular account has been written by a student who made house visits to community leaders of the Bin Thanh district. - Editors' Note

We met with Father Vincent and volunteers of Caritas Saigon, Joe and Joseph, at the house of the archbishop who together with ten other priests governs the diocese of Ho Chi Minh City. This diocese coordinates efforts of the 200 units of parishes within the province, uniting them for a common cause: to love the community. The word “caritas” is the Latin word for charity. Father Vincent, also known by his Vietnamese name Vincent Dao, is the director of Caritas Saigon.

Father Vincent of Caritas Saigon having a chat with Dr Yeoh

Caritas Internationalis is a confederate of 165 Roman Catholic relief, development and social service organizations functioning in over 200 countries. The members are part of a national charitable organization that works with the support of their respective Church. Each Caritas member nation has a diocese. Caritas Saigon constitutes a diocese of Caritas Vietnam.

The vision of the Catholic organization constitutes the expression of the love of God in the form of caring for the disadvantaged. Father Vincent describes the poor “in materials or in love” as the target groups of this organization. The slogan of Caritas Saigon, “The Joy of Service”, manifests itself in the various ways by which Caritas attempts to bridge the rich and the poor; Caritas Saigon professes that its aim is to link the rich at heart, who want to provide funds or other forms of support, to the poor and vulnerable. The latter encompasses HIV positive children, children of migrants, and young women dealing with pregnancies out of wedlock. Caritas Saigon aims to ensure that support or resources are channeled to, in the words of Joe who is a volunteer of Caritas Saigon, “the right people at the right time”.

The motto of Caritas Saigon

   According to Caritas Saigon, the income disparity in Vietnam is widening; the United Nations states that high wage earning Vietnamese earn an income that equals 36.2 times that of low wage earners. 5.1 million PWDs (People With Disabilities) make up seven percent of the Vietnamese population. 293 000 Vietnamese are HIV positive carriers, with Ho Chi Minh City having the highest percentage of HIV/AIDS sufferers. Caritas believes that the Catholic faith needs to be made evident by ministering to the needs of these vulnerable groups.

        Vietnamese law prohibits proselytization of any form of religion; the government, suspicious of the intentions of the organization shut it down in 1976. In the year of 2008, Caritas Vietnam was allowed by the government to resume its operation after the Vietnamese government recognized the impact that Caritas organizations had made in the international arena. While Caritas Saigon has not been officially granted the license to operate as a relief organization, it nevertheless undertakes its humanitarian efforts by maintaining a low profile, refraining from the execution of large-scaled projects or the attribution of a particular relief effort to Caritas Saigon.

        Caritas Saigon ministers to the needs of the AIDS victims. The HIV/AIDS department was set up in the year of 2005, setting up clinics for children suffering from AIDS. It is in charge of five “Love Shelters”, providing food, counseling, and medication. By promoting awareness on the disease, Caritas Saigon attempts to educate the public on HIV/AIDS to eliminate stigma and exclusion. One of the shelters operated by Caritas Saigon is the Mai Tam shelter which provides care, medicine and education programs to mothers and women living with HIV in Ho Chi Minh City.

        Urban migration occurs at a high rate in Vietnam. Children of migrant workers are often underprivileged as individuals who have been uprooted from their homes. They are unable to obtain an education as their migrant parents struggle financially to make ends meet. As a result, these migrant children are often found loitering on the streets instead of attending school in the day. Caritas Saigon conducts “Loving Classes” which provides the migrant children with basic meals and cultivating in them a desire and eagerness to learn. On top of that, they work with the community to send these children to school or to skills training centre for those who are of working age.

        Abortion occurs at a high rate; 2.4 million cases of abortion occur every year, and women who have undergone abortion tend to suffer from depression. These women are therefore in need of spiritual support. The archbishop’s house has consulting rooms where single women dealing with pregnancies receive counseling and the support that they need. Caritas Saigon hopes to provide sex education to young women by teaching them the value of life, love and sex.

Group photograph with our hosts Father Vincent, Joe and Joseph

        We ended the session feeling inspired by the efforts of Caritas Saigon. After taking a group photograph with Father Vincent, Joe and Joseph, we bid our hosts farewell and proceeded to our next destination at a local café to enjoy some Vietnamese coffee.

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Cheah Wui Jia, 23, is currently an Honours student doing her thesis on Christianity in Malaysia and its tithing practices. She’s a fresh Arts graduate who likes to study people and how they behave (thus the Psychology major), and loves writing about people (hence the Writing major).