Here is some of what we're proud to have achieved in the last 7 years:

Health

Surgeries and Improved Health Care

We have worked with other charities to bring better health care and surgeries to the children. Tendon release, cleft lip and cleft palette surgeries, shunt and heart surgeries are amongst those that the children have benefited from in the last few years. In some cases, these have been life saving.

Physiotherapy

Our Physiotherapy programme is achieving excellent results. German Physiotherapist Kalli Heinemann comes every year to train our staff and to help them develop rehabilitation programmes that look at, and develop, each child as a whole; not merely focusing on, for example, a bent foot or a crooked spine.

Dental Treatment

All of the Orphanage children (and the staff and their children) now receive regular, first class, dental treatment. When we first started to treat the children's dental problems in 2004, none of them had ever visited the dentist before; the dentists involved said that they had the worse teeth on mass that they had ever seen. At least once every year, we take the children to the nearby city of Danang and the excellent dentist facilities and services provided by the East Meets West Foundation.

Education

Special Education

We have established a thriving Special Education programme that caters for, and develops, children with all levels of physical and intellectual disability. Children who just a few years before could not talk, read or write are now doing all of these things and more. Special Education is not yet a well-known discipline in Vietnam. We are fortunate that our teachers are regularly trained by a Special Education teacher from Australia (Ms Roe Schroeder); Roe trains them to work more creatively with the children whose needs are greater than that provided for by mainstream education.

Staff Training

Existing Orphanage workers have been trained, and we have employed additional qualified staff.

Quality of Life

Improved Living Conditions

Unsanitary living quarters have been renovated, a bathroom equipped for disabled access has been installed; bright, well-stocked therapy rooms have been established. We provide regular maintenance, repairs and building assistance to ensure that the Orphanage premises are a safe environment for the children to be in.

Social Activities

We have provided countless birthday parties and happy days out, to the beach, the park, local restaurants ­ no small thing to children who, until a few years ago, had not been beyond the Orphanage walls.