<p>“I guess I am missing any serious reason to go.”</p>
<p>My 18-year-old daughter just returned from two months volunteering in Vietnam with Global Volunteer Network. This is a kid who’s grown up in one of the most privileged, wealthy communities in the country (a friend’s mom got $90 million in the divorce, as an example). </p>
<p>What can an inexperienced 18-year-old do to help? Well, she and her fellow volunteers played with the orphans, did physical therapy with the disabled children, and helped teach kindergarteners rudimentary English. She became adept at comforting a child who was in constant pain, changed diapers, and acted as an advocate for a disabled girl who was clearly quite bright but was not attending school because the director felt it wasn’t necessary. (She and the other volunteers arranged transportation for the girl and purchased school uniforms for her. She was elated to get an e-mail upon her return saying that the girl had just completed her first day of school!)</p>
<p>She was the only American in the group - she now has Vietnamese friends, Australian friends, British friends, and friends from New Zealand. (Her Facebook page is like a mini United Nations.) The GVN volunteers were highly regarded in the community, so she served as a de facto goodwill ambassador for her country, even as she confronted a shameful part of our past when she went to My Lai for the 40th anniversary of the massacre. She has seen first-hand what it’s like to live under Communism, and has learned that a war doesn’t necessarily end when the truce is declared - the area she was in was heavily sprayed with Agent Orange in the '60’s and '70’s, and the war’s effects persist in the large number of birth defects seen in the local population. She was also able to travel a little bit through Laos and Cambodia, and can report from first-hand experience that elephants are very large and you have to get out of their way when you’re trying to cross the street!</p>
<p>My daughter left high school a year early - yesterday was graduation day, and I was a little bit sad that she wasn’t participating in that rite of passage with her childhood friends. Then I reflected on the year she’s had, and the things she’s learned, and the ways in which she’s grown, and I wasn’t sad any more.</p>
<p>Not every kid is able to get on a plane by herself to go to a Third World country where she knows no one and doesn’t speak the language - but for those who do, the experience can be life-changing.</p>
<p>Pretty good reasons in my book.</p>