Ba Be Community Service and Cultural Field Trip
25 to 27 February 2007

From February 25th (Sunday) to 27th (Tuesday), six volunteers from Grade eight went to Ba Be National Park as a community and service field trip. During those three days, we helped out the projects organized by the PCRF (People Resources and Conservation Fund – an NGO). The main idea of this trip was not only for us to protect the environment and the natural resources, but to encourage the children and people of different generations of Ba Be to help protect the environment too. Through this experience, we learnt a lot of new things which can’t be explained by being in the classroom. This is a trip and an experience which I will never forget in my lifetime.

The cultural and environmental experience was just great at Ba Be. We all enjoyed playing a part in the PRCF stall at the Ba Be Tung Lung festival. It was set up by us for the children attending the festivities. We painted their faces, hands, a jacket, nails and they could also paint their own pictures. Our stall with PRCF was the only thing for children at the festival. Keeping that beautiful part of the world alive was something we were willing to help with and so we put on our gloves and grabbed our plastic bags. Children came to help and we even got some adults cleaning up the rubbish too. We hope this helped motivate the people to take care of their environment.

The last bit of the trip was a boat trip on the lake looking at the mountains and karsts (like in Ha Long Bay). The silence in such an area can be amazing and the views of such great mountains were spectacular.

We all enjoyed this trip very much and are hoping to extend this as the grade 9 field trip next year.

Kyung Mi. Lee and Vicky Rudolf-Stringer

The UNIS students worked very hard from early in the morning and Richard Rastall, the PRCF Project Coordinator, said he couldn’t have run his stall without them. The PRCF stall was the most popular stall at the entire festival and it was exciting to see that most children who painted a picture used environmental themes, showing the message of the small NGO is working. The Director of Ba Be National Park was very grateful for the wonderful work of our students. It was a very rewarding experience. Perhaps you should visit this beautiful part of Viet Nam. The National Park is currently applying for World Heritage status based on it’s unusual geographical features.

Here are the reasons we thought that this was a great Community Service Field Trip:

Being in and helping in remote areas Really special for the children of the Ba Be community (only stall for kids) Special opportunity to experience another part of Viet Nam Dealt with conservation of a beautiful part of the country Good to be humble in our host country Seeing minorities Helping but having fun at the same time

watch clip Ba Be.wmv (3MB)

Year 8 Students who went:  Kyung Mi Lee (Pia), Won Hee Jo, Finja Schmidt, Mikaela Westwood, Victoria Rudolph-Stringer, Seo Yeon Lee