In Country Volunteer Blog: resonating with TFA’s mission to build local capacity to expand and develop the profession in Vietnam.

Ms. Rachel Lucas first fell in love with Vietnam and discovered the work of TFA during her 4th-year university clinical placement in Hue, Central Vietnam, in 2014. Recently, she returned to Vietnam, this time working in Hai Duong, hosted by the Hai Duong Medical Technical University (HMTU). During her assignment, she contributed across two local hospitals.

In her own words, Rachel reflects on her experiences and what inspired her to volunteer with TFA.

“The need for Speech Therapy (ST) services was very apparent and at the time there were only a handful of locally trained STs in the entire country. I resonate with the sustainable focus of TFA’s mission to build local capacity to expand and develop the profession in Vietnam and have been waiting for the right timing to volunteer ever since graduating.

The ST profession is growing exponentially in Vietnam which is exciting to witness because there is such a need. There are amazing locally-trained therapists who are now running university programs to train the next cohorts of therapists. It was special this trip to have 16 students in one year level at one university, when ten years ago there were only a few STs in the whole country. A sustainable, capacity-building model is so important in facilitating this type of growth and for ensuring that direct therapy itself is delivered by Vietnamese clinicians for culturally and contextually appropriate care.

The teachers and students had learned the theory about AAC but had never used it before in practice. We had lots of powerful discussions around functional and holistic goal-setting, child-led intervention, autonomous communication, robust AAC, benefits of interprofessional practice, and cultural and linguistic relevance for the Vietnamese context. It was such a joy supporting the students and teachers to put this into practice for the patients and watching the students’ confidence in modelling AAC grow. 

I would really recommend reaching out to TFA to discuss what options for volunteering are available and getting in touch with previous volunteers to discuss their experiences. My experience overall was invaluable, challenging, amazing, hard work, and a huge learning curve. It was an excellent opportunity to experience daily work life in a completely different country and culture. I’m so glad that I did it and feel really proud of the work that the lecturers, students and I achieved together”.