Caritas Australia is one of the major funders of the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme and this year they organized a partners meeting in Vientiane, Laos. "Partners" are the organizations and NGOs that receive funding from Caritas Australia in their mission of serving the very poorest in Asia and other areas. Two of the Maryknoll Cambodia projects which receive funding from Caritas sent representatives to the meeting.
| 24 June 2014 A delegation of five staff of the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme and the Maryknoll Seedling of Hope program went to Vientiane for the meeting. We flew nonstop on Vietnam Airlines in an hour and ten minutes. It was my first time on Vietnam Airlines and my first time in Laos. |
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| 25 June 2014 Everyone arrived the night of June 18th and the next morning started with breakfast in the hotel coffee shop. My roommate, Lay Sambath, the assistant director of Caritas Cambodia, ate with me and two women also from Cambodia. |
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| Then it was time to start and Kath Rozic from Caritas Australia in Sydney made opening remarks. There were about thirty of us present from Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Australia. |  |
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After Kath spoke, the Mekong Region partners began to introduce their organizations and programs, starting with the Deaf Development Programme. Following DDP was Caritas Cambodia with Lay Sambath presenting. |
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We were in a small boutique hotel that had enough rooms for all of us and also a meeting room that was barely large enough. We met on the third floor and directly above on the fourth floor was this room where we had our coffee breaks. |
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After the morning break, Sr. Len Montiel, the director of the Seedling of Hope project, explained their operations. |
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Vietnam's project followed in the series of introductions and they showed this brochure they have produced. One of the goals of this meeting was to talk about our differing operations, procedures, and the ways we do things to see what we could learn from each other. |