10,000 meals, years of companionships: Volunteer journey of BUV students

For students at the university, volunteering is not simply about showing up, giving back, and moving on. As many student-led projects grow in scale and ambition, they often come with a deeper sense of responsibility.

The challenge is no longer just about how much can be raised or how many people can be reached. It is about understanding what communities truly need, ensuring support creates meaningful value, and finding ways to make that impact last beyond a single event or donation.

At the BUV Volunteer Club, one of the most memorable moments for all members during a recent visit to the dialysis community known as "Xom Chay Than" was not the donation of more than one ton of rice, but a quieter interaction with patients living there.

After receiving handwritten postcards prepared by students, one elderly patient carefully read each line before looking up with a gentle smile and saying, "Thank you for coming."

A total of 103 handwritten postcards were delivered to dialysis patients living in rented rooms near hospitals in Hanoi.

Those moments stayed with them long after the trip ended. It was a quiet reminder that sometimes people do not only need support but also the feeling that they have not been forgotten.

"Material support may help ease some of the hardships people face in daily life, but beyond that, what we truly hope to offer is emotional encouragement," said Do Hien Diep, president of the BUV Volunteer Club.

Many of the initiatives at the university are student-led, while the university provides institutional support and guidance. The approach is incorporated into the university's Personal and Social Growth (PSG) program, which encourages students to develop leadership, empathy, and social responsibility alongside academic study. Students do not approach volunteering to simply experience but with the responsibility of creating an impact that truly lasts.

That approach was reflected in the "Shared Heartbeats" initiative organized at Thanh Tam Shelter, a center caring for orphaned, abandoned, and disabled children. The fundraising campaign featured traditional lucky envelopes created by the shelter and children themselves, while students coordinated sponsorship outreach, communications, event planning, and fundraising activities.

The true value of the project was reflected in the effort to bring the children's stories closer to more people, through each red envelope carrying the spirit of Tet.

Through journeys like these, many students have come to realize that while material support may help someone through immediate hardship, what truly changes in long term is access to education and opportunities for growth.

That is why many scholarship students at the university once experienced financial pressure, self-doubt, and their own struggles to make it to university, chose to return to communities and ignite the value of education in children standing where they once stood.

That spirit can be seen through Vuon, studentled initiative created to help children in mountainous areas shape their futures through education.

Vuon provides career-oriented English learning opportunities while also equipping children with practical knowledge about landslides, online scams, school dropout risks, and illegal labour.

Oc Thi Quynh Anh, a member of the project, said the initiative aims to help children build confidence in their own abilities.

"I want the children to understand that they are just as capable as anyone else," she said. "What they lack is not ability, but opportunity and someone willing to walk alongside them. Once they are given the pen called education, they can write an entirely new chapter for their own lives."

Kindness may begin with emotion, but lasting impact requires discipline. BUV students do not view volunteering as a shorterm campaign, but as a continuous journey shared by people who choose to stay with communities long enough to understand, connect, and grow together.

Over nearly three years, members of the BUV Volunteer Club have partnered with the Thien Tam An volunteer group to prepare and distribute more than 10,000 meals for patients at K3 Tan Trieu Hospital in Hanoi.

The work often begins before sunrise, with students helping prepare ingredients, cook meals, and package food before distributing it to patients and their families.

Alongside meal programs, BUV students have also collaborated with the National Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion and the Van Giang Red Cross Association to organize the "Lionhearts" blood donation campaign for four consecutive years, contributing a total of 669 units of blood.

Projects like these are sustained not by a few individuals, but by a spirit passed from one generation to the next. BUV Volunteer Club has continued to preserve that spirit for over 15 generations. Previous generations do not simply pass down responsibilities, but also experiences, lessons from failure, and the reasons they first chose to volunteer.

Every campaign is organized with distinct teams responsible for content, operations, partnerships, and communications, ensuring projects are driven not only by passion but also by structure and long-term direction.

While previous community projects reflect students' longterm commitment to local communities, many young people today are also beginning to ask bigger questions about sustainability, innovation, and the role technology can play in solving real-world problems.

To explore those questions, BUV students collaborated with the university's International Office to organize a cultural exchange program involving more than 50 students from the United Kingdom. Activities included waste collection in Ha Long Bay and tree planting at SOS Children's Village in Hai Phong.

The program later inspired the "AI for Sustainable Vietnam" hackathon, where students developed technology-based ideas addressing environmental and social challenges. Rather than approaching sustainability as a purely academic topic, the students were encouraged to start from the realities they had personally observed, then develop AI-driven solutions for environmental and social challenges in Vietnam. Proposed concepts included smart cooling systems to reduce urban energy consumption, recycling models encouraging plastic bottle returns, and smart waste-sorting bins.

Professor Rick Bennett, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice President of BUV, said student-led initiatives help participants develop practical and interpersonal skills.

"We believe that when students are given opportunities to lead community initiatives, engage with real-world challenges, and connect with international peers, they not only grow as individuals but also become a generation ready to take meaningful action for their communities and turn compassion into practical solutions," he said.

Their projects may not change the world overnight. But somewhere in the dialysis village, a patient feels a little less forgotten. A child in a remote mountainous community begins, perhaps for the first time, to imagine a future at university. And at K3 Hospital, a warm meal becomes a quiet source of hope for a family going through its hardest days.

Content by Thy An

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