About the recent visit of our US manager in Vietnam

Each year Stephen Jackel, who is CEF’s manager in the USA, visits Vietnam and attends some events; home visits or payment days, or both. Stephen does the receipting and accounts, as well as a lot of the communication with our US donors and sponsors.

Stephen enjoys these visits and has become more involved each year. He is getting to know the staff and the workings of CEF in Vietnam.  He enjoys the home visits but finds some disturbing as the level of poverty and hardship of some of families is hard to bear.  

 

(This family has a challenging situation as dad fell off the roof and now has partial paralysis and therefore they have lost both incomes as mum has to look after dad)

His visits are important. On payment days they enable Stephen to meet our Vietnamese government partners, but he also gets to see the complete payment process. As well as that he gets to meet some of the children sponsored by people he knows in the US and this enables him to talk about them personally. The visits enable him to talk about the work CEF does in Vietnam and describe the conditions of the families we work with, the despair of some and the joy some express in receiving help, also our criteria and selection process for new families and children, and much more.

We appreciate his commitment to CEF and his efforts in making the long trip from the States to Vietnam each year.  His probing questions and his feedback are important for all of us at CEF too.