Birthday celebration delivers gift of motherhood
The reverberations from Janet Taylor’s 50th birthday commemoration have not stopped. Seven years after the Mapua resident first set foot in Vietnam to celebrate that birthday milestone, Taylor heads up a charitable trust that provides tertiary education scholarships to young people from an orphanage at Lao Cai. She has also gained a son. Nguyen van Gioi was a young guide who took Taylor and her friend, Pam Mallinson, on an overnight trek in the lush mountainous tourist attraction of Sa Pa during that birthday trip.
A simple question about what he did in his spare time led to the development of the charitable trust and a rich mother-son type relationship with Gioi over the intervening years. The bond is much treasured. ‘‘I talk about my son and sometimes people don’t quite get that I’m serious about it,’’ Taylor says. ‘‘It’s a real thing and I know it sounds odd and it looks odd but it’s very real.’’
So real that Taylor has been accepted into the family of Gioi’s wife, Hue, whom he married in 2014. Taylor is also ‘‘Nana’’ to Gioi and Hue’s daughter, Tram, born in 2015.
‘‘Now, Hue’s mother has two words of English,’’ Taylor adds. ‘‘As well as ‘hello’, she also has ‘Nana’. Even dad will say ‘Nana’.’’
It was near the beginning of a planned five-week trip to Vietnam and Cambodia in 2010 when Taylor and Mallinson first met Gioi at Sa Pa in northern Vietnam. He later told Taylor that none of his colleagues wanted to guide the Kiwi pair but Gioi was starting out in the industry and took on the challenge.
‘‘The fact that no-one wanted to guide us was probably the fact that we were two women from New Zealand – I’m not sure that New Zealand is particularly known for tipping,’’ Taylor points out.
During the trek, Taylor asked the beginner guide what he did when he wasn’t working. Gioi told her he helped at an orphanage in nearby Lao Cai so she asked what the children needed most. He replied that shoes for the winter would be welcome so the children could walk to school.
‘‘His logic was that getting to school was your best chance at a future.’’
Back home at Mapua, near Nelson, Taylor started talking to people about the idea of buying shoes and coats for 100 residents at the orphanage.
‘‘People were like: ‘Yeah, we’ll support you.’ So, I did some research and for $25 we could buy a decent pair of walking shoes and a warm coat.’’
Some people said they would support a child and handed over $25. Others said because they had three children, they would support three children at the orphanage.
‘‘People found out about the project through word of mouth and the personal links continue to be a key reason for people’s willingness to donate, I think.’’
It was October 2011 when Taylor and her friend, Sarah McLeod, went on a two-day buying spree in a market at Lao Cai to purchase shoes and coats for 100 people – 94 children and six adults, who were also living at the orphanage.
‘‘Some of the stall holders didn’t even realise that there was an orphanage down the road so we helped raise awareness at a local level,’’ Taylor says. ‘‘As we were leaving, the person we had bought [most goods] from gave me a great wad of money for the orphanage – he was giving back.’’
The children at the orphanage stood in rows to receive their individual bundles and each child said ‘‘thank you’’ in English.
‘‘I asked one girl what she would like to do in the future and she said she would like to study music and then she said: ‘My thank you to you is a song’ and then she stepped forward and sang to us. It was really beautiful, it was quite moving.’’
Meanwhile, back in New Zealand, people were still making donations.
‘‘We ended up with more money than we needed, which is part of the reason the charity continued,’’ Taylor recalls.
While she was considering what to buy for the children with the additional funds, a member of the Mapua Craft Group asked what the artisans could do to help.
‘‘I suggested beanies and some sort of bag because the children don’t have much that’s their own,’’ Taylor says. ‘‘They knitted the beanies and made all these amazing bags – and they were
all different – and they also made or got toys to put in the bags as well. They did knee rugs and beanies for the older people. ‘‘It was awesome.’’ Taylor and Mallinson returned in November 2013 to distribute the gifts. With the additional money, they funded a much-needed perimeter fence around the orphanage to keep the young children safe. It was built by the staff and older boys.
Discussions with those older boys help cement the then fledgling idea of a scholarship programme for tertiary education, to provide some long-term support.
‘‘The girl who wanted to study music came back into mind constantly.’’
Orphan Kids Charity (OKC) was formally established in 2013 and initially helped four students fund tertiary study in business management, IT, hotel management and teacher training.
This year, nine students are receiving support via OKC at an average cost of $700 each a year, which includes living expenses. Of those, four are being supported directly by New Zealand families.
In addition, for the first time this year, OKC is helping with the education costs for another three students identified by an American charity based in Hanoi called Humanitarian Services for the Children of Vietnam (HSCV), which has supported OKC since the first shoes and coats project.
‘‘HSCV are our link to the orphanage, providing translation services – including translating students’ letters – and they distribute our scholarship funds,’’ Taylor says. ‘‘They’ve been fantastic to work with.’’
Donations have helped towards funding the work of OKC along with traditional efforts such as quiz nights and raffles. However, Taylor realised a sustainable fundraising model was needed and this year hit on the idea of charity dinners.
The first was held during June in the Parkside Cafe & Vietnamese Cuisine restaurant at Auckland; the second during July in the Green Bamboo restaurant at Nelson. Both raised about $1200 for the charity. There is an eye on expansion. ‘‘If we could get to the situation where we have an annual dinner in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch and Dunedin, and if we could make that sort of money, along with individual sponsorships, then that would sustain us really.’’
Taylor sees it as a win-win. Participants enjoy a social time with friends and ‘‘contribute to a worthwhile cause’’ while the restaurants get a full house at a time that suits the owners.
Gioi has been a key part of the charity’s development. That Lao Cai orphanage is the same facility where he works in his spare time, as he told Taylor when they first met.
Taylor engaged Gioi as a guide each time she returned to Vietnam and as she got to know him, she discovered he lived in the orphanage for most of his childhood, too.
At dinner during the 2013 visit, Gioi made a speech outlining how important Taylor was, saying she was like a mother to him.
Taylor says she didn’t need to think about her reply, telling Gioi she thought of him as her son.
‘‘And so, from that day forward, he’s called me Mum.’’
That meant Taylor had pride of place as mother of the groom at his 2014 wedding.
‘‘My presence at this ceremony was the acknowledgement to all their guests that I was part of their family.’’
The young couple has since developed Cinnamon Eco Lodge on the grounds of Hue’s family farm at Xuan Hoa, about 90 minutes south-east of Lao Cai.
Taylor says Gioi’s vision is that as well as a homestay for tourists, the lodge will become a place where children from the orphanage and the village can learn and practise their English.
Naturally, Taylor is helping. She’s also organising a 2018 visit for a group of friends who want to experience the lodge and the area.
‘‘For Gioi, it’s the best story in the world because nobody wanted [to guide] us in 2010 and yet he got so much from that contact,’’ she says.
However, Taylor believes she’s the big winner. As well as gaining a son and another family in Vietnam, there is rich reward in the work of the charity.
‘‘I see all the different ways that people give and support,’’ she says. ‘‘I see people’s generosity and that warms my heart to begin with.
‘‘On the other side, I see the gratitude from the children and the gratitude is not just that we’re giving financial support, their gratitude is also that there’s some people who care, there’s some people that are interested enough to give a leg up and what the children talk about is that this gives them confidence to try.
‘‘I have so much more [in life] because I met this young guy and because I asked him a simple question about what he did when he wasn’t working.’’