A Seattle Rotarian takes on the legacy of Agent Orange in Vietnam.
Five pallets of baby pajamas changed Son Michael Pham’s life. Or rather, they allowed Pham to change the lives of children in Seattle, in Vietnam, and beyond.
In 2001, Pham, a member of the Rotary Club of the University District of Seattle, Wash., got a call from a nonprofit offering him unused children’s clothing and related items to distribute through his connections.
“I thought to myself, instead of handing them off, maybe I can get children to help,” Pham says. Within a month, he had founded Kids Without Borders to inspire children to provide support to other kids around the world.
That same year, Pham, a successful businessman, put together the first of what he calls his HumaniTours to Vietnam, the country he and his family were forced to leave in 1975 when the North Vietnamese overran their home in Saigon. His goal was to build schools and purchase wheelchairs for young people with disabilities, including those with genetic abnormalities caused by Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant used during the Vietnam War.
“The Rotarians in my club kept asking me the same question – ‘What can we do?’ – when they learned about the children’s orphanages I visited on that first trip.”
They wanted to know if they could accompany Pham on his next visit. “I said, ‘That’s a great idea.’ From that point on, the HumaniTour has included Rotarians. This year marks our 19th mission together,” Pham says. “The projects are all child-related. We work with teens in orphanages, many of whom have brain damage and other disabilities due to Agent Orange. They have to move out when they are 18, but they need help preparing to join the outside world. We mentor them and try to place them in jobs based on their strengths. Otherwise, they can easily slip into poverty or fall prey to human traffickers, so we teach them the skills they need to get by on their own.”
In keeping with the mission of Kids Without Borders, teens who have benefited from the program pay it back by working with other orphaned children. “It’s a tough job,” Pham says, “but it’s moving to see how compassionate they are.”
Closer to home, Pham and fellow club members regularly prepare dinners for Ronald McDonald House families in Seattle and neighboring Tukwila, and hand out clothes, shoes, and school supplies for the kids at the House and local YMCA. “In a given year, we distribute about $70,000 worth of products.”
Pham, whose youngest brother had severe disabilities related to polio, wasn’t aware of Rotary’s work to end the disease when he joined his club. As club president in 2005, Pham traveled to Chicago for the RI Convention. “I remember how moved I was watching the Rotarian parade downtown,” he recalls. His nephew was standing beside him watching the floats. “I pointed to one and asked, ‘You know about polio, right?’ And he said no.”
Rotarians “helped erase that word from people’s vocabulary,” he says. “To me, it’s amazing that the son of a polio survivor, in my own family, no longer has to fear polio. That’s huge.”
Before joining his Rotary club, Pham had been organizing volunteers on his own to help homeless people in Seattle. But as a club member, he says, “I felt I was part of an army. Now I stand next to my fellow Rotarians feeding the homeless or doing things for the community as a member of a movement.”
Pham credits his club with setting a high bar for community involvement. “When I joined, I realized that this is a club of vibrant leaders. Ezra Teshome, our 2013-14 district governor, is well-known for his work to eliminate polio and to make fresh water available in Ethiopia. He’s been one of my inspirations. And Rosemary Aragon, a dynamic Rotarian in our club, encouraged me to become a leader myself. Now I’ve been the one steering our efforts toward helping children, which has always been most important to my wife, Judy, and me.”
What has given him the most satisfaction, he says, is his work with children in Vietnam, whose plight is a grim legacy of a war long past.
Is there any chance Rotary might return to that country? “I’m hopeful the day will come,” Pham says. “They’ve seen the work we do in orphanages and elsewhere. They need us and we need them – because no one teaches how to forgive and forget like the Vietnamese.” – Stephen Yafa