VietAction 2014 and Beyond

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The Power of Leaders Who Focus on Solving Problems Can you get people excited about the problems that excite you?

Here is the acceptance speech from our President, Diep Vuong, after being named the 2018 Global Citizen laureate by Henley & Partners. Diep traces her beginnings as a stateless refugee to Harvard graduate to co-founder of Pacific Links Foundation, fighting to prevent the trafficking of vulnerable Vietnamese all over the world. Special thanks to award-winning Vietnamese-American author and longtime friend Andrew Lam, as well as Diep’s college classmate Hugh Taylor, for helping to craft this moving speech that is especially relevant to today’s ongoing refugee crises all over the world.

“Good evening. It’s an extraordinary honor to be here tonight, amongst such esteemed guests. I can honestly say that being in attendance at an event like this, much less to be the recipient of the Global Citizenship award this year, would have been hard for me to imagine as a young child growing up in wartime Vietnam.

My journey to the wider world started with the end of the vietnam war. When I was 16, I escaped on a crowded river boat out to sea from Vietnam. My family had been on the losing side of the War and we had no choice but to leave. Those few days not knowing whether we would survive, or whether we would die of thirst or starvation, or worse, was enough to teach me a lifelong lesson about what it is to be a vulnerable, displaced, stateless person.

We were rescued at sea by a Dutch oil exploration boat and brought to a refugee camp in Singapore. Eventually, we made our way to Richmond, Virginia. I worked diligently to learn English, to earn money for rent and food, to finish high school and I was lucky enough to be accepted to Harvard. My upward mobility, the American way, was, in a sense, assured.

But the memory of my escape, and the circumstances in which I became an American were never far from my mind. So I decided to come back to Vietnam to do what I could. This is where I have chosen to focus my energies, to answer in part what I believe a kinder, global world must offer our human race.

Human trafficking, a growing epidemic, represents one of the most appalling consequences of globalization. Ours today is a world where a girl can be sold for as little as $400 dollars. It is a world where young women, and increasingly young men, are seen as mere commodities to be used and traded.

Pacific Links Foundation has spent 15 years protecting the rights of survivors who were enslaved by human trafficking. We implement programs to give opportunities for economic advancement to young people vulnerable to such enslavement. We promote education as an empowerment tool out of poverty and out of the reach of traffickers.

Take the story of Sao, for example. She was kidnapped from the mountainous Northern Vietnam and sold into China as a wife at age of 15. She was forced to have a child with a man twice her age who after she had given birth was going to sell her to another family. She managed to escape back to Vietnam, but sadly, had to leave her child behind. Staying in our shelter, Sao grew more confident and renewed her dream of becoming a doctor. After three years of incredible hard work, she graduated among the top in her class and currently enrolled in a medical college in Saigon. Sao dreams of one day opening a clinic to help others and especially to help girls like herself.

Indeed, over the years, I have watched in amazement as many of our recipients transitioned from a life of dire poverty and vulnerability to a life as an entrepreneur, a chef, a teacher, a fashion designer, etc. In other words, productive and dignified members of society.

Today, I stand before you as proof that given the proper opportunities, a vulnerable, stateless human being can become a global citizen.

While I was among the lucky few who successfully transitioned from a precarious situation, to being someone who can travel the world and effect change, so many others continue to live in that state of fear and deprivation, with little hope of a better life.

Our world is at a crossroad. Whether it will descend toward chaos or rise toward an open society with sustainable, equitable growth will depend entirely on how we all can act, individually, and collectively, to address its many problems, and chief among them, modern-day slavery.

I want to say thank you for this award, to express my gratitude for the opportunities that I have been given and to ask you to take part in creating a safer global society where vulnerable people will be given a real chance to live and thrive.”

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