Kong Sundaramani, Honours Bachelor in Political Science, 3rd year
Internship country: Vietnam
Canadian NGO: Mines Action Canada
Local NGO: Association for Empowerment for Person with Disability
My internship with the Associations for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (AEPD) in Dong Hoi, Vietnam, allowed me to see the things I have been taught in university in a new light. For far too long, I took the theoretical form of knowledge I got from lectures for granted without having the chance to witness the real-world developments I was taught about or apply what I had learned to real-world settings. I would say that after going on my first fieldwork with the AEPD to interview the organization’s household recipients, it would be my major dressing-down moment for the perspectives I always had regarding non-governmental organizations and the work they do for rural community development, as well as my perspective on Vietnam in general.
This moment was inevitable, and I’m glad that my international internship arrived during my international internship by the end of my third year as a university student. Before my university years, I always held this short-sighted belief that theoretical knowledge was the only type of knowledge necessary for my future career. That is, I took the fact that being a university student who will get a degree will guarantee a firm foundation in the job market when I search for a relevant career to my degree. This dogmatic view led me not to do any volunteer work or try to apply for an internship of any kind until the end of my second year of university. Until then, I relied heavily on class lectures without stepping into the real world to grasp the matter I was learning about at hand. For this reason, I also retained a flawed perception about the work non-government organizations (NGOs) do, especially on community development. That was my initial impression when I discovered the Faculty of Social Science International Internship Program, and its list of partners comprised NGOs. It is tempting to believe that NGOs serve only as a voice for the people, urging governments to do a better job of caring for the disadvantaged people in underrepresented regions. Upon seeing the chance provided by Mines Action Canada and the AEPD in Vietnam, I perceived that my participation would make minimal difference, all due to my prejudicial thoughts on NGOs, and that Vietnam was a socialist society; its government must be doing its work to provide welfare services to its population. I took the internship opportunity nonetheless, because there was this innate desire in me to make a difference in the world as a political science student, and it really could not hurt to gain new experience as well as apply what I have learned during my university lectures. The truth is much more complicated and ambiguous than my initial perception formed by my years at university. Little did I know that my goal of making society a livable place for everyone was about to be realized to its fullest during these three months.
My views drastically shifted the moment I arrived at the AEPD office in Dong Hoi. Before I did any work, my AEPD supervisor told me to check the AEPD’s Facebook page and its governance handbook. I realized there and then that their mission, as well as the projects that they have done, is quite a departure from the perception that I had before I arrived.
The AEPD is a non-governmental organization that aims to assist and empower people with disabilities to overcome barriers and live a sustainably fulfilling life that also contributes to the communities they live in. Their model of operation is peer support at the community level across the province (AEPD, 2026). The city they operate in is Dong Hoi, which is in the Quang Tri province. Located in the central and coastal region of the country, the city and its peripheries are plagued by climate disasters, making disadvantaged people, such as people with disabilities, the most vulnerable to these yearly occurrences.
The province is home to around 34,000-50,000 people with disabilities (PWDs). These figures are driven by the legacies of the Vietnam War (known as the “American War” by Vietnamese locals), specifically the US military’s mobilization of a substance to kill crops called Agent Orange, which can severely deform the victims' bodies, and, of course, landmines (Vietnam+, 2025). The effects of Agent Orange are passed down through genetics, making the trauma an intergenerational crisis. As for landmines, these arbitrarily placed weapons can be left unscathed during the war, but can activate once the locals take a step on these weapons. The American War itself is over, but some Vietnamese locals are still wrestling with the traumas of war to this day. These factors, along with the local institutions’ struggle or outright neglect to provide welfare services to protect the disadvantaged, prompted the AEPD to interfere on the issue to give PWDs and ethnic minorities some assistance, thus bolstering their resilience to help them combat and recover their lives that these disasters took away. In contrast to just providing lip service to the government and campaigning on social media to raise awareness about persons with disabilities’ rights, they are the ones who lay the groundwork for rural community development. And I was fortunate to witness the projects they conducted to improve people’s lives in Quang Tri, the province I am interning in.
On Friday of my second week working for the AEPD, me, along with some AEPD outreach workers, and another volunteer, went to interview some recipients of the NGO’s Bread for the World Initiative. The interviewees were from communal households near the Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park, a UNESCOL world heritage site. Recipients received comprehensive assistance from the AEPD in establishing a sustainable lifestyle to restore their dignity as people and make meaningful contributions to erode any barriers they had before the AEPD assisted them. For this initiative, the AEPD espoused an agribusiness model to rural households to stabilize and increase their monthly income. According to the data from AEPD’s interviews, most households that adopted farm animals for commerce were barely making 500k Vietnamese Dong per month. After the AEPD assistance, they were making well over 1.4 million Vietnamese Dong. Moreover, the AEPD assisted these households in creating a network of communication for households to communicate whenever they require assistance or to exchange experiences, such as how to transport pork meat to the market, or how to prevent with pesticides from consuming the plants that will be sold to the markets. Just examining the premise of the AEPD’s Bread for the World Program and being present on the scene gave me a new perception of community-based development non-government organizations, or just about any NGOs.
The AEPD does more than advocacy work or campaigning to raise awareness about people with disabilities; in fact, they also function to bear the Vietnamese government’s responsibility to care for the disadvantaged people, because even a socialist government can sometimes overlook the precarious situation in rural Vietnam, ranging from the disparity between people with no disabilities and PWDs’ vulnerability to climate disasters. This experience also highlights the limitations of relying solely on theoretical knowledge outlined in university textbooks before entering the job market without any experience. By shunning any activities during university that will complement your real-world application experience, you are willingly keeping your worldviews narrow, which is something a social science student should, under no circumstances, do. As a political science student, I see the merits in keeping my mind open to more than one perspective, which is a non-positivist ontological worldview. Doing so enhances our knowledge about the subject matter, in my case, the functions of non-government organizations. Reading textbooks and headlines gives us the general idea of what NGOs are, but having the chance to witness their work boots-on-the-ground can be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to understand their functions and the world they serve. The contrast between textbooks or news and real-life witnesses is extraordinary.
I immediately thought of the second pre-departure workshop training provided by the FSS. During that session, we discussed Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDx speech about the danger of a single story. In her speech, she talked about how growing up and living by a perception she had from a story by a Western author limited her knowledge about her native society. She spent some time never challenging herself by stepping away from that perspective. I relate to her testimony because, as I stated before, I had this rigid view of non-profit organizations and their work. My knowledge on this topic is shaped by university lectures and media headlines, and is never based on in-person experience working with them. Right now, during my internship, my perspective on NGO work and Vietnam has drastically changed. Sometimes, or most of the time, it is the NGOs themselves that lay the groundwork for community development in a certain region of a country that is overlooked by the government. As for Vietnam, travelling the country or simply walking to work every day made me see that the truth is also more nuanced. Yes, it is a socialist society where welfare programs are a pillar, but just like anywhere else, sometimes there can be a lack of political will to completely implement them everywhere. Because of this, Vietnam’s wealth gap and quality of life disparity are indeed low compared to other countries, but they still exist across the country.
Overall, I am very glad that I took the opportunity to work in Vietnam for the AEPD. Being in a country out of my comfort zone broadened my vision of the world. Any student of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa should take any international internship opportunity for a university experience like no other. If the university has not already opened your eyes for you to be receptive to the bigger picture, then this internship program certainly will. University gives you theoretical knowledge, but an internship will also give you practical experience. You may step out of your safe bubble, but you will become a better citizen of the world.