Local News in Brief : Irvine : Students to Work With Refugees in Hong Kong

Four UC Irvine students will spend Christmas break in Hong Kong as part of what is believed to be the first U.S. student volunteer project in an Indochinese refugee camp.

The students, members of Project Ngoc (the Pearl Project), are Trinh Do, 23, a graduate student in electrical engineering; Garvin Melles, 27, a graduate student in mathematics; Duc Au, 21, a junior in economics, and Lam Vu, 21, a senior electrical engineering major.

Van Tran, project chairman and UC Irvine student, said the student organization raised $3,500 to help pay travel costs and expenses.

“We’re very excited because it’s the first time ever that a students’ organization has sent volunteers to a Southeast Asian refugee camp to help with social work on a first-hand basis,” Tran said.

In addition to raising money for the trip, students also arranged for their passports and negotiated with the British government for permission to enter Camp Chimawan, located on an island about 45 minutes by boat from Hong Kong, Tran said.

The volunteers will spend three weeks at the camp. They were invited by Catholic Charities (Caritas) Hong Kong.

The camp has about 10,000 refugees from North and South Vietnam, Tran said, adding that each volunteer might have to work with 1,500 to 2,000 refugees.

Project Ngoc is a student-based humanitarian group dedicated to helping Indochinese refugees. In addition to the volunteer effort at the camps, the organization collected more than $1,000 in donated children’s toys, which have been shipped to the refugee camp.