Shelton Scholars Travel to Vietnam for Biennial International Service Trip

During their spring break, the Shelton Scholars travelled to Vietnam for their biennial service trip. The trip was the culmination of a year-long exploration of leadership lessons in cultural humility covered during the program’s seminars throughout the academic term.

The service component of this year’s trip was facilitated in partnership with the Children of Vietnam, a non-profit organization that strives to lift children out of poverty by eliminating barriers within Vietnamese communities.

Alongside the Children of Vietnam, the Shelton Scholars spent time working with children and visiting affiliated students in rural communities. The Scholars spent time with two groups of beneficiaries and programs within the organization. They met with the Bright Scholars, which is a program that assists students in earning a university degree. Students also engaged with mothers from the Empowering Single Mothers Initiative, which provides support for single mothers at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.

They also participated in a bicycle tour of Da Nang, where they were able to tour and learn more about the Children of Vietnam programs. The experiences provided students an understanding of how the organization actively works with their community to address challenges and promote wellness for local children.

During the trip, the Scholars also attended Children of Vietnam’s annual gala, where they met  the organization’s founder and president Benjamin C. Wilson, who is an alum of NC State University.

Want to see a glimpse into the trip? Check out this trip video diary from rising second-year Shelton Scholar Chloe Hammonds.

The decision to travel to Vietnam sprouted from a personal connection from Shelton Scholar Sarah Eakes ‘25. Eakes and her family have spent years volunteering with Rotary International, a global service organization. With her Greensboro-based chapter of Rotary International, Eakes has participated in annual fundraisers that have supported the Children of Vietnam, which is how she became aware of the organization’s mission and work. 

“I felt like Children of Vietnam’s values and what they do that is service-oriented aligned really well with what we do here at the Shelton Center,” Eakes said. “We put a lot of focus on what you gain from service and how you can impact others, and that is a lot of what Children of Vietnam does. So, I felt like it would be really impactful for us as Shelton Scholars to see first-hand the kind of work that a non-profit organization does and the exposure to the level of service you can build.”

Eakes shared information regarding the Children of Vietnam with Shelton Leadership Center Assistant Director for Scholars and Special Programs, who believed that this organization would make an excellent partner for this year’s international trip

“The Scholars had a lot of discussions this year about how values-based leaders can practice humility. In our seminars, we talked about leading with humility on an interpersonal level in relationships and teams, all the up to leading with cultural humility on a global scale. Partnering with Children of Vietnam was an incredible opportunity for our Scholars to see that in action,” Annaka Sikkink, Program Director for the Shelton Scholars, said. “Students were able to observe how staff had built meaningful and respectful relationships with their beneficiaries. They also saw a multicultural organization leading with cultural humility as they welcomed and collaborated with Americans and many others. Children of Vietnam does phenomenal work, and they were so wonderful helping our students learn and serve.”

As a Shelton Scholars cohort, students spent months preparing for the international trip by co-leading seminars for their peers regarding Vietnamese customs and traditions as well as how they could apply the lessons of cultural humility to their own approaches during the trip.

“It was really important to understand the cultural aspects that we were going to be exposed to in Vietnam, and understand the ways on how you should be respectful and how you can show humility,” Eakes said. “I felt like the best way to show cultural humility and why we focused on it this year was to walk into a non-profit organization in another country and be very open-minded to the differences between our culture and theirs. And having a greater understanding of how we collaborate even though we have those cultural differences.”

Those lessons were apparent in the activities that the Scholars engaged in, according to rising second-year Shelton Scholar Michael Llaury.

“Visiting a country and a continent I’ve never been to was especially eye-opening. It also changed my understanding of what traveling means. Traveling is to explore the cultures of where you’re going, and it’s not just to enjoy your own time,” Llaury said. “So when we traveled to Vietnam, it let me see leadership and community work in a broader sense outside of North Carolina.”

Outside of service, the Scholars immersed themselves in Vietnamese cultural experiences with trips to My Khe Beach, Marble Mountain, Hoi An, Da Nang, the Ba Na Hills Hand Bridge as well as participating in a cooking class and lantern-making class and other excursions.

The Shelton Scholars program completes international service trips every other year, and previous destinations have included London, Prague and more. Each Shelton Scholar typically completes two international service trips during their time in the program.