Remember Hieu? Last year, one REI volunteer family decided to love a little boy in Vietnam named Hieu and because of it, today, Hieu can walk. Watch Hieu's story.

Our REI-Vietnam team has put forth a real effort this year to capture the REI story in video. Take a few minutes to watch their video "What it Takes" and learn one practical way in which REI develops people in Vietnam: through training national healthcare professionals. REI-Vietnam's volunteer doctors and surgeons talk about how and why they train Vietnamese doctors. They are building Vietnamese people to build Vietnam.

Click this link to watch the video!

REI sends two types of people overseas: resident professionals, who live and work in an emerging nation long-term, and visiting professionals, who spend a few weeks in a country volunteering their skills and knowledge in their various fields to local professionals.

Taking a small break from our series on poverty, we would like to honor some of these volunteers, who just recently took a trip to Vietnam, facilitated by REI-Vietnam staff member Cliff. In October, Cliff took a team of six doctors specializing in gastroenterology (the digestive system), cardiology (the heart), pulmonology (the lungs and other respiratory functions) to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City for a two-week volunteer trip.

Dr. Craig Johnson, a surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA and his daughter traveled to Vietnam last November with REI's Pediatric Team as volunteers. In a most remarkable "coincidence," on this trip Dr. Johnson met Dr. Nhat, the head of Orthopedics at Hue Central Hospital.

Dr. Nhat remembered Dr. Johnson from a special training program in the USA they both had received a couple of decades ago, and a budding friendship emerged. Soon Dr. Johnson became aware of a special case confronting Dr. Nhat – a young boy born without a left femur. This young boy made such an impression on Dr. Johnson and his teenage daughter that they returned to the USA determined to do something about the situation...

Welcome to the new and improved Resource Exchange International website and to the first EVER REI blog!

Learn more about REI and join the REI community by reading and discussing the stories we share on our blog. This week we're featuring the photojournalism of Courtney Potter, a photographer who recently went to Vietnam to record the training our world-class ENT surgeon volunteers gave to local Vietnamese surgeons.