Dang H. Nguyen, State Warden
April 2025
My Brother Knights,
Since last fall, I have been involved in a global wheelchair mission to Vietnam. I was recently appointed co-chair of this mission to Vietnam to work closely with Supreme Council Vietnamese Liaison and Immediate Past State Deputy of DC jurisdiction, Le Nguyen, to support the program’s logistics when Brother Le is not available. He and I held the first Vietnamese exemplification in Washington last December 2024 at St. Anthony’s church in Spokane where 7 new members were added to a round table for St. Charles council #8137. |
The goal for the Wheelchair Mission to Vietnam – A Life Changed Program was to raise $42,000 (280 wheelchairs purchased through the Global Wheelchair Mission). As of February 22, 2025, we had raised $39,487.00 (Thirty-Nine thousand four hundred eighty-seven dollars).
I am pleased to announce that during the weekend of March 9-10, we raised $2,352.00 to exceed our goal. A big thanks to Worthy District Deputy Renato Sacramento (DD15) and our membership recruitment team that helped raise this final amount at an event at St. George’s parish in Seattle. With this update, we raised $42,636 – exceeding our goal by $636.00. Between Chairman Le and I, we proposed to fund the excess amount toward the Veterans Hospital (VA) Wheelchair Program administered by DC Knights of Columbus Charities.
Later this summer, a delegation will be traveling to Vietnam for the distribution. The delegation will be funding our own travel arrangements, enabling all of the donations raised to go toward the purchase of the wheelchairs. There are 27 dioceses in Vietnam. We are partnering with Caritas Vietnam to coordinate distribution points and travel logistics throughout the country. Each diocese will receive 10 wheelchairs. The remaining 10 wheelchairs will be provided to a group of retired priests and nuns in Vietnam.
On behalf of the needy and disabled people of Vietnam, we thank you to all our generous donors and friends that supported this very special project!
To learn more about this mission, please view this video from a similar distribution in 2011. The video was produced by Supreme and was also supported by an article in June 2011 in Columbia magazine. Also, read this article and this article by the American Wheelchair Mission.
Dang Nguyen
State Warden