Health & Education for Vietnamese Youth
Empowering Vietnamese youth by providing medical care and education
About Us
Our Mission
We are a nonprofit organization that partners with Shriner's Hospital to provide education and medical care to Vietnamese youth. We work to identify children up to age 18 in Vietnam who have suffered from medical conditions and do not have access to adequate medical care and empower them by providing healthcare and education.
Our Roots: Joe Bodanza
Health & Education for Vietnamese Youth (HEVY) was started in honor of Joe Bodanza, or “Mr. Joe,” as he was called.
When Joe Bodanza visited Vietnam five years ago, he encountered a young boy severely crippled by polio. Struck by the child's plight, Bodanza paid for a plane ticket to the United States and arranged for the boy's medical treatment. That act of charity was the beginning of a mission, and since that first trip, Bodanza has brought 50 Vietnamese children to the Worcester and Boston area for medical care. In June of 1999, Bodanza received the "Heroes Among Us" award for his efforts. This award, sponsored by the Boston Celtics Charitable Foundation, honors individuals across New England who have made exceptional and lasting contributions to their communities.
Throughout his life, he started and ran the Child Medical Connection for many years until his passing in 2016.
Child Medical Connection’s main function was to identify Vietnamese children who had severe medical conditions that were un-treatable in Vietnam. “Mr. Joe” would sponsor the child and guardian to the U.S. for medical treatment at Shriner's Hospital in Boston, MA. In his later years, Joe provided many Vietnamese children with educational assistance. He helped hundreds of Vietnamese youth to receive medical and educational assistance.
In honor of Mr. Joe, Thuy Trask, Tom Mathers and Glenn Hartmann initiated Health & Education for Vietnamese Youth to continue the good work.
Thank You
Please join us in providing support and assistance to these very deserving kids. Whether you help through monetary donations, volunteering, or spreading our mission, we thank you. We couldn't accomplish our goals without the help of supporters like you.
Our Team
Thuy Trask, President
Van Nguyen, Vice President
Van Nguyen, Vice President
Thuy Trask has worked at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Plymouth, Massachusetts as a cook since 1972. She has sponsored a child for medical treatment at Shriners hospital and served as a volunteer for Child Medical and Educational Connection for 11 years with Mr. Joe Bodanza in Leominster, Massachusetts.
Van Nguyen, Vice President
Van Nguyen, Vice President
Van Nguyen, Vice President
Van graduated from Cambridge College with a Master’s Degree in Management. He is the founder of the Springfield Vietnamese American Civic Association, and he is currently working for the Department of Mental Health.
Tom Mathers, Treasurer
Van Nguyen, Vice President
Tom Mathers, Treasurer
Tom is retired from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he worked as Associate Controller/Bursar. He is a past Treasurer of Hampshire Community United Way and a Vietnam combat veteran. He has sponsored four Vietnamese youth for medical treatment at Shriners Hospital in Massachusetts.
Glenn Hartmann, Clerk
Thuy Nguyen, Board Member
Tom Mathers, Treasurer
Glenn works at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst as Assistant Controller. Glenn is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and has extensive experience working with non-profit organizations. He serve as the board president of Stavros Center for Independent Living, an organization working to help persons with disabilities to live independently in their own homes. He has sponsored children from Vietnam for medical treatment at Shriners Hospital in Massachusetts.
Anh Nguyen, Board Member
Thuy Nguyen, Board Member
Thuy Nguyen, Board Member
Anh works as a Business Operations Analyst at Dell EMC. She graduated from Bentley, and For 3 years, Anh was a project manager and participant at the Bentley Service Learning Center for Pax Populi, an interactive web-based ESOL program between Bentley students and students at the Kandahar Institute of Modern Studies in Afghanistan. Service Learning is an an embedded service option that links academic courses to civic engagement.
Thuy Nguyen, Board Member
Thuy Nguyen, Board Member
Thuy Nguyen, Board Member
Thuy owns her own beauty spa and graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a degree in Biology and a Masters in Education. She is an entrepreneur with her own lash business.
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Together, we can empower the youth.
