(SOURCE: NOLA.com)

BY DESIREE STENNETT | Staff writer Aug 30, 2024
(Staff photo by John McCusker, The Times-Picayune | NOLA.com)

The past two summers, Hoi Tran, of Algiers, has looked forward to receiving the noodles, oyster sauce and other Vietnamese pantry staples from the service that brings them to his door.

But the best part is seeing 17-year-old Maddie Do and her family, he said through a translator.

Last week, Tran was one of over a dozen residents to benefit from Do's service, Cảm Ơn, which means "thank you" in Vietnamese. Do, a Vietnamese-American student at Academy of the Sacred Heart New Orleans, started Cảm Ơn last summer in a bid to provide culturally relevant foods and other items to Vietnamese-American residents in need.

Do also hopes to show gratitude to the elders who came before her.

“We have boxes of different types of Vietnamese food items, and we drive to each of the houses and hand-deliver each of these items,” she said. “I want to make sure that the people who aren't physically able to, let's say, drive to a church or drive to a distribution center to get food, are still able to get the essentials that they need."

Across the region, food banks and pantries feed hundreds of thousands of people who need help putting meals on the table every year. But when tasked with feeding a diverse community, providing cultural staples for everyone can be difficult, said Lindsay Hendrix, chief impact officer for Second Harvest Food Bank.

"We believe that the neighbor should have the option to choose what types of foods they want just like everyone else, whether you're in a charitable food system or not,” Hendrix said. “But to be able to meet the cultural, or even dietary, needs of certain community members makes it a lot more challenging as a food bank, particularly because we rely so heavily on donations and food donations that come in."

Organizations such as Do’s help fill the gap, Hendrix added.

Do said she got the idea to start Cảm Ơn after her godmother, who works for a food bank in Houston, told her about visiting Vietnamese families who received food from food pantries.

On the visits, her godmother would notice “piles and piles of food,” like cheese or peanut butter, sitting out untouched.

“Because for Vietnamese people, that's just not part of their diet," Do said.

When Do and her family first started delivering food last summer, they worked with staff and members at St. Joseph Catholic Church in the Woodlawn subdivision of Algiers to find people who most needed the help.

While many residents were hesitant to participate at first, they have since warmed up to Do, who visits the neighborhood regularly with her parents and her two siblings, 8-year-old Ben Do and 14-year-old Kenzie Do.

On a visit on Aug. 11, Trinh Pham thanked the 17-year-old for the food box. She then joked that her favorite drinks — not included in the box — are “Ensure and Bud Light.”

Laughing, Maddie Do told her she’d be sure to add those next time.

The Woodlawn subdivision is just 10 minutes from the English Turn neighborhood where the Dos live now. However, a half-century ago when her parents came to the U.S. as infants after the fall of Saigon in Vietnam, Maddie Do’s father, Diem Do, first settled in Woodlawn, along with dozens of other Vietnamese immigrants.

"It's surreal to come back almost 50 years later," he said. "We wanted to raise our kids to remember where they came from. That's why she chose to do this — to give back. I couldn't be more proud."

As Maddie Do starts her senior year in high school and prepares to go away to college, Ben and Kenzie said they hope to continue the project she started.

The Cảm Ơn founder said she hopes to see the service continue to grow and expand to neighborhoods in New Orleans East, where a larger enclave of Vietnamese families live. She said she hopes her efforts inspire others, from all cultures, to take on similar projects if they can.

Hendrix, with Second Harvest, said those projects help create healthy communities.

"Providing culturally relevant food is an equity issue," she said. "We can do our best to help to promote that and push that. But to achieve true equity, it's going to take a lot more than one organization. It's going to take so many community members seeing the value in serving one another in order to reach that ultimate goal."