Why the team returns to Diệu Viên Pagoda in Huế every year
Three visits to Diệu Viên Pagoda in Huế in 2024, 2025 and 2026, and what the head of the delegation said about returning every year.
Diệu Viên Pagoda in Huế is a special stop on the Compassionate Hands Foundation's charity trips. This page sets the three visits, in 2024, 2025 and 2026, side by side, together with what the full 2026 film says about Diệu Viên, so the reader can see why the team returns here every year. Every figure and statement below is taken from the videos. Where the captions are unclear we have left the detail out rather than guess.
Three visits, three years in a row
In 2024, on 13 March, the narration calls it the final stop of the trip across Vietnam. In 2025 the team came to the pagoda on 22 March, after the road from Đà Nẵng to Huế. In 2026, on 21 March, the narration says it was the 10th gift stop and the one that closed the trip.
| Year | Monthly rice | Wheelchairs | Children | Video and time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Monthly rice was given; no amount stated | No number given; he said more wheelchairs are given here than elsewhere and it is never enough | He said many students here are poor and trying hard to study; this time unplanned gifts were given | 2024, 02:49 and 03:58 |
| 2025 | The narration says 270 regular rice books | The narration says 40 | The narration mentions small children with sores on their skin and serious illness | 2025, 12:46 and 03:25 |
| 2026 | No number given in this part | No number given in this part | The master of ceremonies said 52 children in very sad circumstances, with disabilities from Agent Orange or with illness | 2026, 05:12; 2026 full film, 118:13 |
Why the team returns every year
This was stated plainly in both 2025 and 2026. At most other pagodas the team returns only every three or four years, sometimes longer. At Diệu Viên it returns every year. In 2026 the head of the delegation added that here the team gives two or three times as much as at other places, and that even with such frequent visits it still feels like not enough:
We return every year and help two or three times as much as other places.
Head of the delegation, 2026
In 2025 a member of the delegation named three things he or she called special care for this pagoda. First, the team comes yearly instead of every three or four years. Second, the number of wheelchairs: the speaker said a place usually receives a dozen or so, twenty, thirty at most, and Diệu Viên more. Third, the number of gifts: about 200 elsewhere, more here. The exact figures for the last two could not be heard clearly in the automatic captions, so we do not state them.
The 2026 narration adds that each year the foundation rotates through 10 pagodas, but Diệu Viên is an exception, visited every year, "not because of a rule but because the heart does not allow us to pass it by".
The children in the courtyard
In 2024 the narrator described mothers carrying their children and children carrying their mothers to receive gifts. One baby stopped crying when a team member held him.
In 2025 the narration told of a mother whose children live with mental illness, and of small children with sores on their skin. Some first-time volunteers wept; the narrator said they return every year and still cannot hold back tears.
In 2026 the narration said that every year the team sees one child who comes to receive gifts, and that mothers fan their children in the Huế sun. In the full 2026 film this part runs from about minute 113 to minute 128 and ends the trip at Diệu Viên.
A closing word
The three videos cannot explain why so many small children are ill; the 2025 narrator said the team can only ask and has no answer, and the head of the delegation in 2026 spoke of each person's karma. What the team can do is return, year after year, bringing wheelchairs, rice and gifts from kind people far away. We record this so that readers may know a pagoda the foundation hopes to visit for as long as it has the chance.