Meet the Volunteer: Lea Pham

“I found Zharity through the Facebook group “International Moms of Switzerland“ a few years ago, and I thought that when my kids got older, I would want to get involved. 

Then in October 2023, I saw a Facebook post from Zharity looking for hats, beanies and gloves for their winter collection, and I thought, “This is perfect, I have a lot of beanies to donate”. In the end, I donated 100 self-crocheted beanies and headbands, along  with 11 ikea moving boxes with toys and clothes. 

They told me that Zharity had never received so many donations from one single household before. They were impressed with how organized all my donations were (this was all my husband, he is very, very organized), and they asked me if I would like to join Zharity and help to organize donated items at the storage unit.

I started volunteering in November 2023, taking over organizing the storage unit and building up a “Facebook Online Store”, where our community partners can browse and reserve available items for their clients.

My big urge to help comes from being a refugee myself and realizing how lucky my family and I were that we could flee Vietnam and start a new life in Austria. I was able to grow up in Austria, study whatever I wanted and now live in Switzerland. I don’t take that for granted and I know very well how blessed and lucky my family and I were. We came to Austria with nothing, just a box with a few belongings and pictures from Vietnam and people were so kind in that little Tyrolean mountain village, they helped us with everything. 

I want to pay forward the kindness that was shown to my family and me by helping others, but most importantly, helping others just makes me happy!”

Join Lea and the Zharity team by signing up to volunteer with us!