By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
AFTER a career spent in finance dealing regularly with millionaires, Rob Constable finally saw how the other half lived.
It was during a visit to Vietnam about seven years ago that the finance employee from Narre Warren dropped everything to travel across the globe, and soon found himself living in an orphanage known as Huong Duong in the coastal city of Nha Trang.
Looking back on it, Rob fondly refers to his decision to travel to Vietnam as his “blind leap”.
“It was about 2007, I took long service leave and went over there to go to an orphanage and went and stayed over there,” he said.
“I basically just came out of the orphanage and thought I’d really like to keep getting involved with helping these kids.”
True to his word Rob soon opened a local Vietnamese restaurant in Nha Trang which he named ‘Lanterns’, and now donates the profits from the restaurant to Huong Duong and several other orphanages throughout Vietnam.
“That was after I finished the two months at orphanage. Living over there I got to know friends and I knew some people who were working in restaurants and I thought I could employ them to run a business,” Rob said.
“There were just 35 kids in this orphanage (Huong Duong) and it gave me a chance to go back and visit them.
“I wanted to be involved in a restaurant in Nha Trang and over the six years the business has grown and we now actually work with 550 kids and 13 orphanages and we were able to help more people.”
Rob is also a franchisee of Rolld in Fountain Gate, a Vietnamese street food store, which he hopes will allow him to inform others about his involvement in Vietnam itself and garner as much support for his overseas efforts as possible.
And when it comes to Vietnam involvement there aren’t many people like Rob, who now spends six months each year in what he can now comfortably call his second home.
“I was in finance talking to our clients who had millions and they talk to you about saving tax and it wasn’t until I saw these kids in the orphanages and they had nothing,” he said.
“But they had these beaming faces and these kids are actually showing us how to live life.
“There’s something wrong with the balance of life.”
