LUDLOW, Vt. – At its recent meeting, the Ludlow Rotary Club (LRC) heard from an American consultant, Trevor Weltman, about his activities in Southeast Asia. Weltman is a partner in and developmental consultant for Clickable Impact, headquartered in Hanoi, Vietnam. Clickable Impact is an internationally based company that provides development and sustainable tourism planning.
In describing his activities, Weltman has spent the last 15 years involved with Southeast Asia. He noted that living abroad had caused him to feel very humble about living with a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds. He specifically commented that, “It’s hard to imagine how different cultures and people are, yet how much alike we all are.”
While discussing what it is like to live abroad, he also believed that America, his native country, has changed when viewed in the context of the rest of the world. One comment exploring this feeling was that, “The American dream is alive and well, except in the United States.” He went on to express his personal feeling that America’s preeminence in the world had decreased.
When asked how the people in Vietnam felt about Americans, Weltman cited a personal recollection.
When he first visited the mother of his new bride in Hanoi, he was greeted with more love and affection than his wife and her sisters. “They like Americans,” was his conclusion. In respect to our involvement in the Vietnam War, he cited that, to the Vietnamese, it was the last step in a century-old campaign against colonialism, noting that the country had been occupied by many European nations, as well as other Southeast Asian countries, before it gained independence.
Weltman himself has an interesting background. Born in Michigan, he has spent considerable time in China and India, developing a knowledge of Mandarin and several other Asian languages. He worked with Google and the State Department prior to joining Clickable Impact.
One of his current projects that he finds extremely interesting involves helping an island of 20,000 people, Palau, an independent country located in Oceania in the westernmost part of the Caroline Islands chain, develop a carbon-negative environment.
He and his wife now have a home in Vermont, raising two daughters. While he spends considerable time overseas, he and his family are delighted to call Vermont home.