Good morning friends,
I hope this email finds you healthy and well. How fast time seems to be moving these days. As summer break comes to a close for students and their loved ones around the world and a new school year is right around the corner, it’s a great opportunity to share with you a little bit about our trip this year visiting Viet Nam.
In July, we held an art camp for the girls in the village of Son Tan. It was a designated time for just the girls to come be together for a day of art, music, and dancing. Small groups worked together to create one large project. The entire day was filled with silliness and laughter, and hopefully you can feel some of that through the pictures we’ll share with you all.
Additionally, the girls’ art class in Cam Tan continues to build on each previous week and during our time this summer we were able to spend time with the girls in the class as well as visit with them in some of their homes and meet the families these wonderful girls are being brought up by.
This was the first time in almost 5 years that I had the opportunity to take the summer trip that Sara and members of our volunteer team take annually. I was happy to see the programs thriving. The growth that was most impressive was that of the relationships with the students and their teachers.
The way the girls are responding, opening up, and really loving both our art teachers, Lien and Trang, is truly inspiring. From afar at times, it is easy to get disillusioned, to wonder out loud, “What are we doing? Are we making any impact on the lives of these kids?”
It didn’t take very long for me to find those answers while I was there. The kids keep showing up, each week, for themselves, for each other, for the teachers they love seeing. They work hard and are proud of what they create and look forward to sharing it with those around them. Sure, there are things you can do to measure for impact; there are surveys to create and data to collect, but I witnessed joy and laughter and a palpable levity when I was surrounded by the kids in our program. If we can give them anything, we can always give them a place to be a kid, a place to be safe, and a place they know they can come to for support.
We just want to thank you for your support which has continued to drive our art program forward!
Thank you so much.
Take care,
Patrick and the Rock-Paper-Scissors Team
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Hello Friends,
We hope this email finds you well. We are sending you a quarterly update on our art program in Vietnam. We currently have 80 girls attending art classes on a weekly basis and will soon be adding more boys and girls thanks to all of you!
Over the last few months, our art teacher Trang has been doing many amazing projects with the kids, such as this collaborative owl project. She’s been teaching the girls how to work together and across age-groups. They were very proud of what they had put together. In between Trang has also been focusing on teaching some very important life skills, such as brushing your teeth! We’re sharing some photos of the tooth-brushing, life-skills project and some very silly girls and their artwork with you today! Yes, and just a reminder, please go brush your teeth. Ha! Ha! The girls certainly found it all very funny!
It’s amazing when children get a chance to express their creativity freely and dive into making art, they have so much fun! Not only are the students gaining confidence compared to when they first started with us, but they are making friends, loving our teachers, and certainly finding the space to be silly (which we encourage!). We should all remind ourselves that silliness versus seriousness is so important for kids, because it certainly goes away quickly in life.
You may also be wondering about what else we do for the girls who participate in our art classes? Well, the younger students attend weekly reading time with peer mentors, and 2nd-12th grade girls are tutored in traditional subjects such as math, chemistry and literature after school and all summer long. We provide not only fun art classes to build confidence, and self-esteem, but also the help for the girls to be successful in school.
We just want to thank you for your support which has continued to be the motor behind our art program!
Thank you so much,
Sara and the Rock-Paper-Scissor’s Team
Links:
Hello Friends,
This is a quick end of the year update to all of you, our wonderful supporters and art lovers. Thank you for all your support this year, and to many of you for many years as monthly supporters. You continue to help us expand, providing weekly, year-round classes to many more students compared to when we first started! We couldn’t do any of this without you!
Today we want to share some photos of our new students in the village of Cam Tan. If you remember from our last report, we started this new after school art program in August for 20 girls, mostly ethnic minority. When they first came to our class, the girls were super shy and not quite sure what to do or how to act because normally school is very strict, but as you can see that is changed! Everyone has relaxed, acting a bit sillier, and having a great time together and with our new art teacher Trang. Remember Trang? She was one of our first art students back when we started the non-profit! She is now a university graduate and a certified art teacher and has taken a full-time job with us! We are so lucky to have her.
In 2022 thanks to everyone’s support, we were able to provide after school art and music classes to 129 students year-round. We were able to provide new bicycles and helmets to 520 girls, repairs for 189 bicycles, tutoring in math, literature, chemistry, physics, Vietnamese, and English to 44 ethnic minority girls, and create a new computer lab at the little village school we have worked at all these years. So, it’s finally been a happy year again after the pandemic!
Happy New Year to you all and thank you again!
Sara and the Rock-Paper-Scissor’s Team
Links:
Hello Friends,
I just returned from a trip to Vietnam, along with a few long-time volunteers! This was the first year since 2019 that we have been able to travel with volunteers to Vietnam because of the pandemic, and it was so great working face-to-face with our Vietnamese staff and teachers instead of on zoom!
I am so excited to share, that despite the pandemic, our programs in Vietnam including our art program have been running so well, thanks to our wonderful teachers and staff, and our kids are thriving! In fact, while I was there, we added another after school art class at a very small school in another ethnic minority village, called Cam Tan. This expands our art program to four villages now, with over 80 students attending year-round. The new class will support 20-25 girls, who will attend class every Friday afternoon throughout the year. See the photos of their beautiful artwork so far!
Over the last couple of years, and through the success of our Bike for Girls Program, and now after-school tutoring for girls, we have decided to focus our art education also on girls. Our goal is to encourage girls to express themselves freely, helping them to build more independence, confidence and self-esteem. We have found that having girls only classes has made a difference for our students in terms of their expression in their artwork, how they apply themselves in the classroom, and speak to our mentors and teachers. In many of the villages the girls have learned not to speak up when there are boys in the classroom, which is one of the reasons why we have decided to make this change. We are also considering trying out a boy’s only class in one of the villages. In the end we feel that the boys need just as much mentoring as the girls to become successful members of their communities.
While we were in Vietnam, at the beginning of August, we held our annual two-day arts camp for our students like we had pre-Covid! We had over 60 girls attend the first day, and 150 boys and girls attend the second day. We played lots of games, music, and completed fun art projects. It was a great time!
Thank you again everyone for your amazing support of our small organization, it means a great deal to all of us.
Thank you so much!
Sara and the Rock-Paper-Scissor’s Team
Links:
Hello Friends,
This is a quick update to all our wonderful supporters, friends and art lovers. Thank you! Again, a little light for our students has been the care from all of you and your wonderful support of our teachers in Vietnam.
We wanted to share that through your support, along with a small grant from an organization in Canada called, Give a Hand, we have been able to start our art class again for primary school girls within the ethnic minority community we work in, as well as a Story Time program for siblings of the girls who are too young to attend the art class, but come along with their sisters to class! So far, we have run these programs throughout the month of April with great success. We have recruited high school and college-age students from outside the community to be mentors and readers to help us run the programs and to connect and support the girls. So far so good! All students and mentors are very much loving both the story time and art classes.
At the same time, our art classes in Cam Duc Village continue on a weekly basis as well as our classes in Hue City. We are working on expanding both programs, especially the one in Hue to include another ethnic minority village there where we will be holding art classes for girls. Our programs in Cam Duc and in the city of Hue are for both boys and girls.
As the founders of Rock-Paper-Scissors Children’s Fund, my two daughters, Sophie, and Phoebe, and myself are usually heading to Vietnam with a group of volunteer artists and musicians during the summer, but we have not been able to do this since the start of Covid. We are hoping to make the trip in June or July of this year, with a few volunteers! So hopefully the next time I send you all an update, it is from Vietnam directly!
Happy rest of the spring! Thank you again everyone for your amazing support of our small organization, it means a great deal to all of us.
Sara and the Rock-Paper-Scissor’s Team
Links:
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