Hello Everyone,
Tomorrow is September 1st, and as I’m sure for all of you, like me, I’m feeling that the summer flew by. We were all very sad that for the second year in a row we were not able to bring our summer volunteers to work with our students in Vietnam, Covid-19 is keeping us apart. Unfortunately, we thought that by January 2022 we would be able to make a quick trip over to Vietnam, but Vietnam is now in a terrible state with all of the recent cases of Covid-19 there. We have been very scared for all of our families, children, and staff as things continue to worsen, and now most of our families are completely out of work receiving no income. Thanks to a donor, we will be able to provide 1-2 months of food supplies for the 150 families of Son Tan village where we work. Currently, there are no food sellers going to the remote village, and because the village is made up of ethnic minorities, they are often left behind by the government. We are doing our best to support our students there in whatever way that we can, unfortunately all of the kids are out of school. On top of all this, Vietnam now has the lowest vaccination rate of all Southeast Asian countries, with just 1.5% of the 98 million people living in the country vaccinated.
Our art program in Khanh Hoa closed for a month at the beginning of August, but our program in Hue City re-opened. Lockdowns in Vietnam seem to be happening where there are Covid outbreaks, so at the moment Hue has been open again, while most of the rest of the country is closed. For some non-covid good news I would like to share one story of one of our students in Hue, her name is Thuy and she is 18 years old.
Thuy started in our art program three years ago while she was in high school. She was born and raised in a village near Hue City, Thua Thien Hue province. Thuy has one younger brother and she lives with both of her parents. Thuy says that her parents have helped her to follow her dreams. Her mother, a teacher is a very traditional woman, and Thuy says she was very strict when it comes to educating her children, but also feels grateful to her mother for teaching her about a lot of good things about life. When Thuy joined our class, her mother didn’t agree with her wanting to pursue her love for art as her career, but she slowly began to understand it was Thuy’s dream to be an artist and began giving her support. The true love of a mother. Thuy says, “I couldn’t be who I am today without my mother. I want to thank her for everything.” For Mother’s Day, Thuy painted this beautiful picture of a mother and child.
Thank you all for making art classes available for students like Thuy. For all of you who have donated to us one time or many times, we are very grateful to you. The art program that you support not only provides a place for kids to come together, have fun, and be creative, but so much more. We support all of our kids with school supplies, and anything else in time of need, it’s a great supportive network for them to be a part of, thanks to you all.
Have a good start to the fall, and we wish you all health and safety from the pandemic,
Sara and the Rock-Paper-Scissor's Team
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Dear Friends,
Its spring and things are looking up here in the United States with our ability to be able to be vaccinated against deadly Covid19. Vietnam is still closed to foreigners, and just starting to vaccinate their health care workers, we are hoping that everyone there will find equal opportunity to get the vaccine soon, including all of our wonderful staff and students. In the meantime, all of our programs, our arts programs in both Khanh Hoa and Hue, and our bikes program continue to run smoothly with so many great updates for you that have happened this winter and spring.
As part of this update to you all, we want to share the story about one of our wonderful art teachers named Linh. We are currently raising money to be able to move Linh into a full time teaching position for us, rather than part time. We are almost there and hope to start her full time this summer. Here is Linh’s story and some beautiful photos of her on a trip she recently took into the countryside to paint the landscape.
Linh grew up in Phu Yen province, along the coast of central Vietnam. Like many families in her village, Linh's parents and two of her siblings worked as farmers, and the others in a factory. Throughout school, Linh was a dedicated student and biked 20 minutes each way to another district to study as her village did not have schools higher than the primary school level. Although many students begin working after graduating primary, secondary or high school, Linh proclaims to be lucky to have known a local art teacher who brought out her gift for art, and supported her and encouraged her to apply to the Hue University of the Arts where she was accepted with a scholarship. Linh graduated with a Bachelors of Arts in 2017, after which she became a part-time art teacher for our organization. Linh is a talented artist with experience painting with watercolor materials, acrylics, silk, oil paint, and lacquer, and of course is wonderful with our students! We hope that you enjoy the photos of her painting in the beautiful countryside of Vietnam.
Another quick update and wonderful opportunity that happened in February is that a number of our students were selected to be a part of the “I have a Voice” global art festival, and their artwork has been on display virtually at the Front Room Gallery in Brooklyn, NY! Here is the link to the exhibition: https://www.frontroomles.com/ihaveavoice We are so proud of these students and the stories they have shared along with their artwork, all of them have beautiful voices and stories.
We hope you enjoy the photos this month and again, thank you for everything. More news to come soon!
Sara and the Rock-Paper-Scissors Team
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Dear Supporters of Rock-Paper-Scissors Children’s Fund Art Program,
Happy New Year, we are so looking forward and hoping for a better year in 2021. There was never much good news in 2020, at least here in the U.S., but in Vietnam, the best news has been that the country in general has seen very few Covid19 cases, and very few deaths, and all of our students in our art program and their families are safe and well. We certainly hope this is the same for all of you and your families, friends and neighbors.
So this is a quick update to share our latest newsletter with you. We are sure that you will love all of the things that were accomplished in 2020 with you as our partners:
https://mailchi.mp/6cc2a26da179/rock-paper-scissors-childrens-fund-in-2020?e=c757f065e3
For our art program in particular here is a quick recap of 2020!
We hope you enjoy the photos this month and again, thank you for everything. More news to come soon!
Sara and the Rock-Paper-Scissors Team
Links:
Dear Friends of Rock-Paper-Scissor’s Children’s Fund,
It’s good to be sending you an update; I hope that you all are staying safe and well these days.
Our art program in Vietnam has opened again, and the kids are going back to school next week. Like here in the US it’s been up and down for students, either schooling remotely, or in person, or not at all if they don’t have access to the internet. We have a mix of those students, especially in the village where none of the kids has devices. Schools closed in Vietnam at the end of January and reopened from May-July with in-person learning. We have been holding our art classes since May and between the three programs continue to support over 70 kids. In August, there was another outbreak of Covid19 in the city of Danang. Our art classes in Hue had to be put on hold for another couple of weeks, but we opened again this weekend, with most of the students eagerly appearing on the first day back.
This summer, we started a summer tutoring program for minority girls in the village of Son Tan. The classes included Physics, Chemistry, Math, Vietnamese language, and English. Altogether 27 girls and one boy took part in the six-week program, and 14 of the students had been participating in our art program in the village since they were very young. All of the girls will be leaving home this week. They will be attending a boarding school for 6th through 9th graders. Three of the kids from our art and tutoring program will be going into the 9th grade this year. High school in Vietnam starts in 10th grade, so this is a big year for these three students to pass the entrance exams. The art classes and the mentoring by our art teachers have made them grow into confident, smart, young adults over the last seven years. This is all due to you, our donors; supporting these kids could not be happening without you. It means a great deal to them, and perhaps one day some of you will be able to travel to meet the kids, and do a little painting with them!
I hope you enjoy the photos this month and again, thank you for everything.
Sara
Links:
Dear Friends,
A lot has been going on since our last update to you all in January, as I know is the same for all of you personally. We sincerely hope that you, your family, friends, and neighbors are all well and staying as safe as possible during the pandemic. Even in just a few months, times have changed drastically for us all, with so much uncertainty for what is to come.
At this time, Vietnam has been reporting having only around 300 cases of Covid19 with no deaths in the country. News reports state that with experience gained from dealing with the 2003 SARS and 2009 H1N1 pandemics, Vietnam's government started organizing its response right away in early January. Schools have been closed since the Tet Holiday that began at the end of January, and they have only recently re-opened on May 4th. Thousands of people have been placed in quarantine camps around the country and on April 1st the government issued a stay-at-home order country-wide which stayed in place for approximately four weeks and was just lifted last week.
During the lock-down our staff was hearing from some of our students in the village of Son Tan that the families in the village had been cut off from food sellers who travel up the mountain and that many of the families were desperately in need of food, unable to travel outside of their homes. Because of this, we made a plan with our partners in April to provide supplies for 120 of the neediest families in the village, providing them with rice, noodles, beans, and fish sauce that would last most families 3-4 weeks during the lock-down. These are just a few photos of our staff distributing the supplies.
For our art and music students in Hue and Cam Duc, we decided to re-open the programs at the same time that the schools opened on May 4th. Like all schools in Vietnam, we are following strict protocols for social distancing, holding smaller classes and providing masks, and hand sanitizer as the students come in. Our school houses have large, wide doors that open fully to make an open-air space as well so that kids can paint and play music under a roof outdoors.
We are so proud of our staff in Vietnam and of course all of our wonderful students. Thank you so much for continuing to be a part of their lives.
Please take care!
Sara
Links:
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