Dear Friends of Our Rock-Paper-Scissor's Art Program,
We hope that everyone is doing well as we head into winter! Time has flown by, and we are almost through another year. That being said, we want to share with you a couple of great things that took place in Vietnam while we were there this summer. We were especially lucky to meet Christine, a mural artist from Kentucky who came along with us on the trip this year.
Christine wanted to do a community mural project with the kids and our staff. The whole project took about three weeks, from first creating the design on paper with the input of our local staff and summer volunteers, sketching it on the wall, having the kids paint it, and Christine spending about a week putting on the final touches!
The photo above is of the main wall of the mural with some of our students in front of it, and the rest of the photos are of the kids painting. The woman pictured represents all Vietnamese women, strong, beautiful and powerful. As you can see the woman in the painting is wearing a phoenix around her neck, and according to Vietnamese belief, the phoenix represents peace, grace and happiness.
It was quite a fun project, and the kids loved helping out. At the end of the trip we had our annual string orchestra concert with our music students and a gathering at the mural wall along the street. Oh yes and some fun Virginia Reel street dancing up and down the street in front of the mural. The kids (and us!) had a great, great time that night! We are really hoping that Christine will get the grant she plans on applying for to go back to Vietnam and do more with the kids!
Thank you all for supporting the kids in our art program, we have some fantastic young artists rising! They so appreciate your support!
Sara
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Dear Friends,
It’s 5:00am here in Vietnam and I am in the village of Cam Duc with a group of volunteers from the U.S. for a month. We are reviewing and working on our bike program, teaching the kids in our year-round art and music classes, and holding our annual summer arts and music camp in the village of Son Tan. Two volunteers are on their second and fourth trips back to Vietnam with my family. They’ve fallen in love with the children here like we have.
The first week that we arrived we drove to Son Tan, the little village up in the mountains where 150 minority families of Reglai decent live. As so many of you know it’s a very poor community, it’s also far from the highway, so this village tends to get very little support from the government or other organizations like ours. Our staff goes to the village on the weekends all year to teach art, have fun, read books, mentor the children, keep in touch with what is happening in their lives, and provide them with meals. We’ve been running this program since 2014 so we and they know the children so well. Most weekends there are 25 children who come to class, but during the summer months when school is out, the number rises to 40 or more.
The drive to Son Tan is about 45 minutes from our hotel mostly on a long and windy narrow lane up to the side of the mountains. It’s beautiful and every scene is so different from the states, it’s wonderful to just drive here. The first week when we arrived in the village, 40 children came to class. Our project that day consisted of reading a Vietnamese story book illustrated with beautiful drawings and lots of color. We then had the kids paint similar illustrations and watercolor their drawings. They had great fun painting and listening to the story.
Last year four of the children in our class graduated 5th grade from the school in the village. In order for them to continue their education, the ethnic minorities here must go to live in a boarding school for minorities about two hours away from the village starting at 12 years old. Our four students so wanted to continue their education, so thanks to two donors providing $100 a month, we were able to support the families so that they could afford to have the four children go to school. We are so excited to share that all four of our kids graduated 6th grade and will now be in 7th in the fall, they were the only four from the village who passed and are moving up, which is such a testament to our arts program, but also so unfortunate for the other children in the village who did not pass.
So, to all of you reading this report, thank you for your ongoing support for the wonderful children and kids in our arts programs here in Vietnam. You have helped to provide a place where they not only learn about art, but also have a space for artistic freedom, a place outside the rigor of their lives to grow and gain confidence in themselves. I hope you enjoy the photos, and please visit our Facebook and Instagram for more!
Sara
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Dear Friend of Rock-Paper-Scissors Children's Fund,
My name is Phuong. I’m 37 years old. I learned about Rock-Paper-Scissors in 2014 through a friend named Lan, who is also a mutual friend of me and Ms. Sara.
In 2012, I made one of the biggest decisions in my professional life, i.e. to retreat from corporate life in a hope of doing something that helped me make more direct and obvious contributions to society. I started to apply for some NGOs but they turned my application down, reasoning that my corporate mindset was a stranger to a NGO realm. Nevertheless, these rejections didn’t make me change my mind about staying away from the business world. Actually, I declined several appealing management job offers because I couldn’t imagine myself going back to those less interesting days in the office.
At the same time, I had this long lasting inner urge of appreciating music and art, as well as understanding more about the music scene and art scene in the city that I live, Hue, Vietnam. Soon after quitting my job I spent several month floating around, reconnecting and hanging out with my art friends, and they lead me into the local art community.
Thanks to them I was introduced to many other interesting and influential artists in Hue, among them were the Le Brothers. These twins had already been well-known at the time. They had started out selling lacquer paintings then made a shift to video art in 2008 and have been touring the world exhibiting their work ever since. Most interesting for me, however, is that the brothers own an art foundation, which they call New Space Arts Foundation (NSAF). NSAF has been hosting numerous domestic and international artists on a regular basis. By volunteering for NSAF, I have been exposed to different personalities and art styles. I found out it would be fantastic if I could be part of an organization that could promote art and music to the community.
Such a lengthy lead-in means nothing else but to say that what a perfect timing it was to learn about Rock-Paper-Scissors in 2014 and how important this organization has become to my life. Spending time with the kids in the art class in Hue is one of my biggest sources of happiness in my contemporary life. We hold two art sessions every Sunday. The morning session runs from 8:00am to 11:00am, while the afternoon one is from 3:00pm to 5:00pm. To give illustrations, I believe even if you are from a Western cultural background you will probably find having to show up in class at 8:00am on a nice Sunday morning, when no one can resist an indulging sleep-in, nearly impossible. However, if you were me you would expect the kids to come fooling around in front of your house as early as 6:30am. Also, you would expect them to chase each other or bike around singing, yelling out your name: “Teacher Phuong. Get up. Open the door!”. That is how I am woken up almost every Sunday. Not many people like their sleep-ins being stolen that way but I quite enjoy that. Sometimes, I wake up early but just want to stay in bed waiting for those voices from the kids to open the gate.
After over a year of the art class, we have several dropouts. The kids left the program due to several different reasons. For example, their workload at school was too heavy. Also, some parents thought learning art did little to improve their financial situation in the future. In addition, some kids simply lost their interest in the class. However, there are a lot of them who have hardly been absent from class. These kids come to us not only for some fun time with other kids but also for serious art class. They have made significant progress in their art. The first year, they were taught how to do crayon and water color. We keep record of the works they do in class, so at the end of the year, I was so delighted to see how much progress they made. The first exhibition in June this year provides sufficient visual evidence to our achievement. There were 42 selected pieces, including individual works and group works. This made me so proud of the kids. After the exhibition we began to teach them how to do more DIY things such as coin bags, mid-autumn lanterns, and encourage their creativity in making artwork like such as combining different materials.
One more thing which is very worth mentioning is that, at the art class in Hue, we do not just teach our kids about art, but we also teach them how to behave with others, and how to respect class rules. At times, we teach them some English vocabulary and encourage them to speak English with foreign visitors, who are my friends. Tram, the art teacher, has done a brilliant job as a teacher and a life coach. If you come to our class you will expect the kids to take off and arrange their shoes neatly before entering the classroom. Also unlike some earlier days, they have got to be aware of putting rubbish in trash bins, having said that, we don’t want our kids to be just obedient. We encourage them to talk about their interests and create art of their own styles.
As I mentioned earlier, the rock-paper-scissor’s art class is one of my biggest sources of joy in my life. I am satisfied because the class has left very positive impacts on the children. I also believe the children involved in the program have had a lot of good time with us. Thus, my dream is to expand the class so that more kids will get access to art, which I believe will change their attitude towards the world and transcend their life. I wish more and more children in Vietnam will be brought up with art as a part of their life.
Thank you for giving to our art program and believing, like me, that all kids need art in their lives.
Phuong
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During the summer of 2017 I volunteered in Vietnam for Rock-Paper-Scissors teaching art, these are some of my thoughts about the program that I had written up while I was there.
I found out about this program through my school and from knowing Sara, Sophie, and Phoebe since I was very young. They are a truly compassionate and inspiring family, who has created this beautiful community for the kids of Cam Duc, Vietnam. I am an art teacher with this program, although every volunteer contributes to everything we do here, including bike givings and bike repair, art and music and yoga lessons and camps, and glasses givings to older women and men.
This program provides children with hope towards a positive future that they may not have previously imagined and with the means to express and manifest these aspirations through the arts. Teaching visual arts and violin and cello, we help children to see the many ways to think and express themselves, and of the importance of these intertwined skills. The value of where art can take one’s mind in the moment through raw expression and emotion, and where it can bring people to future success is infinite. In the practice of making art (through sound or sight), skills and intelligences are built which may be applied to every way of life. Art can express the endless bends in life, with abstract excitement balanced with control and purposefulness. This gives children confidence, found joy, and a skillset which may help them move on to another level of education, or simply to be successful in their everyday lives.
By being in Vietnam and volunteering here, the program has brought me a deeper understanding of myself, of happiness, and of communication with those from another culture. It has specifically brought me awareness of a place so far away from my regular life, teaching me of the lives of struggling children and families, who are still able to laugh and smile and feel joy with us and one another. The students here are so open, and excited to learn no matter how difficult their lives are. I am so happy to have met and learned from so many people here and to be able to share my experiences with such a wonderful community.
Violet
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“Art expresses the endless bends and possibilities in life, with abstract excitement balancing with an ability of control and mindful purposefulness.” (RPS Volunteer Artist 2017)
His paint brush flows thoughtfully as he sweeps it across the top of the paper to spread color into the landscape. He is a young art student of ours named Tham, a quiet and thoughtful young boy. Tham comes down from his house up on the hill to our art class on Sundays in the small village school of Son Tan. This village is home to 148 families of the ethnic group called Raglai.
It’s hot and the kids are happy to see our teachers and get into the classroom. While the other boys in the class hang out and laugh and be silly together, Tham sits at the table on the other side of the room quietly waiting to start the project for the day. Once the paper and materials are placed in front of him, he listens to the directions, tips his head down towards the table, and hardly looks up. He clearly loves art.
Like many of the small, ethnic minority villages in Vietnam, this village does not have a school that provides many grades. In this village, the fifth grade is the highest students can go and in order to continue their education, they must live at a boarding school for ethnic minority kids that is over an hour’s drive away from the village. There is still much segregation being practiced in Vietnam. Families like Tham’s and our other students are separated from the main stream population. In our little art class in Son Tan, this is the first year that we’ve had students reach the 5th grade, in fact four of our students graduated this summer, and the dilemma of how we can further support them became an issue for us for the first time. We hadn’t raised money for school fees and supplies to carry them through the next seven years…
As our love for these children has grown over the last three years we could not think about them dropping out of school. Our art classes are about providing the tools and space for our students to express themselves and of course time to be loved, mentored and guided by our wonderful teachers. Although the kids come to take part in art class, it has so much more meaning for them and their education. We just could not ignore the problem of our kids not being able to continue school with any kind of moral conscience. So we decided to talk to their parents and the stories were all the same, that they were unable to let their children move away because they need the income that the kids can make working on the weekends and after school and the girls are needed to take care of their younger siblings. So this fall we decided see how it would work for the four families if we provided them support to buy food and supplies so that they would permit our four students to go away to school. Everyone agreed and so far the kids like school and the parents are happy!
This summer we were very lucky to have a wonderful volunteer who met Tham and offered to sponsor his education. She funded new clothing, shoes, a backpack and school supplies for him, and will be providing the family with supplies for the year. Tham started at the boarding school in September and although he has been quite homesick, he is very happy to be in school. Our teachers are visiting our four students every few weeks to make sure they are doing OK.
We have three more students and their families besides Tham who we are hoping to find sponsors for, so please let us know if you are interested, they are the three 12 year old girls in the photos. Please consider making a recurring monthly donation to help us be assured that we can continue to help these wonderful kids.
Thank you again for your support!
Sara and family
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