Education Vietnam Project #13312

Community Music Program for Vietnamese Youth

by Rock-Paper-Scissors Children's Fund

Project Report | Jan 30, 2023
Happy Lunar New Year!

By Sara Nerone | Co-Founder

Dear Friends,

Happy Lunar New Year! It’s the year of the cat (vs the rabbit in China) in Vietnam. Everyone in Vietnam is on their two-week holiday right now, and our staff and students well deserve the break! I hope that everyone has had a good month of January.

In December we decided to add to our music program by providing a guitar class for girls. Right now, we have five girls who started classes in December. The guitar in Vietnam is not a common instrument played by woman, but we thought, why not have classes for girls, along with our string program! They are all very excited to learn.

This month, we had one of our music teachers leave our organization, so we are currently recruiting for one new full time teacher. Like our art program, we are looking towards past students who now have a college degree and continued in music, as well as trying to recruit a newly graduated music teacher from the larger Universities in Saigon. We hope to introduce a new teacher to you in our next report. In the meantime, one of our previous teachers is going to be filling in on the weekends and evenings, helping out to make sure classes continue for all of our students. We are very excited to have him back in our program!

As some of you may know, two years ago, with grant funding, we started a tutoring program in the ethnic minority village of Son Tan where we work. We are excited to say we have 100 girls in the program now from the village! The girls also take art classes, and our dream is to expand the music program into the tutoring program as well, so that some of the girls who would like to take music, have the opportunity. We’ll keep you all posted on this.

Thank you everyone for your continued support, and we will update you again soon. Happy February!

Sara and the Rock-Paper-Scissors Crew

Happy Year of the Cat!

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Oct 2, 2022
Summer Music Classes and Volunteers!

By Sara | Co-founder

Hello Everyone,

I am sending you a quick update today on our music program in Vietnam. As many of you know we were able to finally travel over to Vietnam with a few volunteers to work directly with our teachers and staff this summer, instead of on zoom! Our programs have been running so smoothly despite the Covid disruptions, and we even have more kids in our programs than ever.

As you may remember from our last update, we received a donation of Berringer synthesizers from a European company called, Music Tribe in early 2021, but we had no teacher who knew how to use them in Vietnam. Being so lucky as we are to have very committed volunteers, one of our long-time volunteers, Rozanne, who planned to travel with us, started learning how to use the synthesizers while back at home in the states, and created an introductory crash course for our students. She is amazing and spent hours preparing the class so that when we got to Vietnam, she could set up the synthesizers, teach the kids for a few days, and send them off with their own synthesizers to practice at home. Check out the photos! The students really had fun time learning.

Also, while in Vietnam for three weeks, Rozanne taught all our violin and cello students a number of new orchestra pieces. At the end of our trip, they put on a great little concert for us, and all the other students. Some of these students have been with us for five years or more, and all of them are just so committed to learning their instruments. They are all so talented, and thanks to all of you, continue to take classes from our two music teachers year round two days a week. Also, thanks to your support, we just hired one of our part time teachers to work full time, so that he can teach more kids music!

I hope that everyone had a great summer, we can’t believe were into the fall already and heading to 2023! Thank you again everyone for your amazing support of our small organization, it means a great deal to all of us.

Thank you,

Sara and the Rock-Paper-Scissor’s Team

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Jun 4, 2022
Summer Volunteers and New Classes

By Sara | Co-Founder

Hello Everyone,

We are sending you a quick update today on our music program in Vietnam. Some immediate good news is that a small group of volunteers, will be heading over to Vietnam at the end of July for a three-week work trip. One of these volunteers is a member of our board of directors, a music teacher, and a cellist, and has been traveling with us for several years to assist with our music program. We are very excited to have her again this summer to work with our teachers and students. We will be doing many things while there for the three weeks and will send an update after the trip!

Also, in early 2021 we received a donation of Beringer synthesizers from a European company called, Music Tribe. These are fantastic beginner synthesizers, and each keyboard came with a pair of headphones. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to use them, one, because of so many delays and class cancelations due to the pandemic, and two, that we really have no teacher in Vietnam who knows how to use them! The great thing is, our volunteer music teacher does know how to use them, and will be teaching the kids when we go to Vietnam this summer. We are really looking forward to introducing these fun little keyboards to the kids, which are great for learning how to read music.

In addition to this, many of you may know about our programs supporting girl’s education, such as our bikes for girls’ program, and our new program providing after-school music and art classes to girls, as well as tutoring in traditional subjects such as chemistry, math, and literature. We currently have over 60 girls in this program and so far it has been very successful. We have our first seven girls attending high school in the fall, some of the very first students to attend high school in the village. With the help of a small grant we have been expanding this program, and have been able to hire a full-time art teacher who is just finishing up college; she was one of our very first art students. We are also moving one of our music teachers who has been working part time, to full time. Having two teachers working full time for us will be a great help to our programs!

As always, our music program could not expand without your support and commitment to us over these past seven years. I hope that everyone has a great spring and summer. 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

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