By Patrick J O'Brien | Board Member
Dear Friends,
I hope you are finding as much enjoyment out of your summer as we are here in Vietnam. We have been lucky this year to have had a group of volunteers come with us to Cam Duc to help with our music program. The best part actually has been that most of the volunteers are young people themselves. To sit back and watch teenagers from the U.S. connecting with teenagers from Vietnam and be able to wipe away the language barrier simply with the love of music has been something to behold.
Along with Sophie,16, and Phoebe,13, daughters of our founder Sara, we had 14-year-old Zachary and his mother Cathy spend a week with us. Kaitlin, 16, and her mother Robyn made the trip and are spending the entire month with us, as is 24-year old Hannah, a violin teacher, as well. All, talented young musicians.
I could try to explain how Kaitlin, Sophie, Phoebe, Hannah and Zachary worked closely with small groups of students everyday for the first week, working on group play and bow positioning, or how by the end of the week they had the kids ready for their first live performance in front of government officials and their parents, and did flawlessly. But what happened that first week was so much more than just lessons and performances.
The strength of community that is our music program with the local kids here in Cam Duc, most speaking very little English and all the volunteers, most speaking no Vietnamese, integrating together all through the commonality of music, was and is an amazing moment in our program and something we are very proud of. One of our teenage volunteers has actually said that she feels a stronger connection to some of the kids in the program than she does to kids in her own school.
To have teenagers and young people come with us to volunteer in Vietnam had been one of the many great ideas our founder has had in our short time as an organization, and this summer’s trip has proved the idea’s importance. What has been produced in the last month is a bond between musicians from two entirely different life situations that will hopefully continue to grow with time. What it has been like to watch as this program has grown is indescribable and as Zach’s mom Cathy said on their last night with us, working with the kids ended up being much more of a gift to them than anything they could ever give to the kids.
We want to thank you all for supporting our program. What your generosity has provided for these, young, Vietnamese kids is exactly what we envisioned our program to become: a fun community for poor, young students to become musicians and who have a safe place to be together, make music, and laugh, play, smile and find joy. The choice you have made to support our program will never be taken for granted. All the choices we make are with our supporters in mind, we understand without you, none of this would be possible and we could never thank you enough.
We hope for your continued health and good fortune in the months and years to come. Thank you again,
Patrick O'Brien and the Rock-Paper-Scissors Children’s volunteer team
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