By Sara Nerone | Founder
Dear Music Friends,
Thank you to all of you for donating to our music program in Vietnam, it has been a huge success in the local community there. Thank you for trusting us with your donations and for your kind support.
As many of you know, our program provides year-round, after school, and weekend music and art lessons to kids living in the district of Cam Lam, Khanh Hoa. We started this program with the idea to create a place where kids can get away from their everyday struggles to share and play music together. This has worked beautifully. In November we had two young volunteers from the United States help at the school for about 5 weeks. While they were there they kept a blog, which is now on our website, but I would like to share some of their last blog post about their impression of the school and the program. While you read this, please remember that you all have helped to create this special place:
“Within the walls of the (Rock-Paper-Children’s Fund) school the culture that has been cultivated is even more striking. Though the students range in age from 7 to 17, there amazingly seem to be minor if any social divisions. There are no cliques, and everyone is welcome to every conversation and every game. Carla and I have both spent many summers working at camps and have experienced a lot of youth social dynamics. We can honestly say the dynamic of this student culture is unique in a really powerful way.
The RPS schoolhouse represents an amazing opportunity as a place, outside of normal school and home, where students can come to learn, play, interact with other students of different ages, and feel safe. It is the exact type of community that inspires confidence and creativity and provides positive role models when kids need them most.
It really is a family here at RPS, and Carla and I have been honored and humbled to be a part of it. Thank you to the students and the staff for being patient with our Vietnamese and sharing your knowledge and games with us, and thank you to all the people that help support this program. Beautiful music and big smiles are happening here every day. -Grady”
Right now we have 22 students in the music program, 20 playing violin and 2 playing cello. We also have 28 students in our art program, so there is a lot of activity in the small building we rent, especially on the weekends. In addition to our beloved teacher Tuan, we are now providing professional violin lessons to Huy, one of our original students, and Hieu who is a young, local musician who has been out of work. We are training these two to become violin teachers, and in fact, they have started to teach some of our younger students. We are supporting professional violin lessons for both Hieu and Huy in the city of Nha Trang and they study there 4-5 days a week. They are working very hard.
Again this summer we hope to return to Vietnam with more volunteer musicians, artists and just fun people, to spend time with the kids. We always welcome volunteers.
Thank you again for your donations,
Sara Nerone (Founder)
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