Community Music Program for Vietnamese Youth

It’s Saturday night around 9:00pm on the east coast of the United States, and 8:00am Sunday morning on the other side of the world in the small town of Cam Duc, Vietnam. Giao, our program manager sits next to Thien, one of our students, and in the U.S., Rozanne, a Rock-Paper-Scissor’s volunteer and cello teacher rings up Thien and Giao on skype on her computer. It’s the start of their weekly cello lesson.

Rozanne traveled to Vietnam during our summer volunteer program to work with our kids there for one month, she fell in love with the kids and Vietnam and has plans to return to teach for a longer period of time. She has since been staying connected with Rock-Paper-Scissor’s students by volunteering her time to teach Thien, who we hope will become one of our teachers in the future.

Thien has been playing the cello for the last two years, and has only been able to take lessons with our violin teacher in Cam Duc, so he is relatively self-taught. Thien is a fantastic young man, he is 15 years old, sweet, funny and kind. Thien is a very enthusiastic and dedicated student , and is so helpful overall when we have volunteers there in the summer. He not only plays the cello, but helps around the school and works in the summers for us as a camp counselor at our day camps for ethnic minority kids.

For the month of July as the founder of Rock-Paper-Scissors, my teenage daughters (co-founders) and I spend time working on our projects in Vietnam along with selected volunteers who come to teach music or art. It had been a year in July since we had been to Vietnam to see our teachers and students other than via skype. It was clear how hard they had worked practicing throughout the year. We now have about 22 students who come to our program 2-3 days a week to take lessons, both privately and once a week as a group. We have three part time teachers, all of whom we have been providing professional instruction to. The teachers themselves have been advancing very quickly, as they travel an hour and a half round trip to the city of Nha Trang to take four hours of lessons each week. They are all very dedicated.

We have so many wonderful students, including one in particular who started with us one year ago. His name is Tu, and when you see him play the violin you can see his love of music and talent through his concentration and movement with the violin. One of our staff recently went to visit Tu’s family to learn more about his living conditions. His family is very poor, so with your help we will be providing him with tuition to his regular school, notebooks and books, a uniform, and other school supplies. School is not free in Vietnam, and the families often struggle to keep their kids in school and pay for their school supplies.

November and December are two important months for us to receive donations. If you are willing, we would love to have volunteers help fundraise for us. There is a great option on Global Giving for people to be able to give gift cards as Christmas presents to help support us. Click on our music program link below and go to Gift Cards under donate.

Thank you all for already supporting our music program, so many people praise our Bikes for Girls program, but the long term mentoring, music and companionship that the kids receive in our music and art programs is much longer lasting and will continue to be as they grow up and become adults in thelocal community.

Thank you again,

Sara (Rock-Paper-Scissors Children’s Fund Founder)

PS-Please email me at sara@rockpaperscissorschildrensfund.org if you would like to learn more about volunteering, or helping us in any way. 

Links:

• Visit our website to learn more
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