Home, under the bridge

ONCE UPON A TIME, a potential donor was visiting Blue Dragon to talk about funding possibilities.

We were introducing him to some young people we'd been working with for almost two years. We were very proud of those kids.

During the meeting, the donor said he had a problem. It was this:

The kids were too good.

They were clean. They had nice clothes. They were polite.

They didn't look like street kids.

It's the main Catch-22 that Blue Dragon - and other charities like us - face. People want to help helpless, dirty waifs in rags. I know of one charitable center here in Hanoi where the Director gratefully accepts donations such as big TVs and nice clothes - but as soon as the donor is gone, the donations go into storage. Otherwise, the next donor might think that the center is already well equipped and doesn't need any help!

Blue Dragon's policy is different. We don't want our kids to look poor. We don't want visitors to walk in and see street children; we want our kids to look just like anybody else their age. And to tell the truth, we don't mind if that turns away a donor or two. The wellbeing and happiness of the kids are simply more important.

THIS WEEK we face a challenge with some kids who definitely qualify as 'helpless, dirty waifs in rags'. On the way to drumming on Sunday, I saw a couple of boys looking absolutely filthy, collecting scrap near the office. SO I invited them back and spent some time chatting. Late for drumming again...

The boys are living with some friends under a bridge - yes, that photo is actually their home. At least some of the kids are runaways; our experience in working with kids like this is that it takes time for them to trust us. And it's only when they trust us that they'll start telling us the truth.

Until then, anything that they say might or not be true, and our staff don't pass judgement on anything.

These boys are really doing it tough - I wouldn't trade places with them for anything! Even our other kids here at the center are shocked to see where they live.

Nothing like a challenge to start the week, though...

A week is a long time on the streets

Friday is staring me in the face - and I am smiling.

Another huge week at Blue Dragon; there really is never a quiet one. I wouldn't have it any other way, but it sure is nice to have a day to slow down and work at a sane pace.

Lots of great news this week!

- The young guy who has been missing for over 2 weeks, T, is back. Our cleaner ran across him in Long Bien market at 7am on Wednesday and brought him back to the center. What a tremendous relief. A few tears were shed... He's still not talking about what happened or where he's been, but we hope he'll open up soon.

- We have a full time volunteer from Australia! Candice O'Brien started work on Monday; she's sponsored by VIDA which is a new program that's been developed by the Australian Youth Ambassadors organisation. Candice is mainly here to work on developing our admin systems - the less sexy side of caring for street kids. Just 12 months ago, Blue Dragon was me and one staff member in a small building, with a street kid as an assistant. Today we have a staff team of about 10, working with over 400 children. While the 'real' work has taken off like a Vietnamese dog at a thit cho restaurant, our admin systems have been struggling to catch up. Let's hope Candice can work some miracles! (And thanks to the good people at VIDA).

- A 16 year old girl, Tuoi, who we've been working with has also been getting about with a big grin on her face. Until this month, she was working about 14 hours a day for just $10 a month so that she could send the money to her sick mother in the countryside. Tuoi is a bright girl - she's got a great future if only she can get through school - but she's just had too many obstacles in her way. This week we enabled her to bring her mother to Hanoi for medical tests at Bach Mai Hospital. Apart from our staff member getting pickpocketed while he was there (another mobile phone gone!) everything went well and we'll have the results by Friday afternoon. Tuoi's mother has been taking traditional medicine, but she doesn't even know what the cause of her illness is. We're hoping to find out exactly what the problem is, get some treatment happening, and support Tuoi to get back to school full time.

- Hoping not to jinx myself, but there has been a lull in the robberies and muggings that were taking place over recent months. A lot of this is thanks to our local policeman, Mr Thanh, who was pretty serious about helping us and putting a stop to the crime wave. It's worked!

- And finally, Little Chung (see my last blog!) has been talking to us about where he's been and what he's been up to for the past 18 months. He and I are rebuilding our relationship - I'm wondering what happened to him, he's wondering how I will react to seeing him again after so long. But the signs are all good, and Chung is keen to get back to school asap. So good to have him back...

Now bring on Friday!

Postscript: Little Chung returns

SUNDAY is usually the best day of the week for me… We have social activities with our kids outside the center, with plenty of time for a slow breakfast at Café 252. And I try to keep the boring admin work to a minimum!

We start the day with soccer: 8am on two dirt fields near the office. We’ve been playing for three years now, with about 50 kids joining in every week.

The soccer is purely a social event – we’re there for an hour no matter what the season or weather, so any street kids in Hanoi can find us and meet us on their own terms.

Last night I wrote about how we often have kids who ‘disappear’ for a year or more, and we just don’t know where they are or what has happened to them. This morning, one of our guys returned after being away for 18 months.

Friends and vols know him as “Little Chung”. He’s an orphan, who met us back in 2003 and was making good progress for a while, before things started to fall apart for him. We had helped him enrol in school and he wanted to join a handicrafts course, but neither of them worked out well. He started hanging out with a bad crowd and got himself into trouble, so started to drift away from us. And then one day he was picked up off the streets and sent to prison.

He was 13 then, and everybody here was worried about what had become of him. We didn’t know that he’d been arrested, and had no way of knowing. So to see him back at the soccer this morning was a real buzz for us. He’s already back working on the streets, so hopefully he’ll come by on Monday and we can start over again…

OUR OTHER SUNDAY ACTVITITY is a drumming circle at the American Club. But I failed to make it there today – despite inviting others to come and see me there!

One of Hanoi’s few truly fine restaurants, The Vine, was holding a party for its staff and their families. Donald Berger, the amazing guy who founded the restaurant, has hired 6 older teenagers from Blue Dragon; and as most of our kids don’t have families, one of the boys invited me to accompany him.

I had no idea what I was in for – I thought I might stay a few minutes and then head off to drumming. No chance. Apart from being a great meal (and about a truck load of wine), the party was a celebration of the staff’s achievements.

The big event was the announcement of the Employee of the Quarter award. In the last quarter, Nguyen Van Minh won the award; I first met Minh back in 2002 as a shoeshine in Hanoi’s Old Quarter. Today, another of Blue Dragon’s young people received the Award – Le Hoai Hai.

Hai is an orphan, and unlike most orphans he doesn’t know anything at all about his background. His earliest memory is of walking the streets in Hanoi, selling chewing gum. He was probably 5 or 6 years old. A local woman named Phuong saw him and took him into her home – now, eleven years later, he’s still there, and has even assumed Phuong’s family name.
Hai’s time at The Vine hasn’t always gone smoothly. He’s quit twice, when the pressure seemed to be too great. One time, a local journalist persuaded him to answer some questions for her by promising Hai guaranteed entry into a sports academy – so he quit his job the next day! But each time this has happened, Tu the Executive Chef has urged him to come back to work and sorted out any problems.

So today’s award is a massive feather in Hai’s cap. Receiving Employee of the Quarter is really something when there’s a staff of 100!

It’s a pity I missed the drumming, but what a treat to see one of the poorest and most vulnerable young people we work with receiving his certificate.

Congratulations, Hai – and welcome back, Little Chung!

The vanishing

One of the realities of life when working with street children is that many of the kids come and go - the little girl we take to the doctor today with a severe case of bronchitis might suddenly decide to leave Hanoi tonight, and we can only hope that she is somewhere safe and taking her medicine.

But we don't know, and there's nothing we can do about it.

It's very rare that one of our kids disappears permanently; some have mysteriously vanished for over a year before coming back to us. Just last week, a boy named Nhon started sending me text messages from Ho Chi Minh City - we last saw him when he stole a bicycle from another one of the kids 18 months ago!

(For those volunteers and friends who knew us during 2004 and 2005, Nhon is the shoeshine boy who gave me Bob, the cat. And considering what a psychopathic freak Bob turned out to be, it was in Nhon's best interest to leave Hanoi!)

So usually when kids 'disappear', we don't worry too much. We know they'll be back.

Except... Since Tet (Lunar New Year), one of our young guys has disappeared, and I have a really bad feeling about it.

T is 16 - or so he says. Actually he has no idea - no birth certificate or official registration papers; and his father is the last person on earth who would have bothered to remember what year his son was born in.

T has been living on the streets for most of his life, and smoking heroin for the last year or so. My staff and I have been trying everything to get him to quit. We've known that, once he starts injecting, it's just a matter of time before he contracts HIV.

With no special expertise in helping drug users, and no resources to rely on other than instinct, we've encouraged and supported T as much as we could. We gave him his own special corner of the office in which to keep his few belongings, so that he could at least have a place to identify as his own. We included him in all the normal outings that we could, took him along with us for lunch and dinner, experimented with confrontational and non-confrontational approaches, and even saved his life when a drug dealer was threatening to kill him. The same dealer has been switching between exploiting him and caring for him, leaving T both dependant and terrified. T has been visibly torn between embracing the support of Blue Dragon, and submitting his soul to these vile drug dealers.

About 3 weeks ago, he turned up at the center with his arms looking like pin cushions. Bad news.

And now he's vanished.

The last time I saw T was on the eve of Lunar New Year. One of the Social Workers, Tung, had been here at the center and left a little before midnight to see the fireworks down at Hoan Kiem Lake. I was getting ready for bed when the doorbell rang... T was in tears, confused, ashamed to be alone on the eve of the New Year.

He wasn't stoned - for the first time I had seen him in a long time. Reality was hitting him hard.

So we watched the fire works from the top floor of the building - he 'wow-ed' and 'whoa-ed' with the awe of a little boy.

For the following hours, he was restless: something was wrong, but he didn't know what. Was it withdrawals? Or just the agony of realising how alone he is in life? I wanted to ask him where the dealers were, and why they had abandoned him on such an important night.

Finally T left, mumbling about going to see someone – and we haven’t seen him since.

In a police operation last week, the dealers were all arrested. Was he with them at the time? Or did he see the police coming and think that he was in trouble, and ran away?

This afternoon I was sorting through some bags that I found when we were moving into the new center earlier this week. Out of one bag fell a piece of paper, with T’s name, written over and over. Just a few months back, we started teaching T how to read and write his name, and other important words such as “Vietnam”. We had such hope. Things seemed to be going so well for him.

This isn’t the end of the story, though. One thing I have learned is that the story never ends; something more will always happen, for better or for worse.

Now it’s almost midnight here in Hanoi; it’s raining and it’s cold. I don’t know where T is sleeping tonight; I don’t know how the next chapter of this story will be written.

I can only hope that it will be for better.

Not just a building

I’m not the sort of guy who gets excited about bricks and mortar.

Nice new facilities and modern equipment do not mean good services for kids; there are plenty of international NGOs right here in Hanoi that are up with expensive offices and staff cars, and back in the dark ages when it comes to service delivery.

But I have to confess that I am feeling pretty excited today about our new building. Because it’s not just a building – it’s now the center where the 100 or so disadvantaged kids in our programs can come for classes, medical help, activities, and a DVD or two.

Up until now, Blue Dragon’s street children center has been based in the same building as our offices (and my home!) As of today, though, the center is a building all on its own, just a few doors away from our current building, which is still used for offices and a computer classroom.

This gives us loads more space to work with the kids – 4 classrooms instead of 1! And 2 psychology rooms instead of none!


Maybe it’s not the building that I’m excited about, but the opportunity for us to achieve more with the kids.

- THANKS (again!) to those people who have contributed to getting us set up with the equipment… I really don’t like spending money on furniture, but of course there’s certain equipment (such as classroom seats!) that we need in order to provide services to the children. We’re just about there now - we started off needing over $3000 but thanks to donations of money and equipment, we now need only about $700 more. Christine Becksted and Robert from Giving It Back To Kids deserve a very special thank you.

- On another train of thought altogether (isn’t that what blogging is about??) an Australian woman who volunteers full time in Hoian, Nicole Woods, is in Hanoi this week making contacts and enjoying the northern drizzle. I’ll be meeting Nicole on Thursday to work out how Blue Dragon can help the Street Children’s Center that she works at in Central Vietnam. More on this later!

- And finally, some news about the spate of attacks against our kids over the past 2 months. Our local policeman, Mr Thang, reports that the man who was behind three attacks (including robbing a child at knifepoint) has now been caught and will be spending the next couple of years getting his back tattooed. (It’s a Vietnamese prison-culture thing). While I wouldn’t wish prison on anybody, I can’t feel too sorry for people who make a living out of robbing street kids.

In the News

A quick note today. Hanoi is slowly coming back to life and Blue Dragon is still (sorta kinda) closed. Some quiet days...

The Vietnam News Agency has run an article on the hair styles our kids were getting as Tet presents. It's mostly accurate (which is the most you can hope for sometimes) and worth a read: http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/showarticle.php?num=01SUN290106

- BIG THANKS to the people who have responded to our request for help to buy equipment! We still need funds to buy study desks and gear for the children's center, so contact me if you can help.

- We had a small victory in the fight against the gangs of thieves who have been robbing our kids. We tracked one of the thieves down to his family home, and (with some careful negoatiation) eventually received a note of apology and a refund of the money the guy stole from one of our children.

- The kids are coming back from holidays now... Football starts up again on Sunday and the office is officially open on Monday.

Life's good!

Help needed!

This is the first time I have used our blog to make an appeal for help - but it might not be the last!

Within the next two weeks, Blue Dragon will be opening a new building here in Hanoi so that we can expand our work with street kids. At the moment, our office is also the center for the kids - and with only one classroom there just isn't enough space. We've reached the limits!

World Vision is helping us to rent the new building (THANK YOU!) but we need some help to equip it.

I don't like using people's donations to buy equipment - unless it's given to us for that specific purpose. People normally give to us on the grounds that the money will help the children, so that's what we use it for.

Now I need to ask for people who'd like to help us set up the new center.

We need everything from mops and door mats to sofas and computers. We do have a complete list with estimated costs, and the total comes to about $3000 USD. That would give us all the classroom equipment, drop-in center facilities, renovations and office gear that we need to help the 100 plus street children who will be coming to us regularly after the Lunar New Year break.

The photo to the left is at our current building... the kids have to play on the floor for lack of space.

If you can help - contact me! bluedragon@bdcf.org

I'll gladly send the list of needs out to anyone who can pitch in.

Thanks, everybody!

Silent streets

Something strange has happened.

It's Saturday night, and the streets of Hanoi have fallen silent.

No beeping, no traffic jams, nobody riding their motorbike with their whole family and a month's supply of groceries on the back.

The Year of the Dog starts at midnight, and Vietnamese people have left Hanoi to return to their ancestral villages. Meantime, most expats have left Hanoi to go some place warm.

And what about the street kids?

Most of the kids who Blue Dragon works with have also left. A few kids actually travelled to Hanoi to see us and drop off small gifts, but they have already returned home. On Friday morning one little guy, Nam, came to see me at 6.30am to ask me to accompany him to the bus stop! I'm no morning person, but it was really nice to walk over to the Long Bien bus station and see him off.

Not all of our kids have gone, though, and that's why I'm staying in Hanoi this Tet. One or two have stayed because they work for foreign owned restuarants that need them through the holiday season, but others are here because - well, because they have no place else to go.

I've written before about one teenager named Hung with a lung disease. His case is a bit sensitive, so I can't go into specifics, but he's out of hospital now and we've found him a place to stay - with a retired doctor, as it turns out. Hung was the hero at last week's Awards Night - all of the Blue Dragon staff were a bit teary when he came on stage, walking unaccompanied, to receive his certificate - "For determination in the face of great adversity." When we found him on the streets a few months back, he was so close to dead that the doctors worried about whether he could possibly make a comeback.

But Hung has no family of his own, so he's here for Tet. Some of our kids are here with family members, who have no home to return to, even though they are not from Hanoi. There's one such family, with two daughters, two sons, and a mother - their dad died a few years back and they survive entirely on the mother's income from collecting scrap paper. At our Awards Night, we gave her an award for excellent parenting - she has absolutely refused to let her kids work on the streets, even though they are desperately poor.

Tomorrow morning Vietnam wakes up to a new year, with all the hopes of new beginnings, better luck, and another chance to make a go of things - 'another crack of the whip' in Australian vernacular.

In a few days, the city will return to its (sometimes) lovable chaos and noise, as people start returning to work and school. But for now, I'm going to enjoy the once-a-year peace that has fallen over the city.

Happy new year, everyone - or, as the Vietnamese say, Chuc mung nam moi!

Back to Bac Ninh

So close to Tet now... It's strange to think that back home in Australia, the new year is old news while here the Biggest Day of the Year is yet to happen. There's a sense of anticipation in the air so strong now that the only comparison I can make is to the final weeks of school in Grade 9. Except that the whole of Vietnam is on edge!

On Sunday a group of us from Blue Dragon, including some of the kids, piled into a truck and rumbled out to Bac Ninh, about 30kms from Hanoi where we sponsor disadvantaged children.

We had a very simple ceremony to give out Tet gifts to 230 children in a hall owned by the local People's Committee. Over the last month here in Hanoi, we've been spending so much of our energy dealing with crises such as muggings, runaways, and violence - it was a welcome change to spend the day in a quiet village.


Our sponsored kids loved the gifts - everyone scored some Lucky Money ("Li Xi"), and we gave out personal items for the kids (crayons and umbrellas!) as well as tea, sweets and biscuits that the families would need for the New Year. Our usual mix of practical and playful. And of course some spontaneous singing by the kids...

After the distribution we headed around to see Hieu and Thao - the boys whose mother died after Christmas (see the posts "A Tribute to Mrs Tat" and "Walls Come Tumbling Down").

The older of the two, Thao, is simply extraordinary. He quit school in Grade 4 to earn money for his mother's health care, and now he is in charge of building the home for himself and his little bro. He's making decisions about using the land that they have, where to build the kitchen, which order all the work must be done in, what materials to use - the sort of thing that an experienced builder would do without second thoughts. Not a 17 year old kid.

Hieu is well, too - very happy to see us and smiling all the time, but also saddened to be facing his first Tet as an orphan. According to Vietnamese custom, he and Thao will not go visiting the relatives this New Year (which is what EVERYBODY does), but must wait for the relatives and friends to come to them. Sounds a bit rough to me, but apparently people fear that they would bring bad luck with them.

Their house won't be finished before Tet, and when work recommences the Blue Dragon staff plan to go back to Bac Ninh with some friends, and maybe some of the street kids too, so that we can help with more of the labour. Thao and Hieu still have work to do carting dirt to raise the land, and then paint the house, put a roof on the kitchen, and build some fences. It's a bit outside our regular jobs, but why not!?

One last thing for today's post about the kids. While we were at the boys' house, a small team of helpers was working with them on some pretty dirty jobs: shovelling sand and carting it in baskets on their heads. Nothing astonishing about this, except that all of the helpers were Hieu's school friends. Boys and girls. One of them is on the photo here - the boy in the hat is a friend, and Hieu is beside him.

It was actually a little saddening that no adults were there to lend a hand, but quite inspirational to see kids helping kids like that. There is hope in the world!

Night of Nights

Blue Dragon is reeling from a soft-drink induced hangover this morning following the First Annual Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation Tet Awards!

Blue Dragon is not very big on ceremony and formalities – nor are our kids! – so this was our first such ‘special occasion’ with the Hanoi kids.

The idea behind the Awards Night was to acknowledge the progress and achievements of the 90-or-so boys and girls who we’ve worked closely with over the past year. These are all kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, street children, and kids with disabilities.

We invited some special guests, but kept it low key and intimate. The Ambassadors of New Zealand and England, and their families, attended; along with the Deputy Head of Mission from the Netherlands Embassy, members of the International Women’s Club, a representative of Catholic Relief Services, and reps of our local government counterpart.

The real stars, of course, were the kids. In our planning, we intended this to look like a typical high school awards night. And it worked – although this was the first Awards night any of the kids had ever been to, and were so excited and noisy that our staff and volunteers spent the whole evening settling them down!

It sounds like a cliche, but it’s true – the kids are our biggest critics. And today they’re telling me “It was so fun!” and they’re all eager to look over the photos. So that’s a big thumbs up from the VIPs.

The Blue Dragon music group, The Chicken I Love performed songs, and a couple of the kids really took us by surprise. Some of the quietest and most introverted kids were transformed once they had a microphone in their hand.

The Dragon Drummers did their bit, one of our vols organised some girls to sing in Spanish, and we had some speeches by a couple of our kids.

Everyone received a Tet gift, and most were awarded certificates to recognise their progress in the past year. Our kids have tough lives – they’re in bad circumstances that they didn’t create but can’t escape on their own. But last night was about celebrating the good and affirming the positives.

It's a great thing to see our kids clutching certificates and standing on stage to receive applause. They were really proud - and we were proud of them. What a terrific way to finish the Lunar New Year.

It's an 8!

Two posts in one day - I just can't help myself!

Our young friend, Ngoc, has come into the center today to tell us the results of his first ever school exams. He scored an 8! (Out of 10, that is).


My November 26 blog told Ngoc's story in brief - he was trafficked to Ho Chi Minh City but with our help has left the streets behind and at age 13 is now in school, where he should be.

The school year started in September, but Ngoc commenced study in November - which makes his score of 8 an even bigger achievement.

Congrats, Ngoc! You're a champion.

Racing toward Tet

Vietnamese New Year - Tet - is looming like a storm cloud. The streets are crazier than usual (yes, it is possible!) as everyone rushes to get ready for The Event of the year.

For Blue Dragon kids, Tet has a particularly pertinent meaning. Will the Year of the Dog bring luck, success, employment, or hope? Will things get better or worse?

The fortunes of the new year begin with the passing of the old. Right now is the time to give and receive gifts such as new clothing, and also to hand out Li Xi - lucky money. A child who does not receive any of these gifts in the coming weeks will start the new lunar year with little reason to hope for happiness or prosperity.

Over the coming week, the staff here at Blue Dragon are preparing two Tet parties: one for the kids in our Hanoi program, and one for the 250 or so girls and boys sponsored in rural areas, through our Stay In School program. Both events should be a lot of fun, but for the moment they are a lot of hard work! I hope to post news and photos of the parties next week.

Since my last post, the center has been in overdrive preparing for Tet and dealing with lots of urgent kids' issues. If I was superstitious I would be wondering of this was related to Friday 13... But it wasn't all bad, of course! Lots of good news too.

-> We have made good progress in dealing with the attacks on some of our kids. During last week, we found where some of the thugs lived and were able to take the police around to visit them. Looks like at least one of the kids who was robbed and beaten will be receiving compensation - and the attacks have definitely stopped for the time being.

-> Another of our boys had a run-in with a standover man, who has made a career out of lending money to homeless children and then making them steal and sell drugs to pay back the loan. Much to his credit, this one kid refused to break the law, but is now in danger for his life. We hope to have this problem sorted out in a day or so.

-> The second Antipodeans team returned from their community service in Bac Ninh on Thursday. The team was made up entirely of Australian school girls, and they spent four days painting a primary school and working on Hieu and Thao's new house (see the January 8 post). The house is coming along really well - all that Aussie labour has made a big difference. This second team dug out a lime pit (man, what a shame I missed that!) and cleaned the used bricks from the old house in order to start building the toilet and kitchen for the new house. The group returned to Hanoi absolutley BUZZING with excitement, but they must have slept for the next 30 or 40 hours!





-> Another Hanoi blogger, ourmaninhanoi.blogspot.com, has added a link to vietnamstreets, so I've been getting some extra traffic and a few offers of support from people around the world. A big THANK YOU to OMIH (aka Steve) and for his readers who have been checking in. Steve works with KOTO, a training restaurant for disadvantaged youth here in Hanoi - another great cause that's good for the kids.

-> Our chief psychologist, Khanh, was approached last week by a school that has a student in need of help. This isn't the first time we've had such a request, but it is one of the more extreme cases. The school has one student (we'll call her Huong) who is doing really well, getting brilliant results in all her classes, and going home after school to work 14 hours or so for her boss, who pays her the miserly sum of $10 a month. $10! The dividing line between employment and slavery in such a case is pretty hard to see. 'Huong' is 16 now, and has been out of school for a few years because of her mother's chronic illness: Huong has to earn the money to pay for the medicine. The boss justifies the ridiculous pay on the grounds that she so kindly lets Huong attend school. And once she knew that Blue Dragon was involved, Huong's boss made moves to make her quit school immediately. But we've reached a compromise - Huong will continue to work until the end of the month, then take a Tet holiday and return to school full time, with Blue Dragon's support, in February. No more slave labour, and one very annoyed boss who might have to pay staff a reasonable amount in future.

-> The hair cuts continue! Vu Doo salon gave the Big Snip to some more of our kids last week, with more to go today and tomorrow. It's such a treat for the children, and beautiful to watch Vu's professional staff treat these street kids to exactly the same level of service as they would any customer. (Thank you, Vu!)

-> Blue Dragon's Permit to Operate has just been renewed, and we are preparing to receive our first official volunteer through VIDA - a new program operated by Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development (AYAD). Both of these events are big deals for us as we grow from a little operation struggling to survive into a sustainable and effective organisation. We're here to stay!

And to finish up... A moment of beauty in a hectic week. One of our guys here is a 16 year old street kid who has been struggling with drugs for a few years, and has had a miserable start to life. Everyone in his family is dead, or in prison, or on their way to prison - nobody has cared for this boy except the dealers on the street who seem in him the opportunity to exploit somebody weaker than themselves.

There is a photo in our 2006 calendar of this boy, and as he was looking over it last week, he turned to one of our social workers to ask what the numbers and symbols on a calendar mean. At age 16, he listened carefully as, for the first time in his life, somebody explained to him what a calendar is.

Such a simple moment, yet somehow so powerful.

Cutting the kids down with voodoo

Sorry, but it's not every day I get to write a headline like that.

We didn't really cut the kids down - just took them for a haircut.

And not using voodoo, either - but a hair salon named Vu Doo.

Vu is one of the top hair stylists in Hanoi - still in his 20s, he has started his own business and serves the upper-end of the local community and expats.

He also volunteered to give the Blue Dragon kids a free hair wash and style before Vietnamese New Year!


Blue Dragon staff started taking the kids yesterday - Tuesday Jan 10 - and we'll keep taking a few at a time until the end of the month.

New Year falls on January 29 - the Year of the Dog! - and that's an extremely important time for all Vietnamese people. It's about the only time of year that I get to use the word 'propitious'. Lunar New Year, or Tet, is like Christmas, New Year, Thanksgiving, and your birthday rolled into one and dished up with a serving of local cuisine, Li Xi (lucky money), and gifts to celebrate the start of a new year.

For the Vietnamese, the first days of the new year are of greatest importance. They signal how the rest of the year will be: so it's essential to have new clothes, new (unused) money, and other symbols of 'newness' and good fortune.

Hence the new haircuts!

In the grand scheme of things, a haircut at a high class salon might not seem so significant. But to Blue Dragon's kids, it is a big deal.

Our kids lead hard lives. The typical Blue Dragon child lives with just one parent or with other relatives - usually, at least one parent is dead or in prison. The kids are totally powerless, living right at the bottom of the social ladder. They are frequently subject to a level abuse, robbery, and violence that seems absurd.

To start off the Vu Doo haircuts, we took 4 boys yesterday (see photo above). One of those boys - and for the sake of privacy I won't say which one - turned up at the Blue Dragon office late last night, having been robbed at knife point by a gang of thugs who wanted his money and his trousers.

The boy was hysterical, terrified that such a thing could happen out in the open. In fact, he's the third of our kids in the last five days to be robbed on the street. One of the social workers and I jumped onto a motorbike and went through the streets looking for the thieves, but they were long gone. We'll go looking again tonight, though, because for sure they'll be back to try their luck on some other poor child.

So a new hairstyle and a shampoo might not wash away all of our kids' fears and problems. But at least the kids can feel a bit better about themselves and start the new year with something new that they can be proud of.

BIG THANKS to Vu and his staff (go get your hair cut there! 32c Cao Ba Quat - phone 733-8329). And thanks also to Glenn, who has found his true calling in life as a hair photographer.

Walls come tumbling down

As crazy as it now seems, I moved from Australia to Vietnam back in 2002 to live a quiet life. It worked for about 6 months, and then I started to get to know some street kids... The life of quiet went right out the window.

Hanoi is a bustling, noisy city, polluted by the hundreds of thousands of honking motorbikes and trucks that race in utter anarchy through the narrow streets, pushing pedestrians and bicycles out of their way in obedience to the only apparent road rule - "Right of Weight".

To top it off, since I arrived (and undoubtedly for several years before that), Hanoi has been one giant construction zone. Everybody is knocking down a house to build a new one, and no matter what kind of construction work they are doing, it involves belting things with hammers from 6.00am until 10.00pm.

Once you escape the city, however, the contrast is stark. OK, I admit that the traffic is still anarchic, but rural areas are quiet and move along at a much more sane pace.

On Saturday I headed off to Bac Ninh province, where Blue Dragon sponsors over 200 children. I went with Tung, a social worker, and we met up with two other staff - Huong and Tarah - who are spending 8 days in the province.

Through an Australian company called Antipodeans, there are 2 teams of Aussie school kids doing service projects in the communities that Blue Dragon works with. For the last few days they have been working in a secondary school - painting fences and gates and working on the school's coutryard. But yesterday the team we met up with had switched to shoveling dirt and knocking down walls.

I wrote on December 27 about Mrs Tat's death; she's been ill for years so Blue Dragon raised the money to build a new home for Tat and her sons, Thao (17) and Hieu (14). The house is well on its way to being finished now, but of course the death of the owner does complicate matters. There are now many different agendas coming in to play, as various family members - mostly distant family - are eyeing the almost-finished house and hinting in pretty excplicit terms that they think they have some right to the property.

They don't, and they're not going to get it. The property must now go to the two children. But it's creating a lot of stress for the boys.

The local Red Cross official, Mr Phong, is looking over the building project and advocating for the kids - he's great, and we have really come to rely on his support. The police and local government are helping out, too, so Thao and Hieu are definitely not alone.

But back to the Aussie kids. Tung and I arrived in the early afternoon, and watched as the team of volunteers transformed the property. (Hey, we helped too, of course... a little...)

The back yard was a mud pit. Every time it rains, the yard fills up with water - this was one reason that Mrs Tat was so ill. She lived in permanent dampness.

No more. The 10 Australian girls and 2 guys shoveled dirt for hours, raising the property and filling in the pits. There's more work to be done yet, but I estimate that they saved Hieu and Thao at least one full week of work.

Then came a more sensitive issue - the old house. We have built the new house on a spot beside the old house, so the home that Thao and Hieu grew up in was still standing. It had to go - it was decrepit, and the boys need the land to build some pig pens. But some family members wanted to keep the old building, and of course the sons had some mixed feelings about knocking it down.

But down it came - and what an event it turned out to be. Instead of being a sensitive and solemn occasion, there was laughter and happiness; friends and neighbours of the two boys also pitched in, climbing up on the roof to dissemble it piece by piece, and then joining in with the Australians to knock the walls over until almost nothing was left.

Thao and Hieu were visibly relieved that the old place was gone. Hieu, normally so quiet and reserved, became animated and started playing about. Even one of the group leaders - Jo, a teacher from Brigidine in St Ives - remarked at the change in Hieu.

Tung and I got back to Hanoi after 9pm, exhausted but elated. To see how a team of Aussie school kids could build bridges between two cultures, and make such a tangible impact on Mrs Tat's house in just one day, was quite moving. And such a great outcome for the kids and families of Bac Ninh.

Off the Streets, Back to School

Today Blue Dragon celebrated a momentous occasion in the life of a street kid: the return to school.

Quy has been shining shoes in Hanoi for more than two years; he left home in his native village after his father died and his mother could no longer afford to support him.

Life on the streets has been hazardous, but Quy's journey finally brought him to the Blue Dragon soccer team, Real Betis Vietnam. This is our outreach program, and Quy's own story testifies to its success.

It's been just one month since we first met Quy at the soccer, but now his life as a street kid is over. He's now a school kid!

Quy is 16 years old, but has only studied up to Grade 6 level. Here in Hanoi, there are some special schools to accommodate young people like Quy: streamlined courses for people of literally any age to continue their education. So even though he's much older than the regular sixth grader, he fits right in at his new school.

Today is a great day for Quy, marking a new start in life. But Blue Dragon's work does not end here: it just begins. I hope that future posts can comment on Quy's progress... maybe even up to university!

This is Quy, back at the Blue Dragon center after his first day at school.

A year of change

At the end of 2004, the coming year was looking very uncertain for Blue Dragon.

The Vietnamese government had just issued us with an official licence, granting us permission to run projects for street kids. This was a major step forward, providing our work with greater legitimacy and much greater security.

At the time, we had a very small office, and I was working with just two staff members - Thuy, a law graduate, and Vuong, a former shoe shine boy.

Our programs were small but yielding strong results. A few of the young guys we had helped escape the streets were now in jobs, and we were supporting about 100 rural kids, mostly girls, through the Stay In School sponsorship program.

But some challenges lay ahead.

We planned to turn our informal work with street kids into an official program: only that we lacked two major ingredients - money, and a local government partner (compulsory for foreign charities working in Vietnam). As 2005 commenced, we had no idea how we would find enough money to run the program, or which government partner we could work with to implement our rather left-of-field approach. By March, both issues were sorted out, and the street children's program, "Step Ahead," was launched in May.

But even with all of this, we still faced the challenge of finding acceptance in the local community. Our office was in a very conservative neighbourhood that did not want a street children's center. On one occasion, two of our boys were physically attacked by business people while walking to the office. On several occasions, our building was attacked by thugs, usually at night, and was the target of theft several times.

So we decided that the simplest solution was to leave - and we found a larger building in a less aggressive area. The move also brought us much closer to the homes and communities of the kids in our programs. (The photo below is taken in our new building shortly after we moved in).



Now as 2005 draws to an end, Blue Dragon staff and volunteers are proud of the progress we've made. In the countryside, we are working with close to 250 children, all of whom would have quit school by now if not for the many individual and group sponsors providing financial support.

Here in Hanoi, we have 60 kids on Individual Plans - meaning that we provide comprehensive support for their education, health, accommodation, and social needs. There are at least 100 kids more who come to our football games and drop into the center when they need some help.



More kids have quit the streets to return to school; more teens are in good jobs and earning steady incomes. We have built five houses for desperately poor families, and helped one child escape from the people who trafficked him to Saigon.

Our list of achievements in 2005 is a long one!

But what about 2006?

We do face some immediate challenges. One of our young guys, an orphan, is in hospital with a lung disease; six weeks ago doctors doubted that he could survive. Now we are looking at rehabilitation and recovery over at least the next nine or ten months.

Another of the kids has committed himself to quitting heroin - he's homeless and totally illiterate at age 16, so he's going to need a lot of support.

My last blog told the news of Mrs Tat's sudden death; we are half way through building her new house, and her sons, aged 14 and 17, are now in desperate need of help. This will require a lot of tact and care, as we need to ensure that the children are the sole beneficiaries of their mother's estate, in accordance with her will. They'll also need some significant emotional and material help to get them through the year.

For our street children project, we plan to double the number of kids on individual plans, and we intend to start supporting a center in Hoian, with over 30 street kids who love in a residential setting.

Blue Dragon has no plans to take over the world - building an empire for ourselves is not what we're about. But growth and development in the coming year will mean more children and teenagers off the streets and on the path to a life without poverty.

I look forward to sharing the highs and lows with you as the year unfolds.

A tribute to Mrs Tat

Amidst the happiness of Christmas, some very sad news: someone close to Blue Dragon staff has died.

Mrs Tat, whose son Hieu is sponsored through our Stay In School program, passed away in the early hours of Tuesday, December 27 in her house in Bac Ninh province.

In our November newsletter, we appealed for funds to rebuild her family home. She had come to ask us for help, as she wanted to know that her two sons would have a good place to live when she was gone.

Our staff brought Mrs Tat to Hanoi to visit a hospital, and the doctors were quite sure that she would be OK with the right treatment. And her health did improve considerably; but in recent weeks Mrs Tat's illnesses returned, stronger than ever, and she was too weak to cope.

Life for single mothers is very difficult in Vietnam; but Mrs Tat coped admirably and cared for her sons as best she could. She was determined that Hieu would stay enrolled in school, and wanted to be sure that her sons would be well cared for even after she had died.

We have already started rebuilding Mrs Tat's home; the work is almost half done. We now intend to finish the house and to ensure that her sons will inherit it, as she wished.

As this has happened quite suddenly, we are not yet sure what will develop in the coming days: how the relatives will respond, and which of them will offer to care for Hieu and his older brother. Blue Dragon staff will attend the funeral on Wednesday morning, and we hope to know more by the end of the week. Anybody with a particular interest in this case is welcome to contact me at bluedragon@bdcf.org.

A Hanoi Christmas

The big question on everyone’s lips at the moment is: Do you miss being home for Christmas?

Of course, the answer isn’t as simple as a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. After all, my home is in Hanoi. I don’t have a home in Australia.

And as nice as it is to see my family when I go back, there is a very real sense in which I have a family here in Vietnam – albeit a very large, diverse family...

With Christmas on a Sunday this year, we took the opportunity to turn our regular events into special events. Soccer, which kicks off at 8am every Sunday, was played as normal, but at the end all the kids received an armload of presents donated by the United Nations International School. (www.unishanoi.org). Big thanks to Julian Carey for initiating this, and to her husband David and son William, who drove out with her to the field on Christmas morning to make the Big Delivery!

Getting our kids organized is always a challenge, but when it came time for gift giving they all sat down in rows and our volunteers distributed 3 or 4 presents to every one of the 74 street kids. That’s a LOT of presents!

Our good friends Jennifer Davoli from the US, and Catherine DeVrye from Australia (www.cdv.com.au) were there along with all of us from Blue Dragon to help with giving out the gifts… and to share in the tremendous excitement of the event. The kids were HUGELY thrilled with it all, and the parcels they received were really something. There were toys, books, soccer balls, shampoo, clothes, watches, hats… even a canned wombat (which, I believe, was not a real wombat…)

Once the wrapping paper was discarded and the field was deserted, we were all off to more parties for the kids. A couple of dozen came by the Blue Dragon HQ to watch Tom and Jerry DVDs, and then at 11am our volunteer Tarah hosted a lunch for all of the kids who attend our weekly drumming circle. Lots of singing, eating, and making funny faces out of sweets!

I then headed to the home of Robert Gordon, the British Ambassador to Vietnam. His family has been exceptionally kind and supportive over the last year or so, and invited me to join their Christmas lunch. 24 hours on and I still feel full…

And finally, a quiet evening with just a handful of kids – I wanted to spend some time with the young guys I have known through 4 Christmases, and who are now in full time employment. It was quite special, to share our memories of the last few years and look back on all that’s changed…

After all the excitement, Blue Dragon HQ was closed today (Boxing Day), although there were still a few kids about needing a hand with this or that. One of the Social Workers and I spent the afternoon at a hospital visiting Hung, one of the kids, who has been seriously ill with a lung disease but is starting to recover. He was even able to walk downstairs to sit outside with us, which is a huge leap from where he was just a month ago.

More on Hung in the next blog! For now, a big THANK YOU to everyone who has been emailing me about Ngoc, the young boy who was trafficked – your concern is appreciated.

And a happy Christmas to all!

The long hard slog beyond the fuzzies

(Christmas 2002 - the very early days of Blue Dragon.
Half the kids at the party are now in school or full time jobs)

In our November 2005 Newsletter, Blue Dragon made an appeal for two separate needs.

First, we asked our supporters for $2000 to help Mrs Tat and her sons build a new house in Bac Ninh province. We had some AMAZING responses, and so the house is under construction right now - more on that in the next week or two.

And second, we asked for donations to buy warm winter clothes for the street kids in time for Christmas. And again, we've had a lot of support come through, from all corners of the globe - a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has sent us some money to help out.

Over the last few weeks we've been taking kids out shopping, making sure they get what they need, but there's a real sense of festivity in the air - making the trips feel more like 'Christmas shopping' than about providing for basic needs.

And there's much more Christmas joy to come. Next Sunday, on Christmas Day, our staff and volunteers will spend time with the kids, and of course there will be some gift giving and parties.

Julian Carey, one of our strong supporters who happens to be a mum with a child at the United Nations International School (UNIS), will be coming to our weekly football match (yep, even on Christmas Day!) with a car load of presents that grade 1 and 5 UNIS kids have donated and wrapped.

She did the same last year, and our kids were filled with the most incredible excitement when they got to open the gifts. We'll have some pics to post after the event next Sunday morning - should be a blast.

It will be a fun Christmas, and our kids will be delighted, but I'm not going to pretend that some presents and balloons will change their world. There are some other charities about at the moment that are throwing massive parties for the poor - parties which just happen to also be terrific photo opportunities for their expat staff and directors to be snapped standing beside big donors.

There's something awfully hypocritical about westerners running charities who want to use Christmas parties as the focus of their year. It's easy to feel warm and fuzzy by inviting an impoverished family to join in a Christmas lunch. But what about the rest of the year? And what matters more - the 364 days of regular life, or the one day of Christmas?

When I think about the street kids that Blue Dragon works with, I know that they appreciate the gifts and fun that come with Christmas - they have in the past, and they will again this year. I also know that, in decades to come, it will be the 'long haul' of caring and commitment that they will most value.

Take Quyen, for example. In the two years that he's been a part of the 'Blue Dragon family,' he's had a tough time. Quyen was in hospital for two weeks with a head injury after being hit by a motorbike - my staff and I took turns visiting him so we could sit by his bed and hold his hand through that ordeal. Then we took up his case to make the motorbike driver who hit him cough up the money to cover the hospital bill.

Since then, Quyen has been expelled twice from his school, and on each occasion we've been there to work out a solution. The first time, we had to help him find a new school. The second time, one of the Blue Dragon social workers took him back to the teacher to mediate a peace treaty (and so far, so good). Apart from all that, Quyen comes to our soccer games and social outings, he's enrolled in one of our computer classes, and we're working with him to get a birth certificate, as so far his birth is unregistered - even though he's 16 years old!

Thanks to the UNIS kids, Quyen will be receiving a big Christmas present on the 25th, and he'll be invited to join us in a party after the soccer. He's going to love it all.

But forget the cheesy photo opportunities, thank you very much - the work that I take the most pride in is the daily slog that's mostly behind the scenes. Our kids know this. And so do our friends and supporters.

Julian, the UNIS parent who has organised the Christmas gifts, asked me last week, "What about rabies shots and all the regular innoculations - do the street kids have those already, or do they need to have them?"

Now, rabies shots don't give you the same warm fuzzies and cute photos that come with Christmas parties. Like most of our supporters, Julian knows the truth:

It's the long hard slog that counts.

The winter woolies

One thing I was not expecting when I moved to Vietnam - winter.

Isn't Vietnam supposed to have a tropical climate? Well, Ho Chi Minh City does. But Hanoi has a fair-dinkum, brass-monkey-beware, genuine winter (apologies for the Australianisms there. But it's really, really cold). The temperature doesn't get too low - usually it's around 10-12 degrees... But it stays humid, and so everything is damp and icy cold. You have to be here to believe it.

For street kids, the winter is a particularly bad time. Even in the day, nobody should be out in this weather, but children who have no family to support them have no choice. They have to go out every morning to collect scrap paper, or shine shoes, regardless of the season.

So Blue Dragon is turning its attention for a while to some basic needs. We prefer not to devote our resources to handouts, but when it comes to the Hanoi winter, the kids need help to stay warm and healthy.

Our social workers have been taking kids down to the local market to buy jackets and jeans; Julian, who is running a music club, gave all the kids winter beanies and gloves. Jennifer, another volunteer, took three boys out during the week to get them jackets and shoes. We always let the kids choose their own clothes - just one little part of our philosophy that happens to be very important.

And to top it all off, the International Women's Club has helped us buy 100 blankets! On Thursday and Friday, the social workers played Santa Claus (and LOVED it), as all the families and carers of our kids came around to collect their early Christmas present.



Such a simple thing, giving out blankets... but there weren't many dry eyes by the end of the day. For most of the kids and families, this was the first time they had ever owned such a warm, beautiful blanket. Wow, were they appreciative!

It's great to know that at least some families will be so much warmer this Christmas.