Photographic Exhibition at the Foreign Correspondents' Club Hong Kong

Launch party 6.00 pm, Tuesday 2 March
Exhibition runs: 2 - 28 March 2004

Classmates - Ho Van Giau, 16 years old

Welcome to Saigon Children's Charity first ever overseas exhibition of Students' Photographs. We are very grateful to the Foreign Correspondents' Club for giving our young photography students the chance to display their work in this prestigious venue.

In 1996 we began the first photography class in our Thang Long Vocational Training School of District 4 in Ho Chi Minh City. District 4 has an unenviable reputation for poverty and vice and the concentration of social deprivation there means children's lives are fraught with danger.

We believe that by giving these youngsters the right training in the right skills we can give them the choices in life that they should be allowed to make. The choice of a decent job free from deprivation and exploitation. And the chance of making their own way freely in the world.

For some of our students, many of whom are free and independently spirited, photography is an ideal choice. Photography opens up the horizons of the children. It helps them to look at the world around them and perceive their own special part in it. Photography is, for many, the first opportunity they have had to think and express themselves creatively and freely. Many of the pictures on display here were taken on photography expeditions we run for the children which take them out to parts of their country they have never seen before.

As the students get older we can help some of them make a living from photography. This exhibition and your support of it will help make that dream a reality. We have found some of our students work in restaurants and hotels. Some will stay in these jobs but given the chance some would like to become professional photographers. Thanks to the generosity of the FCC in waiving commission on sales of the pictures all proceeds from the sales will go entirely to the students and to the expansion and development of the photography classes.

There was a high level of interest in the exhibition from all quarters with reports and reproductions in the South China Morning Post and airline inflight magazines. The eye of the young Vietnamese for an original, striking and colourful scene is quite remarkable. Quoted in a feature story in the South China Morning Post of 14 March the Wall Committee Chairwoman, Ilaria Sala said "When we heard how young the photographers were we really didn't know what to expect. Then we actually saw the photos. We were really surprised by the quality. Even more startling was that the subject matters were actually interesting. That's why we've allowed this exhibition to go on for so long, a full month."

Full text of SCMP article by Joyce Hor-Chung Lau