Saigon Children's Charity - EAFA in Tra Vinh

At the end of September, Mr Tanikawa Hiroshi, president, and Mr Masayashi Endo, secretary general of Asian Education and Friendship Association (AEFA) and the Gypsy Queen Musical Band from Japan visited Hieu Tu A primary school in Tieu Can District, Tra Vinh Province and Thang Long school in District 4, Ho Chi Minh City.

The AEFA-Asian Education and Friendship Association has sponsored the funds to build a 3-room school for Hieu Tu A primary school; this is expected to be finished at the end of this year. Besides building schools, friendship exchange is one of the activities of AEFA. On this occasion, Gypsy Queen Musical Band was invited by AEFA to exchange feelings of friendship and warmth with children through their music. They presented “School Song” and other Vietnamese and Japanese songs to the children. This was the first time, more than 200 students, teachers and people in Hieu Tu School were visited by a Japanese musical band -therefore all of them were eager to meet exchange and enjoy the music.

On the night of September 22, 2007, Gypsy Queen musical band visited Thang Long School in Ho Chi Minh to appear at the Mid Autumn Festival. They introduced some Japanese songs, and sang Vietnamese songs with the children together. In the sparkling eyes of all the students, we saw the warm light of happiness, hope and friendship.

In this school year (2007-2008), nearly 3500 students were enrolled in the Scholarship Programme. All of them were happy to receive pens, textbooks, notebooks and scholarships to start the new school year. Also, 181 students living more than 5 km away from their schools received new bicycles. These small gifts from the donors, however, had a big significance for the students. Not only are they helping lessen their difficulties in school, but they have helped reduce the drop-out rate of poor students.