Pure Vietnam Beauty & Spa Nha Trang Blog

Pure Vietnam Beauty and Spa Charity for June - Loc Tho Pagoda

What a fantastic morning! Charity for the month of June was at Loc Tho Pagoda.

We took fake meat, vegetables, fruit, beans and dried mushrooms to eat. This Pagoda has 130 local and orphaned children that attend their school. We are lucky to have friends visiting from Australia at this time and they have four young children. We took our friends to the Pagoda and the Australian children taught the Vietnamese children a song, called mother finger and the Vietnamese children got to show the Australian children some of the songs that I have taught them while I have been teaching English here, head shoulders knees and toes and the hokey pokey.

There was a lot of laughter and fun. The Australian children bought pencils to give to the children of the Pagoda so they could color in.

At the end of the lessons we taught the children how to brush their teeth correctly. As a part of the charity we bought every child a toothbrush (with some extra’s and big tubes of toothpaste as well).

After teaching, while the children had a break, we all played in the playground. It’s amazing how well the children were able to play without having to know the language. The teachers also got to practice their English.

Thank you to our Australian friends. Paul, Nicole, Jasmine and Riley Peacock, Roz and Brian Harmsworth and Pierre, Tracey, Max and Sebastian De Villecourt. Also many thanks to Pure Vietnam staff and friends who came with us.

Teaching English to Children

One of the things I am privileged to do is to teach English to children at a local Pagoda. This Pogoda has orphans but also has a school for local children whose parents don't have a lot of money. The Pagoda teaches to fifth grade. They feed all the children lunch ensuring they get a reasonable meal each day. I go there on Saturday mornings and teach English from 7:30-9:15. I teach 2 classes, third grade and a combined fourth and fifth class. I have been doing this for a couple of months now and whilst it can be a little challenging it is a fabulous thing to watch some of the kids start to have an English conversation with me. They are innately shy and so it has taken quite some time but now they run to me to greet me, I play skipping and games with them. I get cuddles and high fives.However when you bring out the camera they certainly aren't shy.

I am not a qualified teacher but I have had experience with teaching adults. I want it to be fun so we do lots of games and coloring in and drawing. I’m lucky enough to have found a website that I pay a yearly subscription to that helps enormously with training aids.

The other week I decided to teach them about different types of clothing. I made cut out dolls and cut out lots of different clothing with tags so the children could dress and undress the dolls. They had a great time! Most of the time I have a short story about what we are teaching and they love hearing these.

They all want to help and often they will sort all my papers for me (sometimes not necessarily how I want them) but they love to help.

I have started teaching some of their teachers English as well. These ladies work here for not a lot of money and it is nice to do something for them. We meet twice a week after school. There are some of their friends coming as well and it’s turning into a bit of a social thing. The other day I asked them to write a story about their family. They blew me away with the effort they put it. They are learning so fast. It bought a bit of a tear to my eye.

This is certainly one of those things that you do that you get more out of it than you give :)

Pure Vietnam Beauty and Spa Charity for May

Thank you to Maria Voloshina for generously donating money towards the money that Pure Vietnam spends on charity each month.
Pure Vietnam has been open for one year and the first 1 000 000 vnd that we made we spent at Mr Phuc’s orphanage so I decided that one year later this is where we needed to go . This orphanage has around 20 children. We have been coming here for 12 years. It was the first orphanage that we visited in Vietnam. It is great to watch the children grow up.

We contacted them and asked if they needed anything special. Mr Phuc told us 6 of the children needed bags for school. With the help of staff and friends we went to the markets and bought lots of fruit, vegetables, 4 chickens, 50 eggs, 20 toothbrushes, 6 packets of cake, 50 sausages and two cartons of milk. Lots of food for hungry children. Lots of protein to keep them full so they can concentrate at school.

It’s great to go and spend time with the children and see them smile. Thank you to Dung, Nga, Nhu and Hien for helping us with the shopping and taking it to the orphanage. A cold drink after was certainly appreciated. We had a wonderful time.

I had an amazing day doing the monthly charity for Pure Vietnam Beauty and Spa.
I went to a Pagoda about 40kms south of Nha Trang. This Pagoda has 70 children in it ranging from 8 months to sixteen years of age with some of the children having disabilities. Downs syndrome, spina bifida, cleft palatte were some that I recognized and some I didn’t recognize. They do it fairly tuff here because they are not easily accessible like the other orphanages in Nha Trang (not that any of them have an easy time).

Some friends of ours had given us some money to buy things for orphans.Jacob George, Kim Chi Tran, Robyn Glasgow and daughter Tarja and Nguyen Lanh.
I decided to pool the money along with some of ours and bought a couple og kilos of dried mushrooms, many bags of fake meat (Buddhist’s can’t eat meat), cartons of milk, boxes of noodles, lots of rice, and chuppa chups.

I hired a car and went with Minh Hiền a friend of hers and one of our security guards who wanted to do charity.Steve Brown and the rest of the staff had to work.

These kids are shy yet want to talk and touch. They all want attention.

They who have nothing shared their lunch with us. It was their honor to be able to give to us because we gave to them. A very humbling experience. It was a delicious lunch of pumpkin, fried sweet potato, rice and zucchini soup. The older boys are so studious and are very keen to practice their English. Some of the older boys kept studying through lunch. (maybe they had an exam coming up?)

We gave out milk and chuppa chups. Each child would only have one chuppa chups with many of the older boys giving the younger children theirs so they had two.
We should all take a moment to appreciate what we have and especially on Mother’s Day appreciate those who have given to us selflessly.
It is both a humbling but an incredibly uplifting experience to be able to help someone else even just a little.

(tiếng Việt bên dưới)

We are fortunate enough to have some wonderful friends who are like minded people. Chris Greenwell, Steve Gee, Malcolm and Robyn Campbell and Colleen Rendell all gave me money to spend.Pure Vietnam was going to Thanh Son Orphanage to take food so I combined our trip.

I combined this money and was able to buy:
• 180 school books
• 100pens
• 80 pencils
• 50 refillable lead packets for pencils
• 80 erasers
• 12 boxes of chalk

Thank you all so much for your very generous donations. The children are very appreciative. It helps immensely with their education to have the basic tools

Thanh Son Orphanage was founded in 1994 and has had up to 100 orphans.
Unfortunately things have been hard for them and their numbers have fluctuated. At present they have 75 children under their care.

Chúng tôi thật sự may mắn khi nhân được quyên góp từ những người bạn hào phóng của chúng tôi. Chris Greenwell, Steve Gee, Malcolm and Robyn Campbell và Colleen Rendell đều gửi tặng tiền cho chúng tôi thực hiện công tác từ thiện. Pure Vietnam Beauty and Spa dự định sẽ mang thức ăn đến trại trẻ mồ côi Thanh Sơn, sau đó chúng tôi quyết định phối hợp cả hai.

Tôi đã gộp tiền của tất cả mọi người lại và đã mua được:

180 tập

100  viết mực

80 viết chì

50 ruột viết chì

80 cục tấy

12 hộp phấn viết bảng

Cảm ơn mọi người rất nhiều đã tham gia quyên góp. Tất cả các em đều rất vui sướng. Với dụng cụ học tập này phần nào cổ vũ tinh thần cho các em đến trường.

Trại trẻ mồ côi Thanh Sơn được thành lập vào năm 1994 và hiện tại trại có 100 trẻ mồ cô. Không may rằng các em không có điều kiện sở hửu đầy đủ như trẻ em bình thường và 100 là một con số không hề nhỏ. Hiện tại chỉ có 25 trẻ được quan tâm chăm sóc, 75 còn lại các em tự thân trông nom bản thân.