The Global Fund For Children

Tini’s Story

• By The Smile Group in Vietnam on October 20th, 2011
• Category: Blog, East and Southeast Asia

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – For the last two years, GFC has partnered with the Adobe Foundation to participate in Adobe Youth Voices (AYV), a program that empowers young people to share their voices and express their understanding of the world through the use of new media technology. Twenty-seven of our grantee partners currently participate in the AYV program. Young people from these grantee partners are engaged in innovative media making, including learning how to use Adobe software like Photoshop and Premiere Elements to create animation, digital art, videos, and more. The following guest blog was written by Tini, a youth artist from The Smile Group in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The Smile Group works with disadvantaged youth who are affected by HIV/AIDS, providing them with case management, educational opportunities, referrals for medical assistance, and other services.

I was a parentless orphan because of the HIV disease and my neighbors considered me as an odd in the society for the reason of my parents’ deaths to AIDS. My childhood was remote from my friends and I grew up in the despising eyes from people around. I felt my life was extremely terrible then gave up all my faith in life. However, thanks to the support, love and good care from some social groups, I could stand up and continue living with my trust and optimism in life. I never hate my parents as they gave birth bringing me into this world. I love them deeply for their mistakes that had made them go far away from this world since they were still very young.

I think my dad and mom were like many other people with AIDS, deserving to be cared, assisted, and in particular respected by everyone in the community, instead of being indifferent, isolated, and considered rubbish in life. They were normal citizen like others but living with AIDS. However, they did not do anything harmful at all. Normally, if some people with the disease do something dangerous to others, they feel world-weary. I understand that feeling because I am among the stigma’s victims. Thus I want to do something simple so that people in my community would have a different objective look to AIDS people, hopefully children in the same suffering and sorrowful situation like me could live positive and optimistically.

I am now a member of the Smile Group – Friends of Thay Hung, a social group supporting children affected by HIV/AIDS like me. In the past few months, thanks to the support from the group, I had a chance to learn how to use Photoshop and film-making software. With the knowledge trained during the classes, I practiced my skills in making a story film about my grandma and my family. Besides that, I worked part-time for the group last summer. My tasks were to produce the group’s monthly newsletters. My fellows and I have finished 2 newsletters so far. I find it not very difficult but quite complicated to work in the field. I had some difficulties with techniques and skills because I need some assistants who can train me. As I really enjoy writing and working with photography and film making. I have never attended any professional courses so I just do what I can in my capability.

For now, I have temporarily stopped producing newsletters because this work requires more time for writing articles and working on the computer. I am a high school student and my classes have started so I have less spare time. The most important for me to continue my work is an aid so that I could be trained more and more to be able to work well on the software.