10th Day

I met the girls at our usual coffee place and we discussed a few things about the project and about some excursions we are going to make (Mekong Delta tomorrow until Friday, next week maybe Da Lat and the highlands, and the week after that Angkor War in Cambodia !!). In the afternoon we had a really important meeting : A workshop rehearsal with a professional trainer, who would gave us some advice and feedback. It was very useful, and the guy himself was really nice, he’s from England and Spain and he came to Vietnam for a career break (he’s been living there for more four and half years now). We talked a lot about the eastern and western lifestyles, and at the end he gave us three his number so that we could catch up some time and so that he could introduce us to the Vietnamese nightlife, we’re really looking forward to that !!

Then we had an other meeting with the project members in a KFC, and we discussed a lot of important points. I noticed that I haven’t told you a lot about our project yet, so let me explain it to you :

First of all, what is our goal ? It is to give knowledge about HIV and AIDS to as many Vietnamese people as we can, so that they can learn to know when they are exposed to the HIV virus, how to prevent an infection, and also learn not to discriminate people infected with HIV.

How will we do it ? First we have a series of workshops (they already did more than a hundred of them in about one and a half years !!), to inform the students of universities, high schools, and sometimes primary schools. Then we will have some "interactive visit trips", where we will visit some shelter homes where children infected with HIV are living (most of them were abandonned or are orphans), and thirdly there is the "Lead the change contest", which will take place threw the internet, mainly facebook. It is still being prepared so I'll tell you more about it as soon as I can.

On Saturday evening we're going to Long An to have our first workshop on Sunday, I'm very excited (and anxious also), but I really believe that this whole project is very meaningful, because people in Vietnam aren't really aware of the danger of HIV and most of them don't ever talk about such things, so the HIV-infection rate in this part of the world is really high. We need to raise awareness !! And if you want to help us by sending us some money (not more than 3 to 5 euros !!), please contact me at annevr2@hotmail.com, we will be most grateful and will use the funds well !!

I won't be writing until Friday night, because as I wrote before, we're going to the Mekong Delta for three days. I wish you a nice week !!