Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food

Letter From The Blue Dragon staff and kids

Dear Blue Dragon Friends and Family,

Happy Year of the Tiger! The lunar new year celebration has just ended in Vietnam and we are now looking forward to what this year will bring!

In our March newsletter, you will read about Doan, an 11-year-old who has been living in an abandoned house. You'll also read about Bong, whose family is in dire need of help. And on the brighter side, check out the news about the Blue Dragon Bicycle Tour and the 2010 Tet Awards.

We have a lot of things to share with you, so click the photo to download the March News now!

You'll be mesmerized! Click here to read the news now!!

With warm regards,

The Blue Dragon staff and kids

Nina & Lotta tại Hà Nội

Khai trương sách Blue Dragon

“Nina & Lotta tại Hà Nội” của tác giả Riccardo Bianco Levrin (được Carlo Gherardi dịch) là một cuộc hành trình qua các điểm tham quan, mùi vị, truyền thống và cuộc sống hàng ngày của Hà Nội cũng như những gì thấy được qua đôi mắt của một người cha Ý và những đứa con sinh sống tại Việt Nam.

Cuốn sách được bày bán tại 61 Hàng Gai và tại Bookworm. Tất cả lợi nhuận từ sách sẽ được tặng cho quỹ trẻ em Rồng Xanh (Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation).

(HanoiGrapevine)

KỲ THỊ NGƯỜI CÓ AIDS

Sáng cuối tuần, đồng nghiệp gọi điện hỏi thăm:

- Cuối tuần cậu làm gì?
- Không làm gì cả. Đang nằm ườn trên giường thôi. Còn ông?
- Tôi chuẩn bị đi đám tang.
- Tang ai thế?
- Một đồng nghiệp.
- Sao mà chết.
- Ốm chết. Chính xác hơn là bị AIDS.
- Thế à. Thế nào mà lại dính AIDS.
- Thôi đừng hỏi. Anh ta là người tốt. Tai nạn thôi mà.

Vâng, tôi cũng tin như vậy. Thời buổi này mà một người có học bị dính AIDS thì đúng chỉ có thể là tai nạn.

Còn nhớ cách đây hơn 10 năm, một đám nhà báo trẻ, trưa tụ tập ăn uống, thấy một cậu môi sưng tấy bèn trêu: Này có khi ông bị AIDS.

Anh kia chống chế: "Không, mùa này tôi hay bị sưng môi như vậy"

Cả đám không buông tha: "Ông mà bị AIDS là nổi tiếng ngay, người ta sẽ nói: "Nhà báo đầu tiên bị nhiễm HIV".

Chàng trai tái mặt, cười gượng, lo âu lộ rõ trong mắt.

Mấy hôm sau, môi hết sưng, cậu nói: "Hôm nọ các ông làm tôi lo quá".

Chúng tôi thấy hối hận vì đã đùa quá trớn.

Nhân Ngày Thế giới phòng chống HIV/AIDS, chương trình thời sự VTV1 tối qua phát đoạn băng một người phụ nữ tuổi chừng 30 chao chác nói: "Chúng tôi cũng hiểu thôi, nhưng để con cái chúng tôi học chung với chúng (những đứa trẻ nhiễm HIV) một ngày thì được. Đây là cả năm cả tháng. Ai đảm bảo là con cái chúng tôi không bị lây nhiễm? Trẻ con hiếu động như thế, nhỡ ra, rồi ai chịu trách nhiệm."

Thế là nỗ lực đưa trẻ nhiễm HIV/AIDS hòa nhập cộng đồng đã không thể thực hiện được. Những đứa trẻ bất hạnh chỉ được dự lễ khai giảng ở trường, rồi lại trở về trại trẻ mồ côi, chơi đùa học hành với những bạn có chung hoàn cảnh.

Thử đặt ta vào vị trí cha mẹ có con học chung với trẻ nhiễm HIV/AIDS thấy cũng khó lòng mà yên tâm được.

Thời sự tivi tối nay lại phát một câu chuyện khác. Một người đàn ông có HIV cũng chừng 30 tuổi, phát biểu mà không cần các kỹ thuật viên truyền hình phải che mắt. Anh nói: "Bây giờ xã hội đổi khác rồi. Mấy năm trước thì khó khăn hơn đấy. Trước đi ra ngoài đường người ta cũng tránh. Giờ ra đường người ta quý lắm, bắt tay bình thường. Tôi đi làm với những người không nhiễm HIV cũng không có gì xảy ra. Thậm chí anh em còn mặc chung quần áo"".

Giá mà ở đâu cũng được như thế.

http://vmcinhanoi.blogspot.com/2009/11/world-aids-day.html

Exiled From School, H.I.V.-Infected Orphans Learn a Bitter Lesson

Justin Mott for The New York Times

Children from the Mai Hoa AIDS Center in An Nhon Tay, Vietnam played in between classes. More Photos >

By SETH MYDANS

Published: October 13, 2009

AN NHON TAY, Vietnam — The first day of school was a special one last month for the 15 children from the Mai Hoa orphanage here. They are infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and for the first time they would be allowed to attend the local primary school.

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In Vietnam, an Education Deferred

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Justin Mott for The New York Times

Students studied at the Mai Hoa AIDS Center in An Nhon Tay, Vietnam. More Photos »

The New York Times

An Nhon Tay village is 20 miles from Ho Chi Minh City. More Photos >

“The children were so excited,” said Sister Nguyen Thi Bao, who runs the orphanage and had been lobbying for three years to enroll them in the government school. “They had been wishing for this day to come.”

But when they arrived, they found an uprising by the parents of the other students, who refused to let their children enter the school together with the infected orphans. Some of the parents hastily backed away when the orphans walked past.

After a short standoff, the principal, who had agreed to accept the orphans, told Sister Bao that their papers were not in order and that they could not stay.

The children returned to the orphanage, just a short walk down a country road, where they continue to study in small classrooms, still exiled from the uninfected world.

“I was so happy to go to the school,” said a 12-year-old fourth grader for whom Sister Bao insisted on anonymity to keep her from the spotlight. “But then I saw that some parents wouldn’t let their children go to school with me because they are scared of my disease.”

The girl said she understood their reaction.

“If I were a normal child, I would be afraid, too, because I wouldn’t understand,” she said. “I would feel the same way. But I wouldn’t have acted the way they did.”

Sister Bao and officials of the district and the school, the An Nhon Dong Elementary School, have met with the parents since then, but they remain adamant.

“I don’t want my child to be with the AIDS children,” Nguyen Thi Thuy, 36, said the other day as she brought her 8-year-old son to school. “He could be injured, and it’s easy to transmit the disease through blood. And once you’re sick, it’s difficult to become a normal person again.”

One after another, parents who arrived with their children on small motorbikes raised their voices in agreement. If the orphans came back, said a man who gave his name only as Tam, he would pull his son out again.

The story is not surprising, said Eamonn Murphy, Vietnam director for Unaids, the United Nations’ AIDS-fighting agency.

“You go to any rural environment in Asia, and you are going to have similar reactions,” he said. “The general lack of understanding leads to this inappropriate reaction and fear.”

Most of the parents here are farmers with little education, but the prejudice seemed to extend to city folk as well.

“I don’t know why we don’t isolate people with AIDS,” said a civil servant in Ho Chi Minh City, about 20 miles southeast of the village. “Even with swine flu we isolate people, and this disease is much more dangerous.”

There is no truth to these fears, Mr. Murphy said.

“H.I.V. is not contagious from community contact, even if you are sharing cups and saucers and eating from a communal plate. You can’t get H.I.V. from that.”

In recent years, Vietnam’s prevention and treatment programs have been improving, Mr. Murphy said, although so far only 30 percent of people who need life-saving antiretroviral drugs receive them.

About 290,000 people in Vietnam, a country of 86 million, carry H.I.V. today, and Mr. Murphy said that although the rate of increase was slowing, the infection was spreading outside high-risk groups.

Among those infected, the government estimates that 5,100 are children. Although the law requires equal treatment, almost none of them have been accepted in schools because of the fears of other children’s parents, Nguyen Vinh Hien, the deputy minister of education, said last month.

He said the ministry would try to enroll at least half of these children in government schools by next year, but the experience of the Mai Hoa orphans suggests that this will not be easy.

Frightened and angry on that first day, some of the parents seemed heartless, Sister Bao said.

“They were saying the children were going to die anyway, so there’s no need for them to study,” she said. “ ‘If they are going to study, let them do it in the orphanage, and not put our children in danger.’ ”

The Mai Hoa AIDS Center, with its green and quiet grounds, was founded by a Roman Catholic order in 2003 as a hospice for patients in the final stages of the disease. It added the orphanage to care for children of people who died there.

The children are infected as well, Sister Bao said, but are receiving antiretroviral medication.

The buildings behind the classrooms are still a hospice, where a dozen emaciated patients lie on cots. Altogether, 250 people have died, Sister Bao said, including 90 whose unclaimed ashes are stored behind the hospice buildings.

Some of those are the remains of the children’s parents.

So the orphans of Mai Hoa live suspended between the death that fills the space behind their classrooms and the life of a world, just down the road, that still will not accept them.

“The children say they want to go to the other school because they want to have friends,” Sister Bao said.

But the 12-year-old fourth-grader seemed to have changed her mind.

“I don’t want to go to that school,” she said. “I already have enough friends here.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/world/asia/14orphans.html?ref=world