Partner Organizations and Groups

Smile Group

Since 2004, Smile Group has provided a support network for families affected by HIV/AIDS. The organization originally started as a peer group for young HIV-positive adults. Soon after founding Smile Group, however, Nguyen Van Hung realized the effects of HIV on the entire family, especially the children. The organization expanded its outreach, not only educating and providing support services for those living with HIV/AIDS, but also meeting the needs of their families. Due to the discrimination that HIV/AIDS-positive individuals still face today, many are denied unemployment and ostracized by their communities, placing their families in desperate situations.

Smile Group currently works with 23 children and 18 families, providing group education and assessing individual needs. While keeping the children in school is their primary initiative, they also work to educate HIV/AIDS affected families about nutrition and preventative medical treatment. Smile Group aims to empower these families and prevent them from being pushed into the margins of Vietnamese society by providing personalized service at the grassroots.

Market Children

AWAP has provided painting activities and educational support for a group of about fifteen youth who work at the Cau Muoi Market in Ho Chi Minh City. Each morning at dawn, you can find these AWAP artists and their families hauling bundles of vegetables and baskets piled with fish as they deftly navigate the crowded and chaotic landscape of the riverside market under the Cau Muoi Bridge. The children spend the following hours helping their parents sell as much as possible before the market closes in the early afternoon.

The income earned at the market is meager, barely enough to meet the family’s essential needs. Education is viewed as a luxury. Only one-third of these artists are able to afford school, and even those who can often attend class infrequently because their families income is inconsistent and they may lack the money to pay school-related costs from month to month. AWAP aims to provide scholarships to academic evening programs for all of our market artists.

Thien Phuoc Shelter

In 2003, Nguyen Kim Chi opened a shelter for children suffering from a variety of disabilities such as hydrocephalus, spina bifida and encephalitis, which are widely believed to be the result of dioxin poisoning, a tragic consequence of war-time use of Agent Orange.

Thien Phuoc provides support and services to approximately 80 children, half of whom live with their families in the countryside and make monthly visits to the shelter for physical therapy and medical care. The children who stay at the shelter full-time are either orphaned or have been surrendered to the care of Thien Phuoc by their families, who are unable to provide the additional support and care for their disabled children.

All of the children supported by Thien Phuoc suffer from developmental and cognitive disabilities, the severity of which prevents them from attending school. AWAP aims to provide these children with physical therapy equipment as well as toys and games that will stimulate cognitive functions.