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Publication Date: Friday, February 14, 2003

Helping the street children

The Vietnamese street children in the shelter had so little to play with. A few tennis balls. Some sticks.

"It touched my daughters very much," said Kim Nguyen, who returned to her native Vietnam for a visit in 1999, bringing her daughters, Chi and Truc, then 11 and 17.

"We visited them about three times over the course of two days and were struck by how warm and bright and open they were," recalled Chi. "But they were very undernourished."

The street children taught them games and songs. "We even did the Macarena together since that was one of the few songs we both knew," said Chi.

The Nguyen girls' Vietnamese is so fluent that the street children were surprised - and saddened - to learn they were from far away and could not come back soon. "They cried when saying goodbye," said mother Kim Nguyen.

The Nguyen girls returned to the United States resolved to improve the lives of these children. Truc, a 2000 graduate of Amador Valley High, solicited help from its leadership class, which has sponsored them each year since to give a concert in the Amador Theater. They have raised $18,000 so far.

Their fourth annual benefit concert this Sunday will present jazz and classical music, plus traditional Vietnamese instruments, such as the 16-stringed zither, monochord and thap-luc. Musicians are from Cal State Hayward, including clarinetist and former Music Department Head Bill Wohlmacher and pianist Ellen Wassermann; the Just Friends jazz band; and students from Stanford University, where Truc is a junior.

The proceeds go to the street children of the city of Can Tho, Vietnam, through the Viet Nam Health Education and Literature Projects (NVHelp), a nonprofit organization based in San Jose. For more information, visit www.vnhelp.org.

Zither and more