I has been so wonderful to experience and get to know the unique personalities of the kids at Xa Mẹ. Each week I feel like I get closer with a lot of the kids. For example, it's so nice to see a kid who was once ambivalent about my presence give me a huge, excited smile and enthusiastic wave everytime we arrive at XM. It's really hard for me to think about us having to leave in a few weeks.
Anyways, one of our main goals has been to help the children express themselves and feel good about who they are as individuals. One way that we are implementing this is through our profile project. (Almost) all of the children have had their pictures taken, and the plan has been for them to write about themselves on a piece of paper with their picture on it. The final pages will be compiled as part of our yearbook that we will give each kid at the end of the program.
Today we brought in pictures of the children, taped them on white sheets of paper, and told the kids to write about themselves and/or draw pictures. This was definitely our most successful activity yet. A good chunk of the kids participated (12), and the kids really seemed to enjoy having their own individual pictures and expressing themselves through their pages. I found it interesting when I saw one boy drawing on a girl's page. He didn't seem to be doing it in a mischievious way--it was more like he was just adding details to his own. Jon told him to stop, but this observation really stuck with me. Many times in the past I have also seen kids drawing on and taking each other's papers and turning them into paper airplanes if we weren't paying close enough attention. This observation made me think that maybe the children really don't have that much personal property or much of a feeling of having ownership over things in their lives. It is also possible that I have been witnessing some aspect of a more "collective" culture in contrast to the generally more "individualistic" cultural norm that I'm used to in the United States. Maybe this kind of thing is common among children everywhere in Vietnam?...
But, anyways, as I have mentioned in the past, I think that the personal property and space that the children have in the orphanage is really limited. I don't know of any other activities the children are regularly able to do where they are encouraged to think about who they are and express themselves creatively. The fact that so many children participated (even older kids who usually don't participate!), and that they seemed to really enjoy working on their profile pages, makes me feel that our activity was successful. I think this activity was really aimed at valuing each kid as an individual with a unique identity and perspective that we care about, and I hope that the kids felt this. It was also nice to notice today that the children still use the individual folders we gave them. Those folders are another way for the children to feel a sense of ownership and individuality within a very communal space.
Overall, I hope that our work is helping the kids to have a positive sense of self, and to feel good about expressing their unique identity.
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