TT – Some blind children sniff at the paper to smell colors to make the right paintings they have long envisioned in their imagination. The others got up early in the midnight to take long rides to the painting contest with packs of rice in their bags for a meager lunch.
It has been a painting dream nurtured by almost 200,000 children in HCMCity for 11 years. It has been a quiet dream until a new turning point on a day in late 2008.
A new turning point of the Green Painting Traits
It is a busy afternoon in the TTT office. The end of the year is always the time to collect receivables, check and take over the buildings with all challenges in the current economic downturn. And yet in the meeting room, both the President and the CEO of TTT Corporation indulge in the paintings, the stories about the painting dream, and their special intentions for the new turning point of the color voyage that has been made for more than ten years – the Contest of Green Painting Traits.
The beauty should be advocated, the good should be extended, and especially the children should be encouraged to be creative.
The entrepreneur Le Ba Thong makes estimation. The contest is jointly held by HCMC General Science Library and the War Museum; each contributes VND30 million from the government budget to organize a contest with up to 160,000 pupils-candidates coming from schools all over HCMC, including the remote Can Gio District or the flooded Binh Chanh District. What is lacking is contributed by participants: the schools take part in the contest take care of transportation on their own, the district houses of culture assist facilities, and the teachers and pupils-candidates prepare for the contest with their own money.
To have the first prize worthy VND500,000 for the final round, participants have voluntarily exerted themselves. They raise snacks, colors, or transportation services from here and there. Yet the quality of the contest and its contribution to the society are significant, since right here children can release their imagination, describe the life from their point of view, sense the beauty and the good from their paintings, and have more friends. They can also win international prizes. Some paintings laureate in Green Painting Traits have been hung on the BritishFineArtsMuseum.
Thong smiles with a blue look. “In fact, the budget is not a matter. Since we love it, we can finance the contest. But the point is it receives little attention from the society. It has been happening quietly for 11 years. Few people see what the children are in need of. Few appreciate what they have done.”
To back the beauty up
Ms. Boléo, a French cultural expert, expressed her idea about a painting contest for all pupils in HCMC as an approach to stimulate their aesthetic thinking and creativeness in a Study Promotion Society workshop 11 years ago. Her idea was positively responded. In 1998, the General Science Library held the first contest with 1,600 candidates. It has been developed as a formal cultural art activity in the education system. It is estimated 631,833 works by pupils at age of 4-15 have been made since then.
In the contest, paintings on paper or on computer, or made collectively are acceptable. The disabled or blind, the poor or rich family children are all equally equipped with supplies for painting. Children from Can Gio, a remote poor district of HCMC, get up early at dawn to take rides to the contest. Being offered pâté chaud, a kind of French cake, they hesitate to taste and… cannot eat it because they are only used to the low-end snacks.
Children at kindergarten age are both painting and… dropping off or wetting their pants, so the organizers have to take care of them and play the role of mothers. Children from the countryside show their downtown friends things they may not have seen in their city life; this is a stack of straw; that is a salt-pond; here is a buffalo, and over there is a kite the dad has made all night.
Architects in TTT Corporation find them involve in the contest, because “the beauty should be advocated, the good should be extended, and especially the children should be encouraged to be creative.” A five-year contract has been signed, so that entrepreneurs can lend a helping hand in implementing the program with more support from the society.
“We are responsible for finding social resources to help the contest going on well, thereby children have more opportunities to exert themselves and enhance their lives. The Green Painting Traits is like a seed of the beauty to be sown in children to grow up as a garden with fruits,” a designer of TTT who voluntarily does extra work to serve the contest said.
The Green Painting Traits 2009 was just launched on 23-12-2008 and expected to lastuntil 17-5-2009 in Hoa Binh Theatre. The launch also announced a plan to shift the contest to a diverse program including exhibition, sale, and auction of pa
intings to raise funds which are used to encourage children to make paintings and support art teachers.
An internal exhibition of the laureate paintings in the Green Painting Traits 2008 will be held on 2-1-2009 in New World Hotel with the Leading Business Club (LBC) members’ participation.
Ms. Vu Kim Hanh, the Deputy Head of LBC says, the organizers do not intend to raise money from members, but want them to lend a helping hand to support the Contest with their products. Pepsi contributes soft drink; Saigon Paper offers painting paper; Thien Long gives colors, as shown in the contest logo – hands in hands to create the colors of the life.
By TRẦN NGUYÊN (Tuoitre Magazine)
December 31, 2008