More than three million of Vietnamese people are suffering from Agent Orange – a toxic chemical defoliant spread across Vietnam by the US military during the Vietnam War. Cancer, mental and physical deformities and hundreds of other diseases together with extreme poverty are driving them into a corner. That is the reason why we decided to do Orange Art – an exhibition of Vietnamese Folk Painting to support the victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam.

In fact, half of the project was before the project week as holding an exhibition involved a lot of preparation. With the help from a friend’s parents, ultimately we had three places in Victoria and Metchosin to do the exhibition without having to pay any money. Then came another acute problem: All the paintings we had were without frames. New frames were too expensive, so we had to find other solutions. Finally, bamboo sticks turned out to be our saviors, as they were cheap and we could use them to frame the paintings ourselves. The most important matter was advertising. We tried our best to do that by putting up posters in Victoria and Metchosin and sending invitations to all our contacts. Some students and faculty also helped us to spread the words. We contacted some local newspaper but unfortunately they did not reply. We also did a mini exhibition at One World, mainly to let people know about our project.

The exhibition was not very successful on the first two days because just a few people came, but we got about $200 and at least some more people got to know about Agent Orange as well as the folk paintings. The last three days were wonderful with quite a lot of visitors. Everyone seemed to like the paintings a lot as they were made from all-natural materials from Vietnam and they reflected the Vietnamese culture. It was very pleased to know that almost all of them bought some paintings and some people even donated some more. In the end we raised more than $1200. All the money will be delivered to the victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam under various forms such as scholarships for children or investment of Agent Orange families.

All of us were really happy not only because of the money we raised but also because we succeeded in raising the awareness of people here on Agent Orange as well as brought the culture of Vietnam through the paintings to them. To us, the latter is more important as it inspired people and may be an incentives many more people to give those victims a hand. For the time being, at least we know that Minami – a member of the project – is planning to go to Vietnam this summer to volunteer with the Agent Orange children.