A Blue Dragon of happiness

Lindy Walsh’s face lights up when she talks about her involvement with Blue Dragon, a charity helping to change the lives of at-risk and under-privileged children in Vietnam. Blue Dragon was founded in 2003 by Lindy’s friend Michael Brosowski, AM, and because of this friendship, which began at university, she has long been a supporter of Blue Dragon.

In December last year, Lindy took on a much larger role with Blue Dragon as Strategic Partnerships Manager, liaising with sponsors and donors. It’s a role she is clearly enjoying and she is particularly happy about her recent trip to Vietnam where she met people she describes as ‘incredibly welcoming and friendly’. At right, we see Lindy with a Vietnamese woman who offered her hospitality and friendship.

Lindy is one of only a handful of Australians working for the Blue Dragon charity organisation and the only one based in Australia. Of the 68 staff members in Vietnam, nearly all are Vietnamese, and this gives Blue Dragon an enormous advantage in its ability to tailor and target its resources to match local conditions.

Take, for example, their Step Ahead program to care for street children in Hanoi. Members of Step Ahead’s Outreach Team led by Vi, a bright young man who was himself once a street child, go out nightly to talk to children on the street and see that they have somewhere to stay. They come to know children individually and are able to network to find out about new arrivals in the city. Lindy says, ‘They say they have about 48 hours to find (newly-arrived) children before gangs or pimps pick them up’. Vi is seen below with one of the children he is assisting. 

When contact is made with a with a newly arrived street child, the first aim of Step Ahead is to try to reunite the child with their family at home – usually in the country – and seek to overcome any problems there. Many children are running away from more than poverty, also from complex family situations like violence, family breakdown, disability and drug use.

In cases where going home is not possible, Blue Dragon looks for a way to provide short-term accommodation. Each child is assigned a social worker who will look after their interests, help them back into school – if they are of school age – or, if they are older, help them to acquire skills and a job. Solutions are tailored to the individual needs of the child, but many street children find jobs as motor bike mechanics, fixing mobile phones or in the hospitality industry. 

Some find jobs at Blue Dragon, where eight former Blue Dragon children work. Ten children are currently undertaking an introduction to social work course with the idea of pursuing it as a career in the future.

Another effective Blue Dragon initiative is the Safe and Sound anti-trafficking program, which began five or six years ago. Blue Dragon workers became aware that traffickers were targetting village people and farming families in rural Vietnam. These traffickers said that they could offer the children job training and skills in the city. To the county people it sounded like a good offer. But it was too good to be true.

Once in the city, these children were taken to work in slave-like conditions in factories where they were locked in, made to work 16 or 17 hours a day, with no down time, and forced to sleep in rough conditions, often on the floor. Thanks to the concerted efforts of charities, including Blue Dragon, these appalling work practices are, Lindy says, ‘almost eradicated’ and Vietnamese labour laws have been changed.

Blue Dragon has also worked to ‘fireproof’ rural villages and people at risk from traffickers. Lindy explains, ‘We took children back to the villages and people were very distressed that this had happened. And we took a local policeman to see conditions in these factories and he became a strong advocate’ for change. Word of the problem spread effectively because the Blue Dragon representatives co-operated with the village and district committees who knew people in the area and were able to spread the information. It was another case of local knowledge helping solve local problems.

Lindy says that Blue Dragon also works to assist girls and young women who are trafficked over the border into China, where they may be forced to choose between marriage to a Chinese man they don’t know or to work in a tea house. Once in China, these girls can’t speak the local dialect, often don’t know where they are, and have little chance of escape. 

Lindy explains that sometimes, however, they can gain access to a mobile phone. ‘Normally, they phone their mother,’ she says, ‘and the mother can get in touch with the Blue Dragon rescue team.’

The Stay in School program supports 1,000 children in rural areas. It provides rice for families, pays school fees and supplies a backpack and school uniforms. After a student graduates, sponsors and new initiatives can help them with further study or work opportunities.

Founder Michael Brosowski has now handed over his CEO duties to Julienne Carey who, like Michael, lives in Vietnam and so is closely involved with the day-to-day work there.

Lindy, who holds an academic position at Macquarie University in Sydney, remains here as the Australian face of Blue Dragon, keeping contact with a network of supporters and sponsors. She loved her recent trip to Vietnam, calling it ‘a very moving experience’ and devotes a substantial amount of time to Blue Dragon because she says, ‘It gives me a real sense of purpose’.

The Blue Dragon website: www.bluedragon.org, provides statistics, details and information about Blue Dragon, including how to become a sponsor.