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The Maison Chance Association works in favor of the
disabled and orphans in an underprivileged district of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. The immediate objectives of the Association
are: to give the beneficiaries a home in order to find personal stability; to
offer them the opportunity to finish their schooling; and to provide them with
vocational training. Our long-term
objective is to help our beneficiaries to acquire professional skills that will
enable them to become financially autonomous and to successfully reintegrate
into society.
Maison Chance was created in 1993 by Aline Rebeaud, a
young Swiss artist. It is the outcome of
her personal commitment to the most disadvantaged sector of society in Vietnam.
During an extensive trip throughout Asia, Aline,
aged 20, arrived in Vietnam. One evening, on a street corner of Ho Chi Minh City, she
found a child sobbing inconsolably and all alone. She quickly became aware of the desperate
conditions which orphans must endure when forced to live out on the streets. A second encounter was to change her
life. She was visiting a psychiatric
asylum when she met Thanh, who was just twelve years old. He was barely alive, chained to the
floor. His state of health was
catastrophic and everyone was convinced that he was about to die. But Aline refused to listen to this
diagnostic and took it upon herself to look after him. She took him to hospital so he could receive
treatment for his liver, lung and heart conditions. In Vietnam,
hospital treatment is so basic that family or friends must perform much of the
work normally done by nurses and must also provide food for the patient. She
took care of him and stayed with him all through the three long months that he
was in hospital, paying for the treatment by selling her paintings. When they came out of hospital, Aline was
christened "Tim" by the other patients who showed her the sign in the hospital:
"Tim Mach": Cardiology Hospital;
"Tim" means "heart" in Vietnamese.
When visiting different hospitals in the region, Tim
met many patients with severe disabilities.
These people, paralyzed as a result of accidents at work, also live in
desperate circumstances, all too often abandoned as well by their friends and
family. Tim came up with the idea of combining
these two groups: the disabled people, mostly adults wishing to start a family,
but in need of permanent assistance, and the abandoned orphans and street
children who had no father or mother, big brother or sister.
Since this point in time, many other disabled people
and orphans have come to join Tim and Thanh.
Step by step, Tim has built a real home where she welcomes and takes
care of the most underprivileged. At the same time, by means of education and
vocational training, she gives them the means to find dignity again and a place
in society. With relentless
determination she has recomposed an extended family unit where each individual
is offered the opportunity to construct a project for his or her future.
In 1996, Tim made contact with some friends in Lyon, France. They decided to get involved and join her in
her commitment to the underprivileged.
This is how the first Association "Maison Chance" was created in Lyon. In the same
year, a second Association, also named "Maison Chance", was formed in Lausanne, Switzerland. In May, 2006, a third "Maison Chance"
Association was born in Belgium.
In June 1998, the Association Maison Chance became a
non-governmental organization, (N.G.O.), officially recognized by the
Vietnamese authorities. It obtained its
first license to operate in Vietnam. Since this time, this license, which gives
Maison Chance the legal right to function, is regularly renewed.
Until the beginning of 2006, the tiny Maison Chance
shelter was a home, a school and a training center, all at the same time, for
the beneficiaries. After ten years of
existence, the overcrowded conditions and ever increasing demand made it
absolutely essential to expand the structure.
Hence was born the Take
Wings Center.
All the education and vocational training activities
were transferred to the center. The
entire surface of the Maison Chance building now serves as a home where
approximately 50 beneficiaries live. The
disabled receive care and rehabilitation treatment, for the most part on the
premises. When more serious treatment
and operations are required, the patients must be hospitalized.
The Take
Wings Center
was inaugurated on 18th February, 2006. More than 130 deprived children from the
neighborhood, as well as the residents of Maison Chance, receive schooling at
this center. Simultaneously,
approximately 40 people are employed or are apprentices in one of our four
workshops. The vocational training
includes drawing and painting, sewing, computer and data-processing, as well as
bamboo and woodwork. The workshop activities are separated into two spheres:
training, (with a teacher for each workshop), and production. Those who have completed their training have
the possibility of continuing their profession in the workshops. Being paid a salary enables them to live
independently. The products manufactured
in the workshops are sold in Vietnam
and abroad, (mainly in Switzerland,
France and Belgium). One of our great concerns, at the present
time, is to be able to find employment for qualified workers so as to assure
them of a chance to take wings, off on the way to a stable future.
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