Saturday night at 7 p.m., 3 December, Brooks Tran will sit down at the piano and play a concert to benefit low-income Vietnamese families whose children might otherwise be unable to attend school. The concert is a fund-raiser for the sponsor, Compassion in Deeds (CID), a non-profit organization. The concert location is in the chapel at The Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave N. in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle. Tickets are $12 each. See http://www.historicseattle.org/projects/gsc.aspx.

Tran was one of the winners of the concerto competition in November within the School of Music at the University of Washington. On 12 January 2012, he will perform Piano Concerto #1 in G Minor, OP. 25, by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) I. Molto allegro con fuoco II. Andante III. Presto – Molto allegro e vivace. Tran is a student of Craig Sheppard. He plans to complete his Master of Music degree in Piano Performance in Spring 2012. See http://www.music.washington.edu/upcoming/detail/39408.

Proceeds go into the CID Scholarship Program which provides financial assistance to students attending primary or secondary schools in Vietnam, where the average family income is less than US$90 a month and the average primary/secondary tuition at a public school is nearly US$70 a year per child. Kids in poor families often must drop out of school to help their families. Without proper education, they have little chance for a better life.

Scholarships in the amount of $100 a year help pay for the basic educational needs such as tuition, fees, uniforms and school supplies. The monies are distributed directly to the recipients. To encourage students to earn a high school diploma, CID pledges to continue assistance to the recipients each year until graduation, provided they keep in good academic standing.

Currently, CID’s prime target areas are in the rural southern region near Ho Chi Minh City, central region near Binh-Thuan and Da-Nang, and the highlands region near Kon-Tum.  In the past two years, CID has provided 85 scholarships, with over half of the awards going to repeat recipients.

If you are unable to attend but wish to make a donation, please see the CID website, http://www.cid-vn.org/index.php, or email compassionindeeds@gmail.com. As they say in their motto, “Because every child deserves a chance.”