Asian TV show winner delighted with Ballymun prize

BALLYMUN mightn’t be somewhere you’d expect to be offered as a prize destination for winning a national TV show but that’s exactly where Vietnamese student Tran Thuy An ended up last month.

An, as she’s called by pals, was a competitor and eventual winner on Super Leader, a popular youth TV show on VTV 6 in Vietnam, and as part of her prize she was offered a two-week internship with Global Action Plan (GAP) Ireland in the Northside suburb.

The prize is sponsored by the Irish Embassy in Hanoi as part of its Visibility and Promotion plan and An has returned to her home country with a lot of positive experiences behind her.

An is a student of University of Foreign Languages and Information Technology, majoring in International Relations with a focus on Public Relations in Ho Chi Minh City.

But she’s also a tireless volunteer and has campaigned on a number of important issues in her homeland. In fact it was her work with a human trafficking project that helped her win the Super Leader TV show.

“I participated in the TV show last July,

? she told Northside People.

“The project that I brought to the programme was about human trafficking between Vietnam and Cambodia.

“In 2011 we cycled from Ho Chi Min city and went to the west of Vietnam through four provinces meeting with the local people. We met people of many ages from children to adults who had been trafficked.

“After that we went to Cambodia to work with an organisation involved in human trafficking. The organisation helped trafficked people from Vietnam to get back home.

?

More recently An has become interested in environmental issues and this helped her progress through the various stages of the TV competition and is why she ended up working with GAP.

She admits she was little nervous when she realised she had won.

“I was very happy but at the same time I was quite stressful because I think they expected a lot from me after I won,

? she said.

Obviously An had never heard of Ballymun before arriving in Ireland and was puzzled by people’s reactions when she told them where she was going.

“When I first came here, whenever I mentioned that I was going to Ballymun, the people would go like

‘wow, really?’

“But when I arrived here and interacted with the local people I found them to be very nice.

“I think the work that GAP do is great. I have been working with GAP on two projects. One of them is a gardening project for the local people, especially people with disabilities.

“I think this project is very nice because it makes the community better and it connects local people.

?

An also took exchange lessons with students in primary and secondary schools in Ballymun and took part in St Patrick’s Day celebrations during her stay in Ireland.

She was suitably impressed with the area and with Dublin as a whole, which she described as

“huge

?.

“Everything is so huge for me; the buildings, the food, even the people.

“The Irish people are totally so friendly. I met a woman when I was asking for directions to one of the museums and she told me she didn’t have any plans and would love to join me.

“We spent the rest of the day together and then afterwards she asked if I would like to visit her house and have some tea. She lived about 20 kilometres outside the city in the countryside. It was a very impressive experience for me.

“She told me the story of her family and I asked her if she always took strangers into her house but she said I was the first.

“Compared to Vietnam everything here is very organised for people’s lives. Back in my country everything is a little bit messy.

?

During her time in Dublin, An visited some universities to explore study opportunities in Ireland. She has now returned back to Vietnam but before leaving promised to promote the country to her fellow students.

“It’s one of my responsibilities,

? she said.

“It will be great if the students back home get to know about the great education system here and they can have more of a chance to come here to study.

?