Vocational Training Workshops

TTG’s youngsters create exquisite handmade incense, embroideries, handmade dolls, and various other handicrafts.

In the incense workshop, the youngsters gain valuable skills operating machines to craft incense, enhancing coordination and motor abilities. Preparing the incense paste involves a tactile experience and teaches precise measurement of liquids and powders.

Similarly, crafts like embroidery and doll-making help refine fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.

At TTG, we follow biodynamic methods to cultivate a wide range of vegetables, fruits, and medicinal herbs. While most of the produce is for TTG community’s consumption, some vegetables are also sold to friends. The garden ensures a daily supply of fresh, healthy food, nourishing the entire community.

The biodynamic approach emphasizes nurturing the soil naturally and respecting the rhythms of nature and planetary influences. We aspire to become Vietnam’s first biodynamic training center and have been conducting yearly training sessions with the aim of developing biodynamic medicinal herb products in the future.

The garden is home to three cows, adding joy to some of our youngsters’ lives and contributing to the ecosystem by providing valuable manure.

Working in the garden teaches youngsters to care for the earth and appreciate nature’s abundance. They are able to witness the wonders of seeds sprouting and flourishing into beautiful plants and trees, helping to ground them and enhancing their connection with ourselves. They learn about different fruits and vegetables, understanding their growth requirements and honing our skills with various gardening tools.

The garden is not merely a workshop; it holds a special place within the community. Apart from providing food, it offers a serene environment to sit, walk, and relish the beauty of nature, all of which constitute an integral part of TTG’s daily life. The physical aspect of gardening particularly appeals to those who have a lot of energy, both young and old, and who are looking to channel their vitality and find fulfilment in these tasks.

At TTG, the community kitchen is a vibrant space where youngsters collaborate with our skilled cooks to prepare delightful and nutritious meals daily.

We have a professional food processing workshop that focuses on crafting:

• Jam
• Candied fruits
• Fruit juice

Additionally, we run a bakery workshop where we bake delicious cookies and ice-cream, which are for sale at our tea house, and in which we also bake cakes for the community.

In these workshops, we gain valuable knowledge about various stages of food preparation and conservation. In the kitchen, we learn essential skills like washing and preparing vegetables, meat, and fish, which our talented cook then transforms into delicious meals.

In the professional food processing workshop, we master the art of fruit preparation and learn about the different stages involved in creating our diverse products. Whether making cakes or cookies, we acquire expertise in preparing and measuring ingredients, skillfully combining them to produce mouthwatering baked goods.

The TTG tea house is nestled just 10 minutes away from the bustling town center. TTG teahouse is a little haven of peace, surrounded by flowers, trees and many smiling faces and friendly staff that includes the TTG youngsters. It is a great place to enjoy tea, chat with friends, or just sit to relax! By purchasing products available for sale there, you’ll be supporting the community and its endeavors.

Lacquer painting is a traditional Vietnamese art form that involves crushed eggshells, clear and colored lacquer.

TTG offers the opportunity for youngsters to express themselves artistically and nurture their creativity. Working with colors and preparing a lacquer painting hones fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. The process involves multiple steps, starting with creating a drawing on paper as a model, which is then transferred onto a black board prepared for the lacquer painting. It takes several months to finish a lacquer painting due to the application of multiple layers of color and the polishing required at different stages to achieve the desired depth of color. This process teaches patience and perseverance, valuable qualities in our journey of artistic growth.

As TTG’s teenage students transition into the workshops, the TTG team realized that the existing workshops, although diverse, could not fully meet the needs of the young individuals welcomed, and especially those with autism spectrum disorders and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. To remedy this situation, we launched a new initiative to create a pottery workshop, which began in 2023. This presents a fresh opportunity for these young people to enhance their sensory experiences, including touch, heat, balance, sight, and hearing.

Engaging in pottery is a holistic activity that involves both the hands and the mind, fostering a powerful combination of creativity and mindfulness.