Story of Folktale

We believe in a society where everyone is respected regardless of their identity. Folktale is one of the best ways for us, as a group of young Vietnamese, to create that kind of society. Our story of re-writing the perspective world comes from the stereotypes and societal norms that we experience every day since childhood. We think that adults impose gender and identity standards on us with such ideas as girls must have long hair, and boys must not cry and be strong. Ever since we were kids, we've all been told of fairy tales about princesses who are gentle and skilled – the adjectives that define a good girl. Fairy tales often begin with a tragedy for the damsel and end with her marriage to the prince as her savior. And that how girls can live happily ever after.

Not only encapsulated in stereotypes for women, kids’ stories or teaching contents in our school system often subtly apply common stereotypes on boys as mentally and physically stronger and can get away with “what they want".

Along with that, gender inequality nurtures an inferiority complex for girls across cultures. Boys, in the past, were favored to girls at birth and perception of different sexes has deeply rooted in our mindsets and how we act every day. Domestic violence is somehow a result of the imbalanced status between men and women in society and at home and it all begins with how we are taught to perceive things through a lens of a child’s eyes.

Meanwhile, the older we get, the more we realize that the boys around us do have problems acknowledging their feelings, emotions – they are either bottled up, hidden or driven away as families and society don’t allow them to be present – and this leads to hinderance in loving and healing themselves.

Those are just subtle examples of how stereotypes shape our world. There are many others stopping us from being true to ourselves, living our truths including those that the LGBTQ+ community is still confronting every day.

And that’s how Folktale was born. Our story is simple – we exist to challenge the negative norms that stop us, our generation from living a fulfilled and stigma free life. Our mission is to change parents’ mindsets and their educational approach in all issues related to gender and identity equality.

We, a group of 6, focus on gender equality and girls’ empowerment. We start with rewriting traditional folktales by giving an equal approach to characters and storylines. The books are for children as young as 4-8 years old. The independent, resilient, and innovative female characters in these modern folktales are portrayed to inspire the young readers, girls, and boys in understanding their rights and building their own assets and dreams by making sound life choices. Beside rewriting stories for children, Folktale also works on promoting gender equality awareness through conduction of workshops for children, young people and parents, organizing media campaigns and writing contests, and carrying out research to inform early childhood development.

Our efforts so far have been well received and acknowledged by parents as they make selective and informed choices when offering their children knowledge from the written world.

When social stereotypes and toxic femineity and masculinity wear out, there is no place for judgement in our civilized world. Let’s start teaching our children and the next generations compassion, kindness, acceptance, and respect for diversity – all these make our universe as colorful and beautiful as it should be. – ENDS

Links to Folktale and audio books: Chankro and Doknu, The curious mermaid

Folktale is an ongoing initiative emerged from Generation Unlimited (GenU), organized by UNICEF Viet Nam and Saigon Innovation Hub/ HCMC Department of Science & Technology in 2018. The GenU training workshops were based on the UPSHIFT curriculum, designed to help adolescents identify, analyze, and take entrepreneurial action on community challenges they care about and build their professional readiness and resilience through a human-centered design approach. After GenU, Folktale continues its mission and has received support from various organisations.