Welcome to Omamori Spa
We seek to realize the full potential of people with all forms of blindness so that they can participate fully in society.
It is our mission to expand possibilities for the blind and visually impaired people through creating employment and providing programs encouraging independence and self-confidence.
Empathy, Responsibility, Respect, Tough-Minded Optimism
In 2012, Mrs. Huong Nguyen received the Humphrey Fellowship from the United States Government, granting her the opportunity to spend a year of non-degree graduate-level study, leadership development, and professional collaboration with U.S counterparts at the University of Minnesota. During her trip to Seattle, organized by the Humphrey Program at the University of Washington, she met Kirk Adams, President of Lighthouse for the Blind, at a dinner in March 2013. This was the first time she had heard about the model of social entrepreneurship, a model designed to adopt a business mindset to address social issues. She was surprised to learn that Lighthouse for the Blind, through its Seattle operations, could produce manufacturing products of such high quality that they could be suppliers of aerospace manufacturers like Boeing, even though it is an organization established for the primary purpose of having a positive social impact. Returning to the hotel with Kirk’s words “Maybe one day you can do something to help the blind people in Vietnam”, Huong started immediately searching for information about the blind in Vietnam and their situation.
While relatively little research has been done to document the plight of the bind in Vietnam, what few figures we have available reflect the difficulties they face in society today. Only 8% of the Vietnamese visually impaired go to school, 15% attend training courses, and 20% have jobs. Most of the Vietnamese blind live dependent on their families, and rarely communicate with others in their communities. They often do not believe in themselves and feel they have little hope for the future.
Historically, massage therapy has been one of the few and best jobs for the blind here in Vietnam. Unfortunately, there has been very little professional training available to them, from either governmental or private sources, for the improvement of their massage techniques, knowledge of anatomy and its relationship to massage, nor of the skills necessary to manage and create a professional and appealing spa environment.
Hence, they typically only work in very humble parlors, earning a paltry income of about $1.00 to $1.5 US per 60-minute session, and are often exposed to physical and sexual abuses. As a corollary, their work is not respected because of society’s prejudice against massage which is often viewed as a form of disguised prostitution. Our director, Ms. Huong Nguyen, who also a Rajawali fellow at Harvard Kennedy School 2014-15, made a decision to leave a promising political career in the Vietnamese government in order to find a way to make a difference. With families and friends supported, she founded BlindLink in May 2013.
As the first and pioneer organization to undertake such an endeavor in this field in Vietnam, BlindLink has chosen to attack the issues by providing the blind with professional and personal development training, creating high value-added jobs working through its Omamori Spa chain. Its stated goal is two-fold. 1) Provide training and suitable professional employment for a growing number of blind people throughout the country. 2) Transform the image of blind therapists and their work, through word-of-mouth and the media, and by example. (We invite you to share your experience with us far and wide.)
BlindLink offers a host of programs that we make available to the blind community at large. Our programs are designed to provide students with the opportunity to obtain skills need to achieve success in independent life, interact with peers and sighted people in a variety of social situations, to gain knowledge of the working world and to build self-confidence and self-esteem. Core programs include Massage, English Communication, Entrepreneurship, Sexual Assault Prevention, Soft Skills.
Omamori Spa, established in 2013, is run by the social enterprise called BlindLink. BlindLink 's mission is to provide employment, support and training opportunities in the area of wellness to the blind people in Vietnam.
The business concept of Omamori Spa is unique because of the professional staff employed, the affordable prices for high quality services offered, the no-tip-policy, the relaxing atmosphere in the spa facilities and most importantly because of the social support provided to the blind.
Omamori Spa Co-Op is a group of studios established as part of an initiative of Omamori Spa to provide talented blind therapists at Omamori Spa chain the opportunity to gain their independence and become self-employed, renting beds within an established spa and thereby empowering them to work on their own but with the marketing and administrative support of a respected organization. This group targets middle-income clients seeking professional massages at affordable prices. We are backed by BlindLink, a social impact organization supporting the blind community since 2013. However, we must close the model during COVID-19 and have not been able to reopened it.
BlindLink was founded as a social enterprise dedicated to Vietnamese visually impaired people with the mission is to expand the possibilities for blind and visually impaired people. We achieve the mission by providing employment and creating programs encouraging their independent and self – confidence such as Thang, blind and partially deaf due to brain tumor, running his shop at Room 206, H2, Tap the Thanh Cong, Lane 12, Lang Ha Street, Hanoi since 2017; Chinh, blind due to accident, running Himawari spa at No. 102 B1 Alley 5 , Huỳnh Thúc Kháng str., Đống Đa, Hanoi since 2018; Anh Tu Spa at Lane 196/1 Nguyễn Sơn str., Long Bien, Hanoi.
We also helped setting up and training for staff at Dao Care Hanoi when they wanted to run a spa with blind therapists in 2016. Besides, some blind therapists have been recruited to become massage instructors at spas and massage studios including Midori and Fuji Spa in Hanoi.
We have spent years to lobby for providing White Canes and safe mobility in Vietnam until an Initiative named Free White Cane for the Vietnamese Blind has been offcially sponsored by Minisiter Nguyen Chi Dung, Ministry of Planning & Investment. On December 5th, 2019, the Free White Cane Initiative, aiming at providing 1 million canes for the blind by 2030 was launched and marked the cooperation between the Government (Ministry of Planning & Investment), the beneficiaries (Vietnam Blind Association as representative) and BlindLink, a non-governmental organization to run the program. We do hope that in the near future, all blind people in all corners of the country will proudly show up on the streets by walking independently with the white canes like their counterparts all over the world. The attention and support of high-ranking officials definitely will inspire many pioneers to continue to make a difference in the community.
