They are. But their unlikely beauty belies the fact that these are paintings that emerge from the depths of children who have escaped destitution.

Imaginatively colored chickens peck at bright green grass in front of a solid yellow block of a house. A motorbike weaving in and out of city traffic is frozen in time beside a fish truck, equally frozen as it darts through the street. In the interior of the truck, fish leap above the baskets that should hold them.

In a boldly painted mosaic of national symbols, Vietnamese flags pile up on each other and on simple maps of skinny Vietnam. The stars on the flags give the illusion they are poised to dance. In a piece titled My Teacher, an expressively rendered woman's face looks prettily out of the portrait but away from the viewer. Framed by her thick black hair, she is only half-visible.

Woo - probably the woman in the portrait - has a right to be proud. She has secured corporate sponsors and downtown exhibition space for what she hopes will be the first of many annual exhibitions to benefit the Thao Dan Care Program, a Vietnamese-run non-government organization that seeks to "empower, support, and protect the street children of Ho Chi Minh City.''

All the works to be shown and possibly sold at the exhibition were created over the past year by students in Woo's art class at the Thao Dan safe house for boys. The paintings can be seen from June 24-29 at the Metropolitan in Ho Chi Minh City.

Woo has been on an unlikely journey. After graduating from Yale University in 2004, she deferred medical school for a year to return to Vietnam where she had spent time during her college years. Though she "grew up all-American'' in a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC, her mother is a Vietnamese immigrant who went to the United States in 1969. Woo's contact with other Vietnamese-Americans at college sparked her interest in the country.

As a Fulbright Student Scholar re-searching "the mental health of underprivileged children living under the care of humanitarian organizations,'' Woo made a return not only to Vietnam, but also to Thao Dan, where she volunteered during her earlier time in Ho Chi Minh City.

Founded in 1992, the Thao Dan Care Program runs a safe house, a drop-in center and an outreach program for street children. Estimates vary on many children live on the streets in Vietnam but it is generally agreed there are upwards of 20,000 of them in the country and 8,000 in Ho Chi Minh City alone. In Ho Chi Minh's expensive downtown, small children selling postcards make eye contact through restaurant windows with foreigners in the middle of dinner. In the backpacker district, young girls hawk flowers in the streets at night.

Often, children with something to sell have members of the family nearby for whom they are working. Arguably, those with nothing to sell are more alone and therefore even worse off. Thao Dan works to bring children in off the streets, meet their basic needs, get them educations and reunite them with their families when possible.

At the drop-in center, children can take part in informal recreational activities, meet with program staff to discuss their options and receive health care, clothing and meals. On a weekday afternoon during summer vacation, 10 boys lounge in the center's homey lobby, a room that is open to the street. They range in age from five to 17, but most are deceptively small.

A Vietnamese-American college student volunteering for the summer informally teaches break-dancing moves to four energetic boys eager to show off. Another volunteer looks on and two more - school-aged Dutch women - sit at a table helping a Thao Dan staff member write a letter in English.

The rest of the boys lie around the TV, some drifting off into sleep in the heat. Before dinner, a staff member hands out boxed underwear to all of the boys, who josh each other and compare what they got.

Woo has informal art classes at the drop-in center on a weekly basis, but her main work is at Thao Dan's safe house, where under-18s can live while studying, working or completing vocational training. The environment is much more stable than the one at the drop-in center, as is the population. Even here, though, boys come and go.

There are 12 boys at the safe house but only seven have been in Woo's art class for the year she has been teaching it.

Boys end up at the safe house after going to the drop-in center and going through a consultation process. Some are reunited with their families, some don't know where or who their families are, and some are at the safe house because their families think it best.

When Woo asks the boys to draw family portraits they tend to ask if she means their brothers in the safe house or the families they left behind.

"The safe house is their home,'' says Woo. "They consider it like a family.''

Woo's social work is an extension of her research. The two are deeply connected. The paintings for the Street Children's Art Exhibition all come out of Woo's art class at the safe house. For two hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, these boys have learned about tech-niques and celebrated artists and they have been exposed to a variety of mediums from watercolor on paper to oil on canvas. It is primarily through this class that Woo is looking into their mental health.

"Making art is a good way for the kids to express themselves,'' she says. "The kids always have consultations. Everything's always talk, talk, talk. I want them to think things through for themselves in a recreational context.''

Woo has seen much progress over the course of the year, and believes that learning to express themselves on paper has been good for the boys.

"They were reluctant at first,'' she says. "They don't know how to express themselves in the beginning. You have to make them open up. Otherwise, they'll paint the same house over and over. Some started off close-minded, scared to draw. Now they come up with interesting things.''

The class is even generating small financial benefits. Serendipity and a shared interest in local art brought Woo and Bill Manson together at a Ho Chi Minh City art exhibition in October 2004, planting one of the seeds that would grow into the Street Children's Art Exhibition. Manson is the creator and Director of Rossignol Fine Arts (RFA), a company that specializes in the sale of Vietnamese artwork over the Internet.

The RFA Web site, launched in April 2004, is the first professional site to source original Vietnamese artwork - paintings, custom pieces and furnishings - for sale to overseas buyers. When the site was launched, there was a "Children's Art'' page dedicated to announcing exhibitions and fundraisers related to children's art.

After Woo explained her work to Manson, he offered her management of the page and the chance to do something more with the space.

Woo took the opportunity and ran with it. She began offering paintings from her class for sale through www.rossignolfinearts.com.

All proceeds were to go to funding the art program at Thao Dan and its care program. In addition to being able to purchase paintings, visitors to the site could simply make donations.

Manson had no expectations about how successful the venture would be. "It's the first time that's ever been done for children's art,'' he says. "Nobody's selling work online like this.''

But the response was good. "The first 10 paintings were bought by my mum,'' says Woo. "They went fast.'' Fortunately it turned out that Woo's mother was not the only market for these pieces.

A dozen more have since been sold at the relatively elevated price of US$50 (HK$390) each. Because sales through the RFA site were so good, Woo started thinking about displaying the paintings at a venue where more art could be exposed.

The Street Children's Art Exhibition is that venue. The 40-plus paintings now on the "Children's Art'' page will all be shown. Of these, about 40 percent are on reserve. The work on display at the show range in price from US$50-US$150.

Woo believes sales give the boys incentive and pride. "They say things like, `I'll make one so beautiful you're going to sell it right away' and `I'll make one so beautiful it'll make Shoshana cry,''' she says.

The relationship between Woo's Thao Dan art program and RFA goes beyond the sale of paintings. The exhibition is sponsored by RFA, which has put manpower at Woo's disposal in order to make sure the show goes on. Cuong Tuse, a professional painter featured on the RFA site, came to Woo's class in order to teach the boys how to paint with gouache, his medium of choice.

Manson is excited about the collaboration. "Children don't really get taught the arts in Vietnam,'' he says. "This is probably a unique opportunity for the kids - they get to learn from someone who really knows how to paint.''

Even more fortunate children do not often get opportunities like this. Manson sees another benefit to Woo's program: The development of a culture of local art appreciation. As a businessman who sells Vietnamese art to foreigners, Manson is attuned to local attitudes towards artists and the art that he offers for sale.

"This class is great for the kids,'' he says. "There's no reason why one of these kids can't become a famous artist.''

Even if that doesn't happen, Manson sees Woo's program as a step in developing a local following for local art.

"In the future,'' he says, "Vietnamese will start to appreciate their own artwork.''