Beside many achievements in economic development, Dong Nai is still facing with many challenges such as social security, health care, education and vocation. 65% of Dong Nai population is in rural and remote area and ethnic minorities account for 100 thousand people who need economic and living support. The social infrastructure, healthcare and remote area labor force conditions are also considered to be promoted. Together with using all the available sources, Dong Nai also called for support from FNGO in order to raise people’s living standard and stably reduce poverty, including poor households, ethnic minorities and disable children. The supporting programs and projects in remote communes, extremely poor areas in the province affected remarkably on people’s life, improved living standard and maintained provincial social security.
Deputy Chairman of Provincial People’s Committee – Mr. Tran Van Vinh giving merits to groups and individuals who achieved good results in FNGO mission term 2014 - 2016
Taking the advantage of being the gateway, Provincial Union of Friendship Organizations (PUFO) actively cooperated with relating departments to promote the FNGO financial aid mission, which got attention from many individuals and organizations in the province, including building programs, projects; promoting campaign as well as promoting fostering human resources in order to improve the campaign quality. According to Mr. Bui Ngoc Thanh - Chairman of PUFO, recently, the FNGO financial aid campaign in the province had properly orientated the prioritized sectors and followed the FNGO activities. Specifically, in term from 2014 to June 2016, there were total of 50 individuals, FNGO, enterprises, funds and associations who implemented 52 programs, projects and 49 non-project financial aids, came from mostly 7 international organizations and nations: England, Belgium, Korea, Italy, the United States and Japan… Most of the projects concentrated on solving social security issues, including projects to support the disables such as: providing economic development loan, wheelchairs, improving living condition, especially for people from remote areas, ethnic minorities. The other projects were in education: giving scholarships to poor pupils, financial supports for classrooms, playground construction and school supplies in kindergartens and primary schools. In healthcare, the projects supported medical equipment, medicine, healthcare service; improving HIV/AIDS prevention and supervision supporting services for highly risky patients. For environment, there were projects for biodiversity maintenance and protection on animals in priority list.
Morning of July 5th, Provincial People’s Committee held the preliminary conference for the “Provincial FNGO’s Aid Promotion Term 2014 - 2017” and the summary conference for the FNGO campaign 2015. Participants in the conference includes Deputy Secretary of Provincial Committee – Ms. Phan Thi My Thanh, Deputy Chairman of Provincial People’s Committee – Mr. Tran Van Vinh, Heads of Provincial Departments, Unions, representatives of Southern Branch Office of Vietnam Union of Friendship Organization, representatives of Diplomacy Agencies, foreign enterprises and FNGO in Dong Nai province. The conference listed down solutions to promote attracting FNGO’s financial aid in the near future. On this occasion, Provincial People’s Committee also give merits of honor to individuals, units, non-governmental organizations and enterprises who had achievements in the FNGO campaign term 2014 – 2016.
Practical significance
Seeing the happy faces of people who live in their new houses in Hiep Nhat quarter, Dinh Quan town (from the United House Project funded by Asia Cultural Exchange Foundation (ACEF) in Ho Chi Minh city for ethnic minorities) we can recognize how effective the projects are. As an area with high density of ethnic minorities, people’s living condition is still low; nowadays, with the help of the projects, many households now can live in their new and spacious houses with more motivation in their life. Mr. Kim Ki Young – Founder of ACEF said: “In Dong Nai, we presented 41 houses to ethnic minorities households in Dinh Quan commune. With the idea of making make the household to live close to each other like a village, we built 20 houses in a general area in Hiep Nhat hamlet. We are now raising fund to build another village with 30 more houses in La Nga commune, Dinh Quan district. Beside, we also gave scholarships to studious poor pupil as to empower the education, one little seed today and a big tree tomorrow.”
Dinh Quan district is also one of the areas to receive many supporting projects from FNGO. In term 2014 – 2016, the district received the total support of about 6.8 billion VND from some non-governmental organizations. Representative of Dinh Quan district said that, the positive results from the projects played an important role in the social security policy implementation, promoting local socioeconomic developments. In which, poverty reduction, healthcare, medical and educational developments shall help improve people’s life quality, especially the poor. We also held cultural, entertainment and sport events between the FNGO volunteers and the local resident to improve our friendship.
The current village bridge project in Thanh Son commune (Dinh Quan district) is using non-refundable aid from Consultant General of Japan in Dong Nai. In the period from 2014 to June 2016, Japan was the lead country to have ODA in Vietnam while their FDI in Vietnam ranked the second place. Through the non-refundable aid program in the locality, Consultant General of Japan implemented 5 non-refundable small scale projects: Primary school – Kindergarten construction; pumping station construction, equipment support for vocational centers, medical equipment support for district general hospital and bridge and road constructions.
In education, many localities implementing the FNGO campaign at the same time. In 2 years, Education industry cooperated with 8 FNGO with the total financial aid of over 8.3 billion VND for the provincial places of education. The FNGO’s supporting projects brought a lot of practical benefits, schools are now having more classrooms, poor pupils can continue their education which helps minimize the school dropout and disable pupils can now have a normal life like the others.
Speaking at the preliminary conference for the “Provincial FNGO’s Aid Promotion term 2014 - 2017”, Deputy Chairman Tran Van Vinh highlighted that, the FNGO campaign had already paid off, it improved people’s living condition especially in healthcare, education and environment protection. The FNGO aid did not only bring physical value but also spiritual value, which helped promoting the relationship between Dong Nai and the foreign countries; and at the same time, it proved that Provincial People’s Committee and relating Departments had always facilitated the campaign, implemented it timely and efficiently to bring the best result to provincial people. Hopefully in the near future, the relationship and cooperation between Dong Nai and the FNGO as well as domestic and foreign enterprise in the province would be even better so that people could receive more concern and support from the operations.
Le Phuong
