What We Do

Save the Children in Viet Nam

Save the Children started our work in Vietnam in 1990, through the implementation of a child nutrition project in Thanh Hoa Province. Since then, we have expanded our programs to include six key thematic areas, including Education, Health and Nutrition, Child Protection, Child Rights Governance, Child Poverty, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Emergency Response (ER).

We now cover 24 provinces across the country with offices in Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hai Phong, Lao Cai, and Da Nang. We have more than 150 national staffs with a wide range of technical expertise and program management qualifications. In the implementation of our programs, we work in partnership with government agencies, civil society organizations, private sector, academic and research institutions. We receive findings from institutional organizations, businesses, trusts and foundations, as well as private donors to support the implementation of our programs.

In order to achieve immediate and lasting change in the lives of Vietnamese children, we implement both development and humanitarian programs. Through our various programs, we endeavor that EVERY LAST CHILD will have the opportunity to Survive, Learn and Be Protected. We established our particular focus on reaching the most vulnerable and marginalized children within a community, including ethnic minorities and migrant children and their families.

Education

We are currently programming in education in 10 provinces in all regions of the country. Our strategic goal in 2022-2024 is to Increase access to quality learning (including digital literacy) for the most deprived children and youth. Specifically, our program aims to achieve the below objectives:

• To improve access to quality early childhood and basic education services of deprived children from 0-11 years old in Vietnam, especially ethnic minority children
• To improved capacity of preschool and primary school teachers and caregivers of children from 0-11 years old in Vietnam, especially the ones in remote and mountainous areas, in ensuring the continuity and quality of education for children in any contexts
• Developing and promoting remote engagement solutions, including digital transformation solutions in education
• Action plan/ guidance issued by MOET promoting quality Early Child Care Development (ECCD) and Basic Education (BE)

To achieve the objective and improve the situation of targeted group, four approaches have been applied, including: (1) Building Brains, (2) Emergent Literacy and Math, (3) Literacy Boost, (4) Mother Tongue Based Multi Lingual Education and Student Needs Action Pack (SNAP) and (5) Cross-cutting interventions.

Health and Nutrition

The theme’s strategic objectives are all designed to achieve our Survival Breakthrough: No child dies from preventable causes before their fifth birthday, as well as contributing to improve children’s access to quality health and nutrition services. More specifically, its strategic objective are as follows:

• Provide access to quality health and nutrition services for ethnic minority people and pregnant mothers
• Reduce child deaths and injuries from preventable causes (e.g. road crashes, drowning)
• Reduce child mortality and stunting rates among ethnic minority children

An integrated strategic approach is applied by the theme as follows:

• Policy development. It focuses on formulating policy and a methodology to address malnutrition using traditional and affordable methods that could be replicated at a certain scale. It also enhances the engagement of school leaders, parents and communities to improve policy and support for school health and nutrition area.
• Awareness raising. Its designed interventions focus on raising community awareness on healthy maternal and newborn practices; promoting nutritional intake based on locally available food and ingredients, strengthening community-based nutrition care, and exclusive breastfeeding promotion for infants under 6 months of age, improving knowledge, attitudes and skills related to health and nutrition in school environments.
• Capacity Building. The theme has interventions to improve capacity for local health staff as well as ability to provide health care services of local health stations. Through this, it accesses to these services for ethnic minority community can be increased and demand for these available services will be increased.

Child Protection

Our strategic goal for Child Protection is:

• Deprived children attend quality and child-friendly learning environment.
• Corporal punishment is eliminated in the project schools and communities through establishment of a mechanism for reporting abuse, discrimination and bullying with the participation of children and parents in schools and communities.
• Improve the quality of community- based child protection networks and mechanisms including strengthening capacity and participation of civil society, communities and government stakeholders in monitoring the implementation of child rights to create a friendly, violence free and participatory learning environment.
• Children, communities and families are empowered to prevent and address child labour.

An integrated approach has been applied to achieve the aforementioned ambitious objectives, including building capacity and raising awareness for relevant stakeholders, piloting child protection models, implementing behavior change communications, engaging civil society organizations, etc. Key interventions include:

• Building capacity of teachers, government officers and children on child rights, child protection, child-centered teaching method, positive discipline and child labour.
• Raising awareness of parents and local people on child protection.
• Setting up mechanism on psychosocial support, child-led mechanism for reporting harassment, bullying and other physical and humiliating punishment (PHP) and promoting child participation through the models of core children groups, child forum, child-led school improvement plans.
• Strengthening community-based Child Protection system.
• Strengthening coordination mechanisms among members of Child Protection Board and promoted the role of Civil Society Organizations in Child Protection system.

Child Rights Governance

Since Vietnam ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1990, the key milestone in implementation of Children Rights was achieved. However, the development process has brought along new and more problematic issues, which requires improvements in the legal framework and policies for child protection systems and child rights monitoring. Serious challenges limit the implementation of the Rights of the Child, including the lack of an effective mechanism for law enforcement, inadequate public awareness and knowledge levels of child rights as well as ineffective practical implementation on the ground. Thus, there is a need for close cooperation among various sectors and organizations, aiming at effective functioning of every stakeholder in implementing child rights as stated in the CRC. Our work is to strengthen the capacity of CSOs and connect them with other stakeholders in protecting and promoting the implementation of Child Rights with equality, non-discrimination and child participation.

Our objective is to advocate for realization of child rights for Every Last Child and support the monitoring of the implementation of UN Convention on Child Rights by building the capacity for CSOs to participate in the process.

Our Common Approach is Child Rights Reporting that ensures governments keep their promises to children (Monitoring and Demanding Child Rights). It is a process that children and CSOs can use to analyze, document and report violations of children’s rights. It gives them the opportunity to ‘speak out’ and offer recommendations on what needs to change. Child Rights Reporting ultimately helps children and CSOs shape the child rights agenda in countries. By engaging with children and civil society partners and by influencing global reporting mechanisms for legal changes and policy implementation, Save the Children has brought about real and lasting change for the rights of children.

Child Poverty

• Equip adolescent and youth of different disadvantaged backgrounds with transferable life skills, financial literacy and employability skills to better support their transition into decent employment and contribute to their successful transition to adulthood.
• Use the innovative approach for its interventions and advocate the institutionalization of transferable life skills and employability skills training into the formal and informal vocational training systems.
• Help communities to develop their sustainable livelihoods and provide micro-finance schemes for the most vulnerable populations.
• Provide cash and voucher transfer as well as necessities to support the most affected children and their families to become more resilient against COVID 19 pandemic.