The Vietnamese American Non-Governmental Organization Network was formalized last year with 24 US-based Vietnamese-American humanitarian organizations and groups coming together to share information, leverage resources, coordinate programs, and promote transparency and accountability in their assistance in Vietnam.

The attending groups successfully elected the organization’s first steering committee whose officers were nominated from member organizations. The steering committee is in charge of the governance of the VA NGO Network, representing member organizations from across the United States. The Network’s mission is to strengthen its member’s abilties to have a broad impact in humanitarian and development work in Vietnam, by building a united voice on issues of common interest, delivering practical benefits and building capacity for member organizations. The nine elected members of the steering committee are from Children Of Peace International, East Meets West Foundation, International Children Assistance Network, Lua Viet Youth Association, Our 1 World, Pacific Links Foundation, and Project Vietnam of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Meeting attendees capped off the event by discussing important projects to collaborate on—ranging from health and education to child labor and the the increasing threat of human trafficking. Representatives of member groups proposed and discussed a blueprint for a model collaboration site, the first of which will be located in a district in An Giang, a province at the Vietnam-Cambodia border. This district is one of the poorest and most densely populated rural areas in Vietnam, and is especially vulnerable to human trafficking activies.

Within this model site, VA NGO member groups seek to promote collaborative activities, by combining experience garnered through over two decades of assistance to Vietnam to address poverty issues in a comprehensive manner. Solutions will focus on creating more economic opportunities, job training, improved educational opportunities, and better health care for the community. The goal is to establish more opportunities for advancement within the local community, providing a better chance for residents to succeed without having to leave their community.

The model project will be scalable, replicable and sustainable, and its impacts measurable in this district’s development. The timeframe for this first large-scale collaborative endeavor by the Network is three to five years. Many VA NGO members have long-standing assistance projects in the area. The project builds on an existing VA NGO collaborative project named ADAPT (An giang Dong thap Alliance for the Prevention of Trafficking).

Funding for the VA NGO Network has come from the Ford Foundation, the Asia Foundation and the Alexander Wallace Gerbode Foundation. Financial support has also come from Vietnamese American donors and the VA NGOs themselves: Le Viet Canh & Vuong Ngoc Quyen Foundation, the Tran Family, East Meets West Foundation, Children of Peace International, International Children Assistance Network, and Pacific Links Foundation.

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About the Vietnamese American Non-Governmental Organization (VA NGO) Network: The VA NGO Network is a consortium of over 40 VA NGO member organizations dedicated to humanitarian and development projects in Vietnam. Learn more about the VA NGO Network at www.va-ngo.org./.