KOICA Supports Education for 12,000 Ethnic Minority Children in Vietnam

Save the Children and 3 Years of Literacy Improvement Education and School Renovation in Vietnam's Mountainous Areas

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] KOICA announced that through the "Vietnam Ethnic Minority Children Education Support Project," conducted in collaboration with Save the Children Korea for three years starting in 2018, over 12,000 local children have benefited from educational support.

On the 6th (local time), KOICA and Save the Children held a project outcome sharing workshop at the La Thanh Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, explaining that the school readiness of kindergarten children supported by KOICA improved by 75% (from 36% to 63%), and the proportion of ethnic minority elementary students able to read and write Vietnamese in the target schools increased from 20% to 44%.

Vietnam is composed of 53 ethnic minorities in addition to the Viet ethnic group, which accounts for 85% of the population. Although ethnic minorities make up 15% of Vietnam's total population, they represent 50% of the country's total poverty population.

To support ethnic minority infants and elementary students in Vietnam who are excluded from quality education, KOICA cooperated with Save the Children for three years starting in 2018 to implement a public-private partnership project in three mountainous areas inhabited by ethnic minorities.

Through this project, education in reading and writing Vietnamese and basic arithmetic was provided to approximately 12,000 ethnic minority children aged 3 to 11, before and after entering elementary school. Additionally, 23 school library facilities were renovated, and teaching materials reflecting ethnic minority cultures were provided to improve children's access to quality education.

Moreover, KOICA and Save the Children conducted training for over 600 teachers on literacy improvement teaching methods and mother tongue-based bilingual education to enable teachers to effectively teach Vietnamese to ethnic minority children. To ensure school education is linked with the community and families, the caregiving and educational capacities of over 2,700 parents were also strengthened. In June, to prevent educational gaps caused by COVID-19, rapid support of quarantine supplies such as thermometers, hand sanitizers, and soap was provided to 23 local kindergartens and elementary schools.

The workshop was attended by about 150 people, including Cho Han-duk, head of KOICA Vietnam Office; To Thi Anh, Deputy Director of the Yen Bai Provincial Department of Education and Training; Nguyen Cong Thang, Deputy Director of the Quang Nam Provincial Department of Education and Training; Dragana Strinic, head of Save the Children Vietnam Office; as well as parents and teachers from the project areas.

Cho Han-duk, head of KOICA Vietnam Office, said, "Currently, the poverty rate among Vietnam's ethnic minorities is very high, and especially ethnic minority children are excluded from proper education due to the use of ethnic minority languages and residence in marginalized areas, leading to the inheritance of poverty." He added, "Through today's outcome sharing workshop, I hope that the educational model of this support project will spread to other regions so that all ethnic minority students can study in better environments."