Vietnam Save the Children in Vietnam In 1990, Save the Children received an unprecedented invitation from the Government of Vietnam to help address widespread child malnutrition. The result was a groundbreaking effort pioneering the "Positive Deviance" approach — discovering, learning from and promoting the practices of poor families whose children were thriving while children of other families with access to the same resources and environment were not. "Positive Deviance" not only became a hallmark of our work in Vietnam, but is the model we use to address children's malnutrition in other countries. From this foundation, we have broadened our focus in Vietnam and today work in 10 provinces, reaching children and women in both rural and urban areas. Challenges for Children Nearly 24 million people in Vietnam live in poverty, 95 percent of them in rural areas. Maternal and child mortality are dramatically higher among poor and ethnic populations, with infant mortality rates in remote regions nearly eight times greater than in cities. While Vietnamese society values education – over 85 percent of children attend lower secondary school — there is a key gap in the availability of early childhood development services for children 3-6 years of age, especially among ethnic minorities. And HIV/AIDS is becoming one of the most serious development challenges facing Vietnam. An estimated 300,000 children are affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, including children with HIV-positive parents and those orphaned by AIDS. Numbers at a Glance Some 61 percent of the country's ethnic population lives below the poverty line; Malnutrition affects 25 percent of children under the age of 5; and Neonatal deaths account for nearly 75 percent of all infant deaths. Our Response: Health Through community-based health initiatives in four provinces, we implement simple lifesaving interventions that help reduce neonatal mortality, train village health workers, implement children's immunization and de-worming programs, facilitate breastfeeding support groups and improve health referral systems. Save the Children is also a leading organization in Vietnam working at the national level to advocate and strengthen policies and guidelines for maternal and newborn health. Early Childhood Development Save the Children uses child-friendly, community-based approaches to help poor children learn. In the Dakrong District of Quang Tri Province, our programs nurture young children's growth and development and prepare them to enter primary school. We also support their communities and families with teacher training and parenting classes — with the goal of ensuring that young children receive the best possible care in their formative years. Save the Children's education program prepares disadvantaged girls and boys, particularly ethnic minority children, for primary school by building their cognitive and pre-literacy skills using learning materials that reflect their specific local environments. We also work at the national level by promoting parent-child reading and supporting writing competitions.   Mother Nguyen Thi Tam holds her 20 days old newborn baby, Hoang Thi Hue.  She participated in the Save the Children Safe Motherhood Program HIV/AIDS and Youth Health As the risk of HIV infection steadily increases among youth in Vietnam, Save the Children is targeting HIV/AIDS programming to the 15-24 age group. Our sexual and reproductive health interventions seek to improve youths' knowledge and attitudes, foster a supportive social environment and create youth-oriented health services.  We are piloting an interpersonal communications curriculum that encourages young men in urban areas to adopt practices that can reduce their risk of acquiring HIV. Save the Children also works with the Ministry of Health in developing national guidelines for available and accessible "youth-friendly" reproductive health services. Our school-based HIV prevention efforts focus on developing a national action plan to promote reproductive health and HIV education in secondary schools. Economic Opportunities Many poor Vietnamese women do not have access to the financial services they need to establish livelihoods and better meet their children's basic needs. Save the Children's two microfinance partners — one in rural Thanh Hoa Province and one in urban Hanoi — offer small loans to groups of women who guarantee each others' loans in lieu of formal collateral.  We have conducted microfinance activities in Vietnam since 1998; our programs now serve over 10,000 clients, 99 percent of whom are women. They use loans for farming, animal husbandry, fishing-net making, bamboo products manufacturing and scrap metal trading. Save the Children is also a key advocate for microfinance development in Vietnam through our leadership role in a national microfinance working group. Emergency Preparedness and Response Vietnam is especially vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters, which often have serious consequences for children's well-being.  Save the Children works with local authorities and communities in disaster-prone areas to better prepare and protect themselves in times of emergency. We place a special emphasis on raising awareness of child protection and care during emergency situations. Plans for the Future Save the Children will continue to expand and scale up community-based activities that contribute to improved health, education, HIV/AIDS awareness and economic opportunities for children and families in Vietnam. We will continue to work with other organizations to use our evidence-based experience to advocate for children. Initiatives include: Reaching underserved communities to strengthen newborn survival and care; Conducting province-wide activities to improve the quality of public health facilities in Da Nang and Khanh Hoa; Promoting protective practices to reduce HIV infection among young men in urban areas; Implementing early childhood development activities through local partners in seven disadvantaged areas of Quang Tri Province; and Providing our microfinance partners with technical assistance and training so they can meet the Government of Vietnam's requirements to become registered microfinance institutions. Three-year-old Hung is very happy, and so is his older sister Ha. Save the Children's early childhood development (ECD) promoters at their village preschool read stories to them and help them enjoy storybooks with their friends. Members of an ethnic minority which speaks the Van Kieu language — completely different from Vietnamese — Hung and Ha's parents, and indeed the entire Van Kieu village, are key stakeholders in the weekly reading sessions' growing success. "Before the project began," their father says, "the local school did not have books for us to borrow, so the children rarely read any storybooks. However, now they have a chance to learn many stories through the reading sessions and to borrow storybooks to read at home with their parents. My children's Vietnamese is still limited, but the patience of the ECD promoters helped them to know more about the world around them and to speak more confidently in Vietnamese," he says with pride.