Why Vietnam? Before the establishment of BAJ offices, we had been providing donations to orphanages and facilities for children with disabilities in Vietnam. In recent years, Vietnam has become well known for the rapid growth of its economy, but a large number of people still face difficulties in their everyday lives.    In urban low-income areas where we now implement our activities, it is difficult for children to grow up with dreams and hopes for the future, due to complicated problems such as poverty, discrimination, violence and drugs. BAJ's aim is to assist children through its activities to grow confident by overcoming challenges they face everyday. We want children to acquire deeper understandings of their community and grow up into adults who can contribute to the society.   What we do in Vietnam 1. Supporting children’s education Let’s go to school! For children living in low-income areas, education is often unatainable, where a considerable number of them cannot go to school or quit school to earn money for their families. BAJ established the “Shine! Children of Asia” Fund to provide scholarships for children living in low-income areas and to students at the Thien An Warm House for visually impaired children through donations from supporters in Japan. For children with scholarships, BAJ staff and voluntary university students hold supplementary classes after school and support them with their learning. “Dr. Ajiko” also supports children from Ho Chi Minh City, Hue City and Quy Nhon City with their schoolwork on the Internet. Through achieving good results and being praised by their teachers in supplementary lessons, the children have a more positive attitude and are becoming more active in their school. Children are becoming confident about themselves through trying their best at school and participating in BAJ’s environmental care activities. As a result, some of them have advanced to high school level, which is a first for these low-income areas.

Our offices in Vietnam

2. Caring for the Environment

Children are the stars!

One of the main activities in Vietnam is environmental care activity. BAJ focuses on environmental issues that tend to be neglected in social economic growth. One of the unique features of BAJ’s activities is empowering children by encouraging them to lead activities based on their own ideas. 

For example, in Ho Chi Minh City, there have been garbage collectors who buy valuable wastes and recycle them for many years. However, the waste collected at one home is not enough to sell to these garbage collectors, so recycling wasn’t practiced much in homes. Since children started to collect garbage by visiting individual homes, many families began to cooperate with recycling activity and changed their ways of thinking. With the money earned from selling valuable wastes, the community built roads and installed streetlights in the ward. Children’s behaviors gradually changed the residents’ attitude towards their community, and these residents began to put more effort into improving their own community that they live in.

Broadening the network of Environmental activities

Environmental care activities in Ho Chi Minh City began to spread to Hue City. Hue is a beautiful city with historic palaces and cemeteries that promote tourism. On the other hand, the city is economically poor with no significant industries to speak of. With residents who live on the river and those who had lost their boats to cyclones and have been obliged to live near the palace walls, BAJ implemented waste management project and other activities such as installing water pipelines, village streetlights, places to shower, and toilets. These activities have also expanded to Quy Nhon City. Now children from three cities interact through the Internet to share their activities and give advice to each other.

Our efforts in thinking about community environments have been praised by authorities in Ho Chi Minh City and Hue City. Currently, with cooperation from these authorities, we are providing environmental care education activities to a number of middle schools.

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