Training of fishery communities Vietnam

The Center for Social Sciences and Humanities is part of the Faculty of Sociology of the Hue University. CSSH has close ties with the faculty. According to director Tran Xuan Binh this resulted in some problems at the start of CSSH in 1995. "CSSH originally operated from the Science Faculty, but the research being done was aimed especially at the poor communities of Hue.  CSSH occupied itself mainly with migration, culture, health and unemployment. In 2002 we moved to the Sociology Faculty. The subjects that are being studied here are a better fit to our projects. In that year I started as director.

From that moment on CSSH focused on four areas: training, community development, publications and research. The goal of the organization is the development of a sustainable society. "Because we have a clear vision, we obtained more and more funding from abroad in that year for our projects in the Lagoon. In 2004 we submitted a proposal for the development of the fishing communities with ICCO. We started with two villages. That has grown over the years to four. Satrting from 2011 ICCO funds projects for seven communities in the Tam Giang Lagoon."

In the past ten years CSSH has shown tremendous organizational growth. The cooperation with ICCO has played an important role according to Tran Xuan Binh : "ICCO for us is number one when it comes to comes to cooperation with financing organizations. Because of the way ICCO work, we have become more professional. We have become more efficient, so more money goes to our projects. We also improved the spending of our funds."

Especially ICCO's programmatic approach has had a positive influence on the organization: "We cooperate more with other parties, like the government. An we know better how to involve other foreign organizations and partners in our work", says Tran Xuan Binh.

ICCO support this project of CSSH until end 2016. Tran Xua Binh wants to use the coming years to develop his organization even further. More training and education for his employees: "We employ twelve people at this moment. I would like to see them specialize in one of our four areas. And we want to focus more on the local government. We want to attract more attention to the problems of their own fishing communities. For instance by providing training."  Tran Xuan Binh also emphasizes the importance of close contact with the fishing communities. "Only then we know what is needed to further develop the people in the Lagoon."