Last year was the pilot phase of the Awareness Raising Component of our Project. During this year, I dare to say that our awareness raising cell accomplished a lot. For awareness raising: we set up an awareness raising strategy, had many meetings with partners, organized several workshops, did study trips, visited the field regularly and increased the awareness of our target communes/towns on solid waste management & the importance of clean water.

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Our Project

Let’s start with what WSSP means: ‘Water Supply & Sanitation Program’ in Binh Dinh Province (Vietnam). As the name already mentions, our project has two main components: solid waste & water supply. More in detail, the water supply component includes building cost-efficient infrastructures for irrigation and drinking water supply. The solid waste component promotes efficient collection of municipal solid waste and invests in facilities for solid waste treatment.  All this combined with reinforcing the local capacities in planning, management, operation and maintenance facilities and developing a long-term awareness raising strategy.

My Field: Awareness Raising (AR)

In our project there is a big focus on sustainability. What will happen when the project is finished? For this reason it is really important to work through already existing structures. If you do not do this, everything you’ve been working for might collapse after you leave. And obviously, that is not what we want. So, how do we do this for awareness raising?

For Awareness Raising we work through EPA (Environment Protection Agency on the Provincial level) for the solid waste component, and through PCerwass (National Center for Rural Water Supply and Sanitation) for the Water Supply Component. We discuss pretty much everything with them: activities, strategies, studytrips, trainings. We try to make them responsible for the awareness raising part. This is where the other big term of development work pops in: ownership.

We try to make our partners OWN our awareness raising component on every level. On provincial level we work, as I said, with EPA & PCerwass; on district level we work with a District Task Force (DTF) and on commune level we work with the Environmental Communication Teams (ECTeams). These ECTeams are the ones that actually have to organise the awareness raising activities (roleplays, contest, performances, village meetings, household visits). For every commune we have three ECTeams: one for primary school, one for secondary school and one for the commune.

So, we build capacities of all these local agencies and try to involve them as much as possible into our project. If they believe in it, if they own it, the project will succeed. If they don’t, the project might have no long-term impacts and all our efforts might be for nothing on the long-term.

Now, My Role:

Junior Assistant in Awareness Raising & Communication, which means:

• Develop a long-term Awareness Raising Strategy, including pilot and extension phase.
• Organise trainings and workshops on the need for clean water, solid waste management, communication skills, monitoring & evaluation etc. for our District Task Forces and ECTeams.
• Conduct regular visits to the communes and districts to attend their awareness raising activities, evaluate the past activities, discuss their future activities and give comments on their communication plans.
• Develop booklets, posters, t-shirts, manuals that our ECTeams can use during their awareness raising activities
• Develop a website

If you want to read more about our project, you can visit our brand NEW website: http://binhdinhwssp.wordpress.com/

Het is opvallend hoe we spontaan geuren associëren met ervaringen, herinneringen, plaatsen etc. Ik beaam nu dat Azië een zeer aparte geur heeft, best te beschrijven als een vochtige mengeling van dampende Pho (noodle soep), look, stof, uitlaatgassen, en een vleugje jasmijn, dat je af en toe aangenaam verrast. De warme, vochtige  Hanoi-lucht mag nog binnen, wetende dat we ze binnen enkele weken omruilen voor de airco.

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It’s pooring rain in Quy Nhon and thus i will tell you last week’s Great Days. Finally our first “awareness raising activity” !
(ps: to know the background of what i’m doing here, far away in Vietnam, click here)

Starring:
- a female trainer with power and humor (and an expert in communication programs about waste management)
- 30 hungry-to-learn “rural towns & communes”-staff (from Commune People’s Committees, environment divisions, health centers, women union, youth union)

In:
a 3-day training on how to raise the “rural towns-and-communes”-public’s awareness on waste and how to deal with it in a sustainable way.

Script:

Day 1 – topic: What is waste? What are its effects on human’s health and the environment? How to deal with it in a sustainable way?

A great game that works for kids as well as for adults: to classify waste.

Groups compete against each other to finish as first the “waste” (pictures, though) classification. People wonder in a hurry: Are cigaret ends organic or inorganic waste? Does a shoe belong to the recyclables? Where to toss my broken bamboo chop sticks?

And have you ever heard of “3R” ? That is hip in Vietnam (at least, among the ones in the field of waste management). 3R was introduced in Vietnam by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and means “Reuse-Reduce-Recycle”. It is a simple but easy-to-remember way of what to do with waste if you want to communicate to a public.

Day 2 – topic: What is communication? What methods and tools to use? What skills do i need?

The day starts with the game where two lines of people have to communicate a long phrase from the first to the last person in the line, passing over the message from one to the next person. And ofcourse, at the end: none of both lines are able to even keep close to the message that was in the original phrase. A total other message, after having passed 15 people, arrives at the end.

The group also learned about (and tried briefly out their) communication skills (listening, observing, presenting & speaking, …) and discussed ‘good’ and ‘bad’ examples of Information-Education-Communication (IEC) materials such as flyers, posters, T-shirts etc.

Day 3 - Topic: Excercise: Design a communication plan for your town/commune

Together with the participants, the trainer went through questions and answers such as “What are our objectifs? Who are the target groups? What messages will we convey? What activities are adapted to convey these messages? Then the 4 towns/communes each drafted its communication activity plan. In one commune some one said: But hey, the money that the project provides us, is not enough for all the activities we want to do!, to which the leader of the Commune People’s Committee (CPC) replied: the CPC can add some money! Isn’t this just what you love to hear being “the donor”?! That the locals want to contribute too, because they are convinced of the necessity of the activity.

Finally all communes presented their plans, followed by the others’ questions and comments.
Evaluation forms were filled out, and the training was over. Except that the oldest of the group, who seemed to be a very quiet and observing guy, stood up and said he was very grateful for the project to have provided him and all the others with this training. Others followed his expression and after a couple of minutes a bunch of vietnamese were enthousiastically shaking hands with us (trainer, colleague, and me). It all made me very happy. To be able to provide training for people who are so grateful for receiving the training, for they find it very useful in their working environment.

This little mail from a vietnamese participant was great proof:

Dear Ashley!

I have to receive your letter. Although i have not an allowance for
those days but i feel very happy because i will have more experience
for working!

Once more, thank you for you because you give me the opportunity to
gain experience. I always wanted to learn to work effectively on the
environmental protection.

(Literally copied – I did not correct the prases)

And now what?

By the end of December 2010 the involved rural towns & communes submit us their serious communication activity plans. We (project unit, together with the provincial and district partners) will review these and go to the rural towns/communes to discuss them and, if necessary, provide support to improve the plans. And then… the real awareness raising activities will start!

On top, our project is lucky to welcome a new Junior, Anke, who will also work on this program. TBC!

TV Brussel heeft een reportage reeks gemaakt over de Belgische ontwikkelingssamenwerking in Vietnam.  Vanaf 6 september wordt er iedere zondag een deel van ongeveer 12 minuten uitgezonden op de regional zender in Brussel.  De afleveringen zijn ook online te bekijken: http://www.tvbrussel.be/programmas/vietnam/herbekijk
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