UBC is leading a broad academic team in a unique program to reduce poverty
in Vietnam.
More than 30 UBC faculty, staff and students will work with people from nine
Vietnamese and Canadian universities and academic institutions.
“We aim to get local people involved with local officials in finding appropriate
solutions to hunger and poverty,” says program director Peter Boothroyd, chair
of UBC’s Centre for Human Settlements.
The Localized Poverty Reduction in Vietnam Program will receive $4.9 million
in funding over five years from the Canadian International Development Agency.
UBC’s centres for Human Settlements, Southeast Asia Research, and Research
in Women’s Studies and Gender Relations will play central roles in the program.
Among the ideas UBC will present to local people for their consideration are
projects to help them upgrade their own homes and neighborhoods in Vietnamese
cities and the introduction of credit schemes to provide loans to small businesses
to create employment.
The UBC team and their Canadian and Vietnamese partners will also focus on
community involvement in the management of Vietnam’s forests and fisheries.
Boothroyd says the work will involve testing participatory planning methods
in some of Vietnam’s poorest communes. Special attention will be given to the
participation of women in policy assessment and project design.
“We hope that by increasing university capacity for teaching effective public
involvement methods, we will make a real difference beyond the test communes,”
says Boothroyd.
The objectives of the program are in line with Vietnam’s new policy of hunger
eradication and poverty reduction.
The policy calls for planning and policy-making to be more decentralized with
the increasing participation of Vietnamese people as well as support for self-help
initiatives.
“One thing we know about poverty is that it is a complex and often localized
problem,” says Boothroyd. “Governments everywhere can benefit by paying attention
to local knowledge and by supporting community-driven projects.”
Boothroyd says knowledge gained by the poverty program will also contribute
to teaching programs at Canadian and Vietnamese universities.
Other Canadian partners include Université Laval and the International
Development Research Centre, an Ottawa-based institution which supports research
in developing countries.
The World University Service of Canada, an organization that sends volunteer
university students overseas to teach English and French, is also taking part.
The Canadians will be working with people from Vietnam’s National Centre for
Social Sciences and Humanities and five regional universities.
