Country strategy

Disability situation in Vietnam

The disability movement is quite weak and it is questionable whether "movement" is at all a suitable wording. Only one national OPWD exists: The Vietnamese Blind Association (VBA). This organisation, however, is impressively well-organised both at national, provincial, and district level, covering more than half the country. The status of the organization seems almost semi-governmental, as all salaries and many of the programs are paid for by the government. VBA runs a number of services providing activities, and seems to be little engaged in advocacy work.

Apart from VBA the disability movement consists of more informal groupings of PWD’s, which are all small and locally based. Those groups include physically impaired, deaf, and parents' groups on behalf of children with learning disabilities. Most of them are so-called “self-help groups” with no other objective than for the members to support each other. Almost all the self-help groups seem to have very low ambitions with regards to formation of independent organisations.

DPOD's focus areas in Vietnam

The number of organisations and groupings of people with disabilities is extremely limited and the number of INGOS working to improve the life of disabled in general few. Moreover the work of these INGOS is highly uncoordinated and very unequal distributed countrywide. A substantial part of the efforts goes into service provision which, in turn, varies substantially in quality. Service programmes funded by external donors often seem to be characterised by the use of poor methodological approaches, e.g. lack of appropriate stimulation of children with learning disabilities. Based on the situation analysis the key focus areas of work for DPOD funded programme are identified as:

Strengthening of organisational potential
Addressing the needs of the Invisible Disability Groups
Improvement and development of service providing models

Country strategy

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