On 10.08.2016 in Hanoi, the CSOs annual conference with theme “for sustainable development of CSOs in Vietnam” was held by the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA), in collaboration with some relative organizations and associations. Nearly 200 delegates in multiple areas, such as government representatives, CSOs representatives, scientists, academics, sponsors and journalists from various provinces across the country attended the conference.

 
Mrs. Le Thi Thanh Ha - Deputy Director of The Center for Supporting Community Development Initiatives (SCDI), noticed many initiatives and positive changes in the CSOs activities in comparison to last year. She also received many constructive ideas and comments from delegates.
 
The conference was divided into four topics, presented by experts in each field: The 1^st topic summarized the development process and the contribution of CSOs in numerous service delivery sectors, such as education/training, health, community development and poverty reduction and science/technology; the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th topics aimed to assess current situation and provide solutions to improve the efficiency of CSOs in 3 dimensions: legal environment, sustainable financing and the CSOs’ duties of policy advocacy (consultancy, supervision and critical evaluation).
 

Photo credit: Xuan Hoan (SCDI)

"All associations and organizations should necessarily focus on developing their own internal capacity, along with encourage government institutions to make necessary policy amendments in order to promote and protect CSOs, building a healthy legal environment for the CSOs to be fully developed, raising community awareness about the role of civil society as an important part of a sustainable democracy."
 

Nguyen Kim Ngan, Deputy Director of the Center for Sustainable Rural Development

 
The seminar provided a comprehensive picture of the development process of Vietnamese CSOs up to this date as well as challenges in the future. During the discussion phase, participants raised many comments, where the role of CSOs in advocacy and policy contributions were accentuated as a matter of priority, since Decree 93 / 2009 / NĐ-CP is said to be limiting the autonomy of CSOs in seeking financial resources  from foreign NGOs. In addition, in the context of decreasing international funding and assistance (including ODA) for Vietnam in the future (since Vietnam has been graded as a lower middle-income country), this represents a major challenge that urges Vietnamese CSOs to seek for domestic resources to support their activities. The domestic business sectors represent a great potential, albeit untapped and unexplored, due to limited capacity of Vietnamese CSOs (since many CSOs are small organizations), weak coordination between organizations and ineffective communication activities, not to mention the lack of knowledge and attention from the press and journalists about the organizations’ activities...
 

 Photo credit: Xuan Hoan (SCDI)

In the contextof globalization and deepening regional integration, people of SCDI are fully aware of the importance of strengthening the capacity and autonomy within the CSOs, on their way to forge one of the three pillars that generate a prosperous nation: Civil society. Therefore, SCDI has been focusing on developing organizational capacity through promoting communication, building self image, strengthening the connection with relative networks and CSOs with the same area of expertise, in order to send a stronger and more effective message to partners, sponsors, and targeted communities, thus create a higher social impact.

Vân Anh