New Life Page for "Invisible" Children - Vietnam

Dear donor,

We send you the report for the period of December 2019 - March 2020 for "A new life page" project.

It is great to inform you that our donations and supports helped 110 disadvanted children in Vietnam to have birth certicates from May 2017 to March 2020. Though you may think that 110 is not a big numer but with disadvantaged children, it means 130 children can have "new life pages", they can go to school and have health insurance now.

The children we helped are in various cases but not limited to Children of unknown birthplace, origins; Children from unregistered households, being born out of the wedlock, whose parent(s) lose civil act capacity, serve prison sentences or go missing; Orphans whose parent(s) have died, are unknown or have permanently abandoned them; Children over 10 years old whose notice of birth are missing, etc. Children of course can not do the birth certificates for themselves so they need HELP, adults have to do that. Within the project, last December, we have establish "A new life page" group to help disadvanataged children and their families (if they have) or their shelters (if they are stay in) to provide technical and financial assistance to do so. All members of "A new life page" group are un-paid volunteers and devotes our time for the mission of changing the life to children. With the increasing number of volunteers of "A new life page group", we hope that we can help more and more children. In addition, we will make all of your donations go directly to support the process of completing birth certifications to the disadvantaged children. All of your donations will help.

We will continue sending you the updates about the progress of doing certificates. If you use Facebook, please join us at "Trang moi cuoc doi (A new life pgae)" - https://www.facebook.com/Duantrangmoicuocdoi/ to get frequent updates and information. 

Thank you very much for all of your supports and we are trying our best to give further good updates for you.

Please taking a good care of you in when COVID 19 spreading to many countries in the world. 

Best regards,

MSD team

Links:

• Facebook page of A new life page

1. The Management and Sustainable Development Institute (MSD) has documented and classified cases regarding the children in need of birth certificates. The project group directly identified and committed support for 62 cases until 31st, October, 2019; 21 other cases, in the meantime are being handled by other civil society organizations. In total, we have taken 83 cases.

2. A training course entitled “Legal Aid in birth certificate registration for disadvantaged children living in Ho Chi Minh City” was held on 21st and 22nd, August, 2019 in Ho Chi Minh City to raise awareness among civil society and community based organizations about the Vietnamese legal system, necessary administrative procedures and other requirements for helping the children in need register birth certificates. Besides, with the consultancy of 28 participants, media and operational plans of the project were also developed involving all stakeholders.

3. A handbook guiding birth registration procedures for children has been compiled and revised with the participation of different stakeholders.

4. The group “New life page" was also founded with the membership of Ho Chi Minh City’s Center for Legal Aid, project officers of MSD Vietnam, and other civil society organizations with the aim to join hands to provide legal assistance for disadvataged children living without birth certificates. The group actively communicatethrough 5 channels including Email, Zalo, Facebook page: A new life page (Trang moi cuoc oi), an online library and meetings held on every last Saturday of each month. Two first meetings were successfully held on 26th, October and 30th, November this year.