Trương Thị Ngoc Ánh, Vice Chairwoman of the Central Committee of the Việt Nam Fatherland Front and Deputy Head of the Standing Committee of the Fund Raising Unit of the "For the Poor" Fund. Photo baodantoc.vn

Responding to Prime Minister’s programme "Joining hands for the poor and not leaving anyone behind", Trương Thị Ngoc Ánh, Vice Chairwoman of the Central Committee of the Việt Nam Fatherland Front and Deputy Head of the Standing Committee of the Fund Raising Unit of the "For the Poor" Fund spoke to Dân tộc và Phát triển (Ethnic and Development) newspaper about the plan.

For many years, the Central Committee of the Việt Nam Fatherland Front has actively coordinated with the Government in realising the goal of poverty reduction through the "For the Poor" fund and social security programmes. How do you evaluate the results so far?

Poverty reduction and social security programmes are a major policy of the Party and State and have been effectively implemented at all levels for many years, specifically through the fund "For the Poor".

In the past two years, the implementation of the Fund took place in a special context when the whole country was heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in order to support the poor to overcome their difficulties to rise out of poverty, we still continue to mobilise resources for the work. Despite the difficult conditions of the economy when affected by COVID-19, we still receive the attention and active support of the community, corporations, and enterprises; especially individuals, including overseas Vietnamese in the past three years.

The amount that the Việt Nam Fatherland Front mobilised from agencies, units, organisations, individuals and businesses was over VNĐ19 trillion. It shows that the cause to support the poor has been, in return, supported by corporations, businesses, organisations and overseas Vietnamese.

I think the best result of the programme is that we were able to connect the organisations and individuals who want to support the poor, not just the amount of money and funding that we can mobilise. This is especially true with provinces and areas that are or were hit hard by flooding in recent years.

How did the Việt Nam Fatherland Front Committee manage to deliver all the support to people in need and poor households?

We focused on a number of contents in the programme: Firstly, we support building houses for the poor and households in difficult circumstances who have not had a home or a stable place to live. In the past three years, the Fund at all levels has built more than 102,000 houses for the poor.

In addition, we provide support to families in need to ensure their children are able to go to school. In the past three years, nearly 600,000 children from disadvantaged families have been supported with loans to cover tuition fees, and given books so that they can go to school.

There is one activity that we have been working on for the past three years, which has been evaluated as very effective. That is to directly support disadvantaged households so that they have good conditions to do business and develop production; promote their labour skills and internal resources to sustainably escape poverty. Besides, we also coordinate with the Bank for Social Policies every year to create conditions for poor households to borrow interest-free loans, with capital for production and business.

Second, we develop projects to guide models of sustainably escaping poverty. Currently, the Central Committee of the Việt Nam Fatherland Front has deployed 61 models in 35 provinces and cities. Each model will guide from up to 50 households on how to do business. Each group in the community participating in the project includes well-to-do households and households that have just escaped poverty. The well-to-do households can guide the other households on how to do business with their experience.

There are models that have reached their third cycle. This shows supporting people ways of doing business and creating conditions for them to do business is the basis and the core value of the poverty reduction programme. We will try to implement this form in the near future.

This year, in order to implement this goal, we will post the account number of the Bank for Social Policies so that organisations and individuals who support the Fund can deposit into the account. We will monitor that source of support to provide loans to poor households across the country.

After two years of suspension, this year the programme "The whole country joins hands for the poor" was organised with the theme "Journey of hope". What is the significance of this topic?

The theme of this year's live TV programme "The whole country joins hands for the poor" is "Journey of hope", a journey of listening, helping, sharing, love, self-reliance. The reports and performances in the programme were made and staged according to the idea of ​​a journey of sowing hopes, symbolising the efforts to rise up, helping hands to look forward to a future together.

We want to convey a message to the people of the country that supporting the poor is the concern of the leaders of the Party and State, and we always have guidelines and policies to mobilise the participation of the whole political system to support the poor to rise out of poverty. We also hope that with such a right policy and orientation, the cooperation of the whole society will be spread and replicated.

With “Journey of Hope”, we want the poor to have the opportunity to rise out of poverty, take charge of their own lives, so that no one is left behind.

Through the programme "The whole country joins hands for the poor", what does the Central Committee of the Việt Nam Fatherland Front expect from units and businesses?

For two years the country was heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, corporations and businesses throughout the country are in the process of recovering and developing production and business, so we also did not set a target this year to achieve for the Fund "For the Poor" and how much funding for the social security programme. But we hope that this year, if the Prime Minister has given specific ideas and accompanied the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front in organising the programme, the spread of this program to the business community will be strong.

Businesses will overcome difficulties, and continue to show the sharing, spirit of solidarity and mutual love of the nation. In particular, this also shows the social responsibility of businesses to participate, so that the programme "The whole country joins hands for the poor" is welcomed by the business community.

After the official announcement of the account receiving the support, as of 15.00 pm on October 17, nearly 150 agencies, businesses, organisations, individuals and overseas Vietnamese have registered to support. VNS