Reuniting adoptees and birth parents

A medical worker is treating a HFMD toddler

According to Dr. Le Hong Nga from Ho Chi Minh City Center for Disease Control (HCDC), in the first three months of 2021, the number of HFMD cases nearly doubled compared to the average of the same period in 2017-2020. The number of cases of severe HFMD at grade 2B or higher is on the rise. The southern metropolis recorded 2,564 cases of HFMD, an increase of 2.5 times compared to the same period in 2020 with 1,044 cases. The city recorded 346 cases in March 2021 alone, an increase of 2.2 times compared to the previous month’s average with 152 cases. Thu Duc City and districts 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, Binh Tan, Tan Binh, Go Vap, Binh Chanh, Cu Chi, Hoc Mon have seen an alarming rate of HFMD cases.

By staff writers – Translated by Uyen Phuong

As the project’s coordinating agency, the MoIT has selected three of its colleges to pilot the Japanese-style vocational training model, including the College of Industry and Commerce (COIT), Hue Industrial College (HUE-IC) and Cao Thang Technical College (CTTC).

Vietnam and Japan are strengthening cooperation to increase the quality of industrial human resources

Since 2018, information about the vocational training program has been introduced to junior high schools and higher education levels in Vietnam. The model has also been introduced to enterprises located near the colleges, especially Japanese ones, and to parent companies of Japanese investors in Vietnam in order to promote recruitment of graduates from industrial colleges in Vietnam. Graduates are likely to be recruited by these businesses.

All three colleges have promoted internships and research activities and diversified training through cooperation with business firms. “Although Covid-19 has affected the cooperation program, the KOSEN education model is developing positively, attracting 264 students to participate in training in the electrical, electronics, industrial and mechatronics industries,” said Nguyen The Hieu, deputy director of the MoIT Department of Personnel and Organization.

According to the MoIT evaluation, the pilot units have linked the training program closely to the needs of Japanese enterprises and the human resources requirements for industrial development and integration goals. However, the representative of KOSEN said that although the program had made positive progress, in order to seize the opportunity of supplying human resources for Japanese enterprises shifting their investment to Vietnam, training institutions need to further strengthen cooperation with businesses to grasp recruitment needs and outline a suitable career orientation for students.

To create new breakthroughs in training human resources in general and for the industrial sector in Vietnam in particular, the MoIT colleges are offering three-year and five-year programs based on the Japanese model. Some 250 participants have signed up for the 2020-2021 period.

Hoa Quynh

Shift to edtech taking centre stage. Source: freepik.com

Last month Manabie, a Singapore-based education tech firm, secured $3 million in investment from Do Ventures, Genesia Ventures, and Chiba Dojo.

“Manabie is leveraging new funding to keep increasing our content, coach training, and technology to enhance the personalised learning experience, and with our current technology we can expand our outreach further,” said Christy Wong, Manabie co-founder.

In February San Francisco-based edtech company ELSA, which helps language learners improve their English-speaking skills and pronunciation, raised a $15 million Series B funding round, co-led by Asia-based Vietnam Investments Group and SIG.

Michael Ngo, Vietnam country manager of ELSA said, “This new funding will go towards research and development to further our award-winning voice recognition AI, build a scalable business-to-business (B2B) platform, and hire new talent.”

ELSA recently piloted its B2B efforts with schools in Vietnam and India and received significant interest from other regions. “Therefore, we will also focus on creating a scalable B2B platform that allows cooperation with corporate partners and schools around the world,” he said.

Additionally, in mid-March, Vietnamese edtech startup Edmicro closed a pre-Series A+ round from Singapore-based venture capital firm BEENEXT, Qualgro, and Insignia Ventures Partners. Elsewhere, Nguyen Hoang Education Group announced two American baccalaureate programmes in Vietnam in both online and offline education.

Leading the game

In the technology sector, edtech has been the third-most funded field in Vietnam over the past eight years. The total venture capital investment in edtech is now $103 million, just behind payments ($462 million) and retail ($416 million), according to a Do Ventures report. But with COVID-19 continuing to cause chaos worldwide and despite successful prevention here, the Vietnamese edtech market is now more active than ever, as evidenced by the increase in raised capital for such educational startups.

Olivier Raussin, managing partner of FEBE Ventures, highlighted that attention to edtech stems from social distancing leading to remote learning being a way to help students continue their education.

Online delivery platforms, he said, are trying to solve the dual problem of teaching and learning. However, as education is a massive industry with many intricacies in the value chain, the digitalisation of the industry “will bring forward many interesting companies that solve other problems in the education space than online education delivery”.

From a different angle, Jenny Chau Dang, CEO of Topica Edtech Group, noted that like many other higher education institutions around the world, the pandemic showed that Vietnam’s higher education institutions also lack the digital capabilities for distance or online learning.

“We saw this very clearly in 2020 when Vietnam went into its first lockdown. Many schools and institutions not only were ill-equipped and unprepared to move teaching and instruction online, but often cannot afford to develop the resources to move online,” Dang said.

Combine that with lack of expertise to create high quality, attractive content to motivate and engage learners on the platform, these conditions, created and heightened by the pandemic, have increased the demand for online learning, she added.

Statistics from Topica show that Vietnam is a burgeoning edtech market estimated to reach $3 billion by 2023. There are approximately 16 million students in primary and secondary schools and another 1.7 million in universities in a country where parents spend upwards of 47 per cent of their disposable income on education for their children.

Nevertheless, Olivier Raussin from FEBE Ventures said that parents’ budget for education is not exactly a mutually exclusive choice between online or offline. Further, he noted that the portion of parents’ budget for online education has not grown significantly either.

However, parental budgets for education in general in Vietnam are some of the largest in the world, and some of the fastest-growing as well. Statistics indicate that Vietnamese parents spend up to 40 per cent of their disposable income on their children’s education.

“It will be challenging to compete directly to the traditional players for the money from the parents’ wallet – as such, some startups in this space position themselves as complementary pieces and value creators for traditional players,” Raussin said.

In his opinion, the technology prowess of startup companies can add value to traditional businesses in education. As a result, the education space as a whole can deliver a greater experience to students and parents are willing to invest more.

Surmounting difficulties

Despite clear advantages that edtech startups may have, issues remain that startups themselves have to find ways to address.

Ngo of ELSA supposes that when it comes to language learning, more often than not, the biggest challenge is motivation. Regardless of the delivery method – offline or online – if the learner is unmotivated, the results will reflect accordingly. On the other hand, Wong from Manabie believed that the learning experience in an online environment still faces many challenges from an infrastructure perspective. Internet speed in rural areas is limited; and many students only have a low-spec smartphone.

Topica’s Dang claimed learners are becoming more demanding. “There is a need to find the right balance between high-quality content and affordable fees to continue to attract and retain learners and maintain our 90 per cent retention rate,” Dang said.

By Truc Van

Taking place from April 16-19, the 8th Congress will look into the important issues of politics, economics and social life in Cuba. This congress is a turning point, marking the conclusion of the historic leadership transition, which is strategically significant to the nation’s destiny, ensuring the continuation of the revolutionary process and the irreversibility of socialism.

In the spirit of the Hiron Victory and with the indomitable revolutionary tradition, the 8th Congress of the CPC affirms the determination to overcome all challenges and stay firm on the path of building prosperous and sustainable socialism.

The Cuban revolution succeeded on January 1, 1959, when the Cuban people and patriotic revolutionaries, under the leadership of Fidel Castro, overthrew the Batista dictatorship and established the first state of workers and farmers in the Western hemisphere, bringing the “island of freedom” to a new era of independence, freedom and socialism.

The birth and existence of the socialist Cuban state has motivated the oppressed peoples of the world to step up their struggles for national independence. However, with hostile forces’ plots to overpower the young revolutionary state, Cuba has been faced with a great deal of difficulties, especially the policy of blockade and embargo.

Through 62 years and seven congresses, under the leadership of the CPC, the Cuban people have fought steadfastly to foil the plots of hostile forces, successfully safeguarding the revolutionary achievements and taking the Caribbean island firmly on the chosen path.

With creativity and hard work, the Cuban people have weathered numerous difficulties and gradually recorded significant accomplishments. Since 2009, Cuba has been implementing a number of new socio-economic policies. In April 2011, the 6th Congress introduced a policy on updating the socio-economic model, expanding the participation of non-state economic sectors, increasing devolution and autonomy; while stepping up reform, encouraging self-employment, reducing subsidy and implementing a new tax policy.

The first five years of updating the socio-economic model brought about some positive results, with the average growth rate reaching 2.8% during the 2011-2015 period. The Cuban economic growth rate slowed during the 2016-2020 period due to increased blockages and embargoes. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic exerted profound impacts around the world and Cuba was also faced with numerous difficulties as economic growth was low, healthcare service exports declined and the socio-economic model update process was affected.

In the face of challenges, the Cuban Communist Party and people have shown enormous efforts and determination to push through the cause of building prosperous and sustainable socialism on the heroic island. The 8th Congress will review the economic performance during the 2016-2021 period and outline the development plan until 2030, conduct an overall review of the economic model update, and discuss and approve the documents on updating the guidelines for the coming period.

The Cuban Communist Party and people have affirmed that they will carry on updating the socio-economic model, strive to remove difficulties, protect the recorded achievements, persist with development goals and the path of socialism, maintain and promote the support and solidarity of the world’s people, continue with its dynamic foreign policy, and uphold the example of proletarian internationalism.

The special friendship between the Parties, States and peoples of Vietnam and Cuba, which was formed and constructed on the historical foundation of the indomitable struggles for independence, liberty, sovereignty and self-determination of the two countries, has been nurtured and developed by President Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and generations of the two countries’ leaders, bringing about substantive benefits to the cause of socialist construction and defence in each country, weathering the ups and downs of history for more than 60 years.

Cuba was always a symbol and a pioneer in the global movement to support Vietnam’s just cause of fighting against foreign aggressors and reunifying the country. The Cuban Communist Party and people always show their valuable and effective support for Vietnam while Vietnam always holds the spirit of solidarity, friendship, and sincere, close and transparent cooperation with Cuba.

The Vietnamese Communist Party and people are delighted at the achievements that the Cuban Communist Party and people have been recording for more than 60 years, and believe that, under the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba, the heroic Cuban people will overcome all difficulties and continue to steer the revolutionary cause to victory. The Vietnamese Communist Party and people would like to extend the warmest congratulations to the entire Cuban Party members, officials and people. May the 8th National Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba be a great success!