Authorities of Vietnam’s central city of Danang and the Spanish NGO Paz y Desarrollo (PyD) on July 9 jointly launched a school-based violence prevention project, the first of this kind in the country. The project will be implemented until 2014 with financial and technical support from the Spanish Agency for International Development and Partners for Prevention, a regional United Nations interagency initiative on gender-based violence in Asia and the Pacific. Under the title “Hanh Trinh Yeu Thuong” (The Journey of Love), the project aims to raise awareness among 11-14-year-old students of gender-based violence and guide children on how to manage emotions, resolve conflicts without violence and promote gender equity. The project also will create enabling environment within schools for gender violence prevention and mitigation through advocacy among students, teachers, students' clubs, and policy makers. “Working with children who are still forming ideas about gender and violence has been proven internationally to be an effective strategy for preventing violence later on in life,” said Benjamin Swanton, joint project manager. Firstly, it will be carried out in 10 junior high schools that are selected at random and later expanded to 10 more schools in the city. School violence has also been mentioned as a burning issue of Vietnam’s education sector, threatening the school environment and more seriously showing signs of morality degradation among young people. Statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training showed that in the 2011-2012 school years, there were 384 students in 12 provinces involving in violent cases. Though schools applied several measures to stop school violence, such as suspending students caught fighting for certain periods of time, the measures have proven to be in vain. In fact, finding methods to reduce the number of school violence cases will remain a difficult task for society and the education sector in the long term, experts said. (www.cpv.org.vn [1] July 10)
