Preventive Case Studies: no3

Family of Mr. Le Le (Ngai) and Ms. Ho Thi Mai — Pho Nam A Village, Quang Tho Commune

Similar to other beneficiaries in Quang Tho Commune, the family of Mr. Le and Mrs. Mai was selected after 3 strict selection meetings.

His family contains 6 members (3 little children and paternal grandmother). He looks older than his age maybe because he has many things in life to contrive. When I came, Mrs. Mai was making conical hats with all her concentration and Mr. Le was taking care of little pigs. The house of 5 x 7m is well arranged. Formerly, due to money limitations, their house had no doors and walls were not plastered yet. That is the reason why their family was selected as a beneficiary of the project. The total reinforcement cost of their house is 4,000,000 VND; of which, 2,000,000 VND subsidized from DW project and 2,000,000 VND from Commune Damage Prevention Committee credit program. The reinforcement work includes:
- Plastering walls
- Reinforcing roof
- Doors and windows
Beside this, they used their savings to improve the floor and the front yard.

Through the conversation, I was informed that they have a stable income. Beside the rice from their rice field, they also earn 2-3 million dong /year from porkers and 1.5 million dong /year from sows. In addition, Ms. Mai can earn 12,000 VND/day from conical hat making. Hence, to refund loan for housing is not so difficult for them.

There is one point that is interesting; that is, they also got a loan of 5,000,000 VND from Women Union with the interest of 0.5% /month to breed pigs. They already finished one out of five years of refunding.

On the other hand, Mr. Le is a skilful builder and he can get some more income. He used to join the training for builders organized by the project in Quang Tho. After the training, he got a chance to apply the technique gained to Tan Xuan Lai Kindergarten which was reinforced with the support from DW.

Their last-born daughter is at the age of kindergarten. Before, she was not sent to school because of lack of schoolrooms; however, she presently is a school child of the kindergarten next door and her parents do not worry that it could be collapsed or not (before being reinforced, it was very weak). According to Ms. Mai, everybody supports and hopes the project can help and work with much more families in years to come.

Preventive Case Studies: no4

Family of Ms. Le Thi Sam, Thuy An Commune

Thuy An Commune located along the edge of Hue City and is in depression area along An Cuu River Bank. It is easily affected by disaster annually, which is the reason for being chosen as a place to implement DW project in 2003. Because Thuy An is quite a new commune with the project, the work at the beginning was rather difficult – from beneficiary selection to people’s awareness of the project targets and other animation.

However, with the effort of project staff and positive response of People’s Committee of Commune and people as well, the project has been carried out favourably and easily; especially in beneficiary selection.

Ms. Le Thi Sam was one of poor families of the first group being chosen based on project criteria. Covered with iron sheets, her house had an area of 34.8 m2, non-plaster block-cement walls, bamboo purlins, no doors, temporarily composition, and weak roof structure. Therefore, to reinforce Ms. Sam’s house was very pressing.

Her husband has passed away and she lived with 2 little children. With the patience and diligence of Vietnamese woman, she hasn’t remarried and tried her best to bring up her children. The time we came to make the agreement with her is also the time she went to the People’s Committee to make birth certificates for her daughters of about 18 years old. By asking, we knew that her family was too poor to concern these kinds of things. At that time, even her children grew up, they could not save enough money to improve their house.

Being selected, she was very happy and warmly welcomed the project staff to home for work. The estimated budget was too high for the family’s capacity to carry out the work. However, she asked the project to get a loan of 2.5 million dong from the Commune Damage Prevention Committee credit program. On principle, the maximum amount of a credit loan is 2 million dong, but with this special case, we considered and accepted her requirement with the interest of 0.3% /month. All should be refunded within 3 years.

The total cost to reinforce the house is 4,527,000 VND and now it can resist typhoon. Every month, she gives back 142,000 VND to credit officer of Commune on the agreed date