From ideas into action
Xin caio!
It was already Monday morning, filled with excitement to meet our host client. We started fully energized an early morning walk to the city center, through the streets of Hanoi.
Once we arrived at the famous Hoan-Kiem lake (Vietnamese: Hồ Hoàn Kiếm), also known as Sword Lake (Hồ Gươm), we were so curious to meet our host organization REACH in person for the first time and finally also in the same time zone. Before preparing our journey, we had two online meetings with the management team at late night for our hosting partners and early morning for our colleague Daniel, from Mexico.
REACH (Research Institute for Education and Career Help) is a non-profit organization specializing in vocational and life skill training and job placement for disadvantaged youth in Vietnam. They work with youth aged between 16–30, who lack access to formal education due to physical and social barriers such as disabilities, poverty, or difficult family circumstances. REACH offers a variety of job training programs depending on regional market needs such as cooking and hospitality service classes, as well as computer design courses in 2D and 3D. The non-profit organization will achieve its goals when Vietnam’s disenfranchised youth attains sustained income generation and fair employment to raise their standard of living and alleviate their financial situation.
More information can be found here: http://reach.org.vn/
After the formal kick-off, everyone warmly welcomed us at the REACH training center in Hanoi (several others across the country) where the students attended their daily classes in computer modelling or food and beverage or cooking classes. Getting the option with access to education for 3–6 months, REACH not only supports them on learning practical skills but also offers skill trainings, CV writing and individual mentoring for 6 months after the program to find and retain their first jobs, with a decent income.
Everything so far was very impactful and inspiring until we heard that REACH was highly impacted through COVID as tourism and hospitality sector closed down, and global donations were getting cut. This adversely affected their powerful trainings classes which are free for their students, but are expensive to equip and run. REACH is fighting hard to keep as much as their trainings ongoing but still is impacted until now by the decreasing funding situation.
As donation cycles are usually project based, ranging between one up to three years cycle, organizations like REACH need to define a sustainable income strategy to keep their services alive. As we talked with their management team, we agreed to help them with a clear positioning and marketing strategy, as well as a hands-on execution plan which is feasible for their organization to implement to sustain and grow in the future.
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