On the side of Quang Binh, there were Mr. Tran Cong Thuat, Vice-chairman of the Provincial People’s Committee; representative of the Public Relations Committee of Provincial Party Committee and members of the Red Cross of the provinces benefited from the Project.

The Project on hygiene education and school nutrition has been jointly carried out by US Red Cross and Vietnam Red Cross and funded the US Department of Agriculture and Red Cross.

The first phase of the project, which was launched from Sept 2003 to May 2005, provided nutritional portions for 50,000 pupils of 126 schools in four central provinces of Ha Tinh, Nghe An, Quang Binh and Quang Ngai with a total donation of US$6.7 million.

The second phase of the project, which was launched from Sept 2006 to May 2008, provided nutritional portions for about 60,000 pupils in six provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Ngai, Dien Bien and Lai Chau with a total donation of US$4.2 million from the US agencies under the Mc.Govern-Dole international food for education and child nutrition programme.

The project’s objective is to provide nutritional portions, improve the hygiene education and school nutrition and build a scientific hygiene lifestyle for the pupils. Concurrently, It also funded construction of hygiene works to supply safe water for the schools and held training on environment and water resources and hygiene and food safety for pupils.

After two-years of implementation of the Project on hygiene education and school nutrition for the second phase, it has provided nearly 17 million nutritional portions for 57,602 pupils from the age of 6-11 of 187 schools in mountainous and remote areas of the six provinces of Dien Bien, Ha Tinh, Lai Chau, Nghe An, Quang Binh and Quang Ngai provinces.

As a result, 100% of participating pupils gained an average 3.5 kilogrammes. The project helped reduce the rate of malnutrition among pupils and improved their ability to concentrate during class.

By N.Y