Marina Hutton has been back from a six-week international seminar and research expedition in Southeast Asia for more than a month now. Talk to her, though, and it still seems like she has Vietnam and the Vietnamese people on the brain.
“I love the people there!” she recalled enthusiastically. “The people are wonderful. By the end, I was falling more in love with it because being there just felt natural. Coming back here was a bigger culture shock.”
The 18-year-old university student spent the better part of her summer doing development work in the southern provinces of Bình Thu?n and TrĹ• Vinh. There, she was looking hard at the socioeconomic circumstances of the younger population, trying to determine ways where people could be better matched with viable employment and vice versa.
She was one of 20 students from across the country to be accepted for Youth in the Workforce and the Socioeconomic Development of Vietnam program. The seminar was offered by the Uniterra program, a joint effort between the World University Service of Canada and the Canadian Centre for International Studies and Co-operation. It is already involved in Trŕ Vinh, helping to dissolve language and gender barriers, improve access to quality education and overcome financial and economic challenges.
According to Uniterra’s website, Vietnam may have one of the top performing economies among developing nations but the wealth creation potential of its private sector is still underdeveloped. This is due to a combination of both a shortage of quality labour and weak management skills.
Every year, about 1.5 million Vietnamese enter the workforce. Recently, that country’s government made a commitment to developing labour in the agricultural sector and promoting training.
Hutton’s job was to create a questionnaire and conduct surveys on the youth market. She soon learned that it’s an uphill battle when trying to make suggestions about improvements in the system.
“They wanted us to come in and do the research and report back, but saving face is really important. We had recommendations for the schools to better meet demands but we couldn’t present it at certain places. They had to revise it and make it more sensitive.”
Apart from that, she enjoyed her trip and her work so much that she actually spent 10 extra days to do more sightseeing there before returning. She highly recommends the country as a travel destination.
“It’s a really easy, good place to travel to. I felt safe the entire time, especially in the south more so than in the north. The scenery is gorgeous everywhere you go.”
“When you go to places like Japan, it’s very culturally distinct. Like India. In Vietnam, you can tell that, because of all the war and all that’s gone on there, its culture is heavily influenced from other countries. They don’t have a very distinct culture. They’re not lacking of a culture; you just see the influence of all these other cultures.”
For more information on this and other programs, please visit www.wusc.ca/en/volunteer/seminar.
