What do our local and international volunteers do ?

• Volunteers teach the blind children basic English.

• Some of the children have difficulties carrying out daily tasks, so volunteers help them with activities such as tidying up the classrooms, the playground, and the dormitories.

• Volunteers record tapes with English sentences for the blind students.

• Furthermore, some of the children are shy and prefer not to discuss their condition. Volunteers encourage them to accept it and be open and

�

The organization Solidarités Jeunesses Vietnam (SJ Vietnam) is a non-profit international youth volunteering organization in Hanoi, Vietnam. It is a small organization, set up for, and by young volunteers. In december 2007, 3207 young vietnamese volunters were official members of SJ Vietnam.Our volunteers are active in the organization as work camp leaders, project managers or as volunteer on our local projects.

The goals of SJ Vietnam are:
• Work towards a society of justice, peace and solidarity.
• Break cultural misunderstanding between peoples and nations.
• Improve local and global environment, provide non-formal education, reduce poverty and establish human rights.
• Encourage young people to participate actively in the society in which they live.

SJ Vietnam organizes mainly 4 kind of activities: local activities during all the year (mainly for local volunteers living in Hanoi), international workcamp (hosting and sending volunteers), long term voluntary projects (hosting and sending long term volunteers) and promotion of International Volunteerism .All these activities are the specific tools of our organization to reach our goals about youth education, peace, tolerance, and solidarity.
All our activities are open to everybody: to join our activities, you need only to buy your annual member card or to be sent by a voluntary organization partner of SJV.

Two short video presentations of SJV can be downloaded at http://vietnam.solidaritesjeunesses.org/video/sjvpresentation/sjvnetchua.mpg (in vietnamese) and at http://vietnam.solidaritesjeunesses.org/video/sjvpresentation/sjvpresentation.mpg (in english)

SJ Vietnam is proudly a non-professional youth organization ;except our secretary staff, all the organization is completely managed by everyday youth themselves from Vietnam and around the world. All the local and international activities are imagined and realized collectively by the members. SJ Vietnam is a youth organization FOR young people BY the young people.

All SJ volunteers (national and international) are non-paid. We donate our time for free because we believe in the goals of our projects and they are most important for us.
During the year, SJ Vietnam organizes local activities open to everybody: visit to museums with poor children, lessons for street children, environmental activities, autumn festival for child victims of the Orange Agent, free lunch for poor children, cultural and leisure activities, etc.

Each week at least one activity is organized, contact the secretary to get our calendar.

Feel free to join us, you are welcome!!

SJ Vietnam organizes and promotes international workcamps throughout the year and trains workcamp leaders to run them. The over 40 international camps in vietnam aim to promote:
1. Volunteerism, friendship and solidarity among young people.
2. Awareness of local, national and international issues.    
3. Improvement on quality of life. (Water filters for people living on Red river, free medicine for those with TB, information about HIV and sexual health, leisure and cultural activities, environmental projects, etc…)
4. Cultural exchange by living together.

Each year, SJ Vietnam uses to host around 300 international short and long term international volunteers coming from different voluntary organization around the world. If you live outside Vietnam and you want to join one of our workcamp, contact your national voluntary organization (check the section "partners" on this web site). You can see our list of workcamps in vietnam in the section "workcamp" on this web site.

But SJ Vietnam is also a sending organization : SJ Vietnam trough an international network of partners offers to Vietnamese volunteers the opportunity to join international workcamp abroad as volunteer. At this time around 30 countries are accessible to Vietnamese Volunteers (France, UK, Mexico, Germany, Thailand, Korea, Japan, China; Mongolia, etc). And each year more that one thousand projects are available…

In parrallele, to assure high quality workcamps, SJ Vietnam organizes week-end workshop to train workcamp leaders.

To know more about workcamp, see the section "workcamps & LTV " on this web site

A long term project is a little bit like a workcamp but longer (between 1 and 6 month). More motivation is required from the volunteer but it also provides more rewards. Long Term Volunteerism with SJ Vietnam gives the opportunity to foreign volunteers to join our long term projects in Vietnam .

SJ Vietnam through this network also offers long term opportunities to Vietnamese volunteers to be volunteer abroad.

To know more about LTV, see the section "workcamps & LTV " on this web site

SJ Vietnam is also actif on the internal stage to promote the philisophy of workcamps and international solidarity between youth people. In this frame, SJ Vietnam is an active member of NDVA and CCIVS.