As their working visit to Germany continues, on Wednesday the delegation of Da Nang’s leaders met with some representatives from the Federal Foreign Office (AA) and the Central Agency for German Schools Abroad (ZfA).

Da Nang People’s Committee (PC) Vice Chairman Dang Viet Dung remarked that top priority is being given to boosting bilateral trade and investment cooperation with Germany.  He said he would like AA to develop specific cooperative projects in order to further deepen the bilateral economic cooperation with Da Nang in the years ahead.

Vice Chairman Dung (second left) and the representatives from AA and ZfA

Vice Chairman Dung also thanked AA and ZfA for implementing a pilot German teaching project at Tran Quy Cap and Nguyen Thien Thuat junior high schools in Da Nang’s Cam Le District which is now progressing well.  He also said he hoped that ZfA would build libraries at these schools and provide them with more learning materials in German, as well as train local teachers in the German language for the project.

The visiting guest also suggested that more opportunities should be created for Da Nang’s school pupils to attend cultural exchange programmes in Germany.  He also stressed the need to implement German teaching programmes at local vocational training schools in order to offer more job opportunities for their trainees after graduation.

He revealed that the city leaders are negotiating with KfW, a German government-owned development bank, to access official development assistance (ODA) from Germany for the construction of a vocational training school in the city and to carry out the teaching of the German language there.

In reply, a representative from ZfA thanked the Da Nang PC for creating favourable conditions for the German organisation to deploy the German teaching project at Tran Quy Cap and Nguyen Thien Thuat junior high schools.

ZfA will expand this project into other local schools, with a focus on selecting and training local teachers in the German language and appealing for more financial aid to effectively develop the project.  Coordinators from ZfA’s representative office in Viet Nam are to conduct surveys in these junior high schools and make suggestions to ZfA about building libraries there.