Founded in March 2019, the Da Nang Children's Council whose leaders are outstanding children has collected more than 200 opinions raised by children, well serving as an important and useful information channel for the local authorities to develop policies and action programmes towards the goal of becoming a safe and child-friendly city.

A member from the Da Nang Children's Council in the 2021 - 2022 term present her opinions at the 6th meeting of the Da Nang Children's Council. Photo: T.V

Paying more attention to the care and protection of children

On May 24, 2021, the Da Nang People's Committee issued Decision No. 1782/QD-UBND approving the action plan for the sake of Da Nang children in the 2021 - 2030 period. This move once again affirmed the city's high determination to make itself a safe and child-friendly city.

For many years, the city has been one of the leading Vietnamese localities not only in child care and protection, but also pioneering in implementing many new protection models.

Since 2019, Da Nang has been the second city in Viet Nam to officially participate in the initiative of becoming a child-friendly city.

With the active companion and great support from UNICEF, the city has made outstanding progress strides in child care and protection.

The report on the situation of adolescents in 2020 released by UNICEF shows that, Da Nang recorded outstanding achievements such as always ensuring a high rate of children going to school, 93-98% of the total students studying in public educational institutions and the mortality rate of mothers and children aged under 5 being lower than the national average.

Da Nang is also the first locality in the country to establish a breast milk bank, with 98.17% of the total newborn babies being breastfed within the first hour after birth.

In particular, Not only is Da Nang one of the six Vietnamese localities to have established a Children's Council in 2019 but it also maintains this agency’s operation effectively.

Through recommendations, Da Nang has piloted many effective models such as ‘Safe house’, ‘Ward does well with children’ and ‘Social work site’ and ‘What I want to say’ annual forum.

Listening to what children say

Although the city's child care, education and protection work has achieved encouraging results, there is still much work to be done to achieve the goal of building a safe, child-friendly city.

According to Duong Nhat Khanh, Chairman of the Da Nang Children's Council in the 2019 - 2020 term, adults and children always have different views on certain issues. Therefore, it is necessary for adults to listen and share instead of giving compulsory mandates to their children.

“Currently, many parents always force their children to study a lot, including gifted subjects for becoming fully-developed people in the future. However, parents do not realise a fact that that children like us need time to rest, relax and especially we only study subjects that we like much”, Khanh shared.

In her perspectives, Nguyen Minh Thu, Vice Chairman of the Da Nang Children's Council in the 2021 – 2022 term also expressed many concerns over a trouble that COVID-19 is adversely affecting all activities. Still worse, learning and playing of the children were turned upside down. After a long time at home, some children have shifted from being active and cheerful to being passive, and they do not want to communicate with outsiders. Meanwhile, others fall into love with social networking sites, adversely affecting their studies. Therefore, Thu would like the local authorities to launch a very specific programme to solve these problems as quickly as possible.

In particular, according to many opinions raised by the municipal People’s Council, in order for Da Nang to become a safe and friendly city, it needs to ensure traffic order and safety well.

According to them, just on the way from home to school, they have to face many possible risks of traffic accidents, and the air pollution due to a large volume of smoke and dust from production and business activities and emissions from vehicles travelling on streets and even noise pollution, all of which also adversely affects children's health.

Of more concern is a lack of playgrounds for children, while there are too many dangerous online games. Therefore, it is high time for functional agencies to come up with a solution for children to live in a safe, clean environment that is highly resistant to external influences.

Deputy Secretary of the Da Nang Youth Union Nguyen Ba Duan commented that the members of the municipal Children's Council all have well matured. The Council’s members knew well how to submit opinions made by their peers to the city leaders.

Over the past time, many of the children's ideas have been promptly ‘absorbed’, responded to and implemented by the local leaders and relevant agencies. Hopefully in the coming time, more good ideas that fully reflect their thoughts and aspirations will be taken so that the city leaders can have ‘more data’ in building Da Nang into a safe and child-friendly city.

Reporting by THANH VAN – Translating by A.THU