In 2006, Dimsum was very happy to promote the Kianh foundation in their Christmas appeal, and this year, we are looking to raise awareness and raise funds for the Kianh foundation to create a day centre for young and disabled people in Vietnam.

Education and Therapies Day Centre, Dien Ban District, Central Vietnam

Since 2002, the Kianh Foundation has been providing a number of services to facilitate the running and development of the government-run Hoi An Orphanage in Central Vietnam. The orphanage is located in the Dien Ban district, which is 8km from Hoi An City, in an area that has one of the highest proportions of disabled and disadvantaged children in Quang Nam Province.

There are over 800 disabled children who do not have access to essential education and therapy services. To address this need therefore, the Kianh Foundation hopes to expand its work by building a separate, purpose-designed Day Centre in Dien Ban. The centre will provide much needed educational and health assistance to a great number of disabled children in the area.

As a small, UK-registered charity, the Kianh Foundation relies on the help and support of people like you, in order to make a real difference to the lives of so many disabled and disadvantaged children.

Background

The Foundation employs and trains 15 Vietnamese staff and runs programmes at the Orphanage which focus on the physical and emotional development of disabled children. Its key programmes are the provision of special education and physiotherapy - it operates 2 classrooms and one therapy room. In conjunction with another non-governmental organisation, the Foundation also provides annual dental treatment for all the Orphanage children, as well as the staff and their children. Moreover, it has recently introduced speech therapy into the education programme.

Day Centre

The Day Centre is a proposed purpose-built health and educational facility, the first of its kind in the region, which aims to address the gap in health services as well as set a benchmark for sustainable building principles in Central Vietnam.

The Kianh Foundation has been working with Architects without Frontiers Australia (AWF) since 2008 to develop proposals for the new Day Centre, which is due to be constructed in 2010. AWF are now working with Melbourne-based pro-bono partner architectural firm BURO Architecture + Interiors to develop designs for the Day Centre. In addition, RMIT University (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) has partnered with the Kianh Foundation to assist with the successful delivery of the project through educational support and some financial contribution.

The Day Centre is initially intended to:

• Directly assist 60 disabled children in the Dien Ban area
• Indirectly assist 200 people in the community
• Provide local employment opportunities for teachers, physiotherapists, cooks, carers, nursing staff, security, directors and administrative assistants

The Foundation is looking to raise approximately £200,000 in order to build, fit-out and equip the Centre. They urgently need your help to make this vital project a reality.

If you would like to make a donation, you can do this in a number of ways. Please visit their site http://www.kianh.org.uk/makeadonation.htm

To find out more about the Kianh Foundation, you can read more about Kianh on Dimsum:

Dimsum's Holiday appeal

From West to East - Dimsum interviews Nick Keegan

The Kianh Foundation

Also please visit www.kianh.org.uk