The Summer for Return to the Root Results in a Useful Playground

    Right at the beginning of this summer, the action plan was set by the provincial steering committee for summer. The plan contents were quickly and disseminated to any districts and communes and summer opening ceremonies simultaneously were held across the province with a wide range of activities for teenagers. During the summer a great deal of summer activities aimed at politics and ideology education, knowledge review, aptitude development and triggering activities for society and public good labor were conducted continually. Most of the activities really met youngsters’ interest.

They joined specific activities such as visiting historical relics, establishing youth’s bookcases, organizing knowledge contests on Uncle Ho and so on. By means of these activities, their national tradition and pride were revived. In particular, 15,000 children in Nhon Trach, Long Thanh and Thong Nhat districts, and Long Khanh town were funded to visit Minh Dam Base, Ho Chi Minh Museum, Cu Chi Tunnel, Duc Thanh School, Nha Rong Harbor and 700 children including children in distress and excellent member of  Pioneer Teenager Association and Youth Union members in camp festival entitled “Return to the root” were financed by provincial budget. The districts steadily hold contest on knowledge of inland waterway traffic and environment to boost the propaganda and education of State legal policies and countering social evils among the children.   

    Under the guideline “study while playing and vice versa” and” playing without forgetting schooling knowledge, the summer committee and schools jointly organized 630 knowledge review classes for 15,785 students and encouraged and assisted non-education children and school- leavers to attend schools. Other classes were held to develop the children aptitude, such as foreign languages, informatics, music, sing and dance, and story telling and so on. Besides, the standing committee of provincial Group encouraged teenagers and youth to donate 50,000 notebooks and 116 bikes and other learning tools to children in distress. Especially, in this summer, Dong Nai newspaper granted 180 bikes to poor students, Tuoi Tre newspaper granted “Sharing the same dreams” scholarship to 50 students who were in distress and in orphanages but had progressive study results. Numbers of culture and arts activities such as arts festival, painting contest, and contest on story telling about summer books and so on were frequently held. Moreover, cultural points held 3,100 times of children activities, arts groups, propaganda groups of revolutionary songs and other sports events. As a result, they spent a healthy and exciting summer as well as enlarged their knowledge and revived their love for the country and people and perfected their personality.

    Also in this summer, many social activities and public interest labor were enhanced and resulted in authentic significance such as granting 200 gifts and money to government-policy beneficiary families, excellent poor students in Dak Nhoong commune, Kon Tum province; visiting and granting gifts worth up to VND 100 million (US$ 6,192) to government-policy beneficiary families and Vietnamese Heroine Mother; building up 10 houses of gratitude; undergoing to look after green trees and reclaiming martyr tombs; establishing physician clubs to provide free treatments to 800 ethnic minority people, to government-policy beneficiary families, and households in far-flung areas.

    In conclusion, the best advantage of summer activities was that they were held broadly and deeply, and attracted social donation sources and contributed a healthy, useful and safe playground to teenagers and youths across the province. In the end, the provincial people’s committee decided awarding certificates of merit to 24 teams and 27 individuals for their outstanding achievements in the 2008 summer program performance.

(Reported by Thuy Lien, Translated by L.H)