Social Science Research Council

Over the past year the Vietnam Program undertook a range of activities for the promotion of collaborative and international research and training, at regional as well as cross-regional levels.

 From October 2005 to May 2006, the Vietnam Program worked with the United Nations Development Programme and the Government of Vietnam in a comprehensive stock taking review of 20 years of Doi Moi (reforms), which involved assessing the successes and failures of reforms and setting forth options and recommendations for the future. Dr. Mary McDonnell, director of the Vietnam Program, collaborated with a research team from the Institute of Sociology (Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences) to produce the paper "Vietnamese Youth under Doi Moi: Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities in the Transitional Process," which focused on youth and the emergence of newly wealthy social groups and their relationship to each other and to the state. Findings of the study and recommendations were presented at a workshop in Hanoi in May 2006.

Other activities included receiving members of a Vietnamese delegation in March 2006 who were part of the Department of State's International Visitor Program. At this meeting, Vietnam program staff shared the Council's knowledge and experience as a non-profit organization and assessed the role that non-profit organizations have played in shaping or influencing American foreign policy. The Vietnam Program also organized a study tour for members of the Vietnamese Academy of Social Science (VASS) on how the humanities are researched and studied in the United States. The delegation was introduced to resource people at universities and research centers in New York City and the surrounding areas who may be interested in engaging in scholarly exchanges or research collaborations with VASS.

In a significant development, the Atlantic Philanthropies commissioned the SSRC to carry out the first phase of the evaluation of Atlantic’s Vietnam Population Health Program. This Program has four inter-related health capacity-building objectives for Vietnam: (1) to strengthen key national and provincial institutions; (2) to develop replicable provincial and community models; (3) to promote healthy behavior; and (4) to promote population health policy.