A boy washes his face with water in Nam Thai A commune of Kien Giang province's An Bien district (Photo: VNA) Hanoi (VNA) – The Vietnam Red Cross Society (VRC) and the US company Procter & Gamble (P&G) will bring clean water to children in disadvantaged localities.
The two sides signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on humanitarian collaboration in Hanoi on March 22, which includes the assistance to vulnerable groups via scholarships for poor students and supporting orphanages.
Chairwoman of the VRC Nguyen Thi Xuan Thu said the MoU demonstrated the bilateral efforts in improving local living standards.
She said she hopes the projects will be implemented soon, so as to create a premise for further cooperation between the VRC and other humanitarian organisations.
General Manager of P&G Vietnam Emre Olcer said supplying clean water for children is one of the group’s key social programmes in the world, which was initiated in 2004.
Over the past 11 years, the group has coordinated with 150 partners from 75 countries to supply over 9 billion litres of clean water to local people, which is expected to reach 15 billion litres by 2020.
The company has pledged to spare no effort to bring economic, education and healthcare opportunities to children in Vietnam, he said.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), around 663 million people around the world cannot access clean water. Every day, about 1,000 children lose their lives due to diseases related to dirty water.
In Vietnam, many locals in remote and flood prone areas often have limited access to clean water.
The P&G Company has been active in Vietnam for more than 20 years, and it has helped improve the lives of more than 200,000 unfortunate locals. The group has coordinated with UNICEF to present scholarships to poor students, build houses for needy farmers in the Mekong Delta and improve hygiene conditions at schools.-VNA
