Overseas Vietnamese at the on-going 7 th National Congress of the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) in Hanoi have expressed their feelings and aspirations as well as their opinions on the festive day that celebrates national solidarity.

Nguyen Van Thai, the Vice President of the Association for Vietnamese People in Poland - the Solidarity and Friendship Association, said that he was attending the VFF congress for the third time.

More attention to overseas Vietnamese communities was now being paid, he said, which can be seen by the increasing number of overseas Vietnamese people attending the congress.

On top of this, the number of overseas Vietnamese representatives offering to join the VFF’s Central Committee rose to 17 this year, up from 13 at the previous congress, added Thai, who was a member of the 6 th VFF’s Central Committee.

This increase reflects the VFF’s desire to have more input from the overseas Vietnamese community around the world and to enable them to contribute more to the VFF’s activities - the great bloc of national unity.

Dr Tran Dinh Hoanh, an overseas Vietnamese living in the US, said that the congress was a good chance for long term expatriates like himself to work together with representatives from all walks of life in Vietnam .

He said that recently he has seen closer links forged between people in the home country and those living abroad. The government has introduced policies to facilitate overseas Vietnamese returning to invest, do business or carry out a range of other activities in their homeland.

As a Vietnamese expatriate, Hoanh liaised with several domestic universities to develop an online teaching programme.

Meanwhile, the President of the Association of Vietnamese Residents in Slovakia, Ngo The Luc, said he believed that the VFF acts as a bridge linking the Party, the State and the people to those living outside the country.

The Vietnamese community in Slovakia want their children and their children’s children to treasure national traditions and understand the Vietnamese language, he said.

The executive board of the Vietnamese association lobbied for Vietnamese agencies to help standardise a Vietnamese-language teaching curriculum for children born overseas to Vietnamese families, he added.

Thanks to the new curriculum, his association will now organise weekend courses for children, said Luc, adding that this is the way to encourage younger Vietnamese generations to feel closer to the homeland./.