Vietnam Foundation

Programs: Programs for the blind a talking books library--assistance to complete building of new community center in ho chi minh city. B sun flower college scholarship--provides tuition scholarships to blind students for colleges and universities in ho chi minh city. Supported 46 this year, most from poor families. Graduates are leading giving productive lives across vietnam. C laptops for top scholars--in past years, have awarded about 20 laptops per year to our top scholarship performers. Now with invention of 360 machine as explained below, we will be able to give every scholarship recipient a special laptop computer without a screen suitable for their needs. 23 awarded this year, with short course on how to use. D lotus scholarships for blind children--50 annual scholarships to blind children, many with multiple disabilities, in ho chi minh city. E 360 machine program--the 360 machine is an innovative laptop without a screen, designed by us for blind users, at a cost of 50. Allows blind people in vietnam and elsewhere to have easy access to the internet.

open educational resource oer program continues to be a resounding success. Unique users who contribute research and download materials at http//voer. Edu. Vn is 50,000 to 80,000 per day 25-100 increase over 2014. In peak period, this can reach 100,000 users. To accommodate the increase, we are developing more user functions for our hanoi spring software and maintaining strong hardware with 5 servers at our data center. To accelerate the growth of both active users/contributors and qualified content, we collaborated with the vietnam northern academic library association, the vietnam southern academic library association and the center for research and development on open technology under the vietnam ministry of science and technology to organize a series of oer workshops and training sessions at several universities across vietnam, attracting 180 participants who were university leaders, managers of libraries, librarians and faculty members. They were the key people to directly contribute their materials to our oer website and spread our call for qualified materials.

us graduate fellowship program new pilot initiative for vnf to provide scholarship support and selection to top vietnamese scholars to attend us universities. It stands on the strength of hundreds of young vietnamese with graduate degrees who have returned to vietnam after finishing graduate training under the vietnam education foundation. Mobilizes vef fellows to help create next generation of scientists and engineers for vietnam. This initiative replicates interview and selection process with voluntary service from vef alumni and a network of leading american professors. Program offers a rigorous selection process to recommend the best candidates to us graduate schools. In this pilot year, we had more than 200 applicants, whom we screened and interviewed down to 20 final selectees who received our formal letter of recommendation. Our team of voluntary vef fellows is coaching selectees on graduate school applications. Result exceeded expectation--16 were accepted to top us graduate schools. In june 2017, vnf hosted pre-departure orientation program to prepare them for study in us.