Who are We?
We are a Vietnamese and internationally-affiliated NGO based on the sustainable development of ethnic minorities and vulnerable groups in Lam Dong Province. We are registered in Vietnam as a non-profit organisation and dispose of national tax code for social business, and we are registered as well under French and European law as a non-profit association (french law 1901) through our founders.
More about us
Working in Vietnam since November 2000, our specific activities with ethnic minorities follow on from a long-term development project in agriculture for ethnic minorities K’ho Mà and Tay, that started in January 2013. This project was a partnership between a Vietnamese NGO, Caritas Da Lat, a French NGO, Vietnam France Echanges, and the Delegation of the European Union in Vietnam. As the results of this project, the Da Nha Project and its 7 local agents, engineers and development specialists keep on working with the communities and addressing economic, social, environmental, educational and health-related problems.
Background of the action
Da Nha is a K’ho, Ma and Tay ethnic minorities village in Quoc Oai commune, in Da Teh district. 1 095 persons belonging to 283 households live in this poor village. 118 households are registered as very poor families, that is to say earning less than 16usd a month. Da Nha population is mainly young : 56 % are under 18 years old, 39 % are 19-60 years old, 4 % are 60 – 90 years old. Da Nha population is driven by a good community spirit and are prone to help and communicate each other. All families are farmers, cultivate cashews and rice on the terrasse.
The district of Dateh is located south west of Lam Dong province with a total population of 49,848 people including 2,311 of local ethnic minorities and 8,431 of Northern ethnic minorities. The majority of people at Dateh district are poor.
The K'ho and Ma are the most disadvantaged group in the district of Dateh: the poorest, less literate, less healthy. The other groups are less illiterate less poor and better integrated.
Major part of Da Teh population are farmers or earn their living by cutting bamboos and woods. Nowadays, deforestation being illegal, so people shifted their activities to rice, cashews, sugar cane plantings and breeding livestock, etc. Ethnic minorities are called montainous people as they mainly live in those specific areas and they are totally dependant from the forest. They still cut and exploit illegally the wood from the forest, meanwhile they struggle to adapt their agriculture on the steep slope of mountains, which obviously involves some technical restrictions. Their lives are centered on the forestry activities so that the other parts of their social life are critically detrimental.