Storm Resistant Housing for a Resilient Da Nang City

Program Locations: Da Nang, Vietnam
Project Duration: October 2011–September 2014
Project Lead: Ngo Thi Le Mai, Country Coordinator, Vietnam

Project Overview

The role of ISET-International in this project is to provide the Da Nang Women’s Union with the tools they need to build a more storm resistant city. ISET-International gives the Women’s Union technical support and training, along with financial monitoring. The two organizations work together to create a strong foundation for effective disaster resilience management in Da Nang.

The goal of the Women’s Union is to reach the most vulnerable households in the Da Nang community. In order to do so, they host community based disaster resilience workshops, and collect qualitative data and feedback through “Sharing and Experience” workshops.

ISET-International has focused on training the Women’s Union staff on climate change responses, community-based disaster resilience management, interpersonal communication, and credit management. ISET works to ensure that the Women’s Union staff are comfortable and effective at passing this information on to the community and to future staff members. So far, ISET-International has trained 22 women who are now able to pass this knowledge on to over 160 community members from the most vulnerable demographics. In addition, the Women’s Union was able to approve and disperse 66 home improvement loans to low-income households for the purpose of storm-resistant renovation or reconstruction. Of the 66 loans, 60 households have now completed their projects. Furthermore, the Women’s Union was able to assist 19 low-income households in getting housing construction grants from the Department of Labor.

Core Program Activities

Provide expertise in areas of climate change, storm resistant housing, business communications, and credit management skills, and work to ensure that the Women’s Union staff are comfortable and effective in passing this information on to the community.
Identify and work constructively with key government officials and private stakeholders to facilitate shared learning dialogs.
Provide technical assistance in organizing storm resistant housing workshops, credit-for-housing workshop, “training-of-trainers” sessions, and shared learning dialogs.
Provide financial monitoring to the Da Nang Women’s Union.
Provide technical and capacity building support to the Da Nang Women’s Union to monitor, evaluate, and make changes to the program as necessary based on learning.
Provide guidance to the Women’s Union in developing a set of criteria for storm resistant housing reconstruction loan approval.