East Meets West (non-governmental organization)

EMW SPELL recipients, Vietnam

The Scholarship Program to Enhance Learning and Literacy (SPELL) program provides 10-year scholarships to children from Vietnam's poorest families.

The anti-trafficking ADAPT program, implemented by EMW's partner Pacific Links Foundation, works to stop trafficking at the source by providing vulnerable girls with resources.

The School Construction program builds primary schools and kindergartens in rural areas so more children can attend school. Vietnam does not have enough schools to meet the needs of its population EMW has also helped fill in the gaps in Vietnam's higher education system by building key educational facilities such as university libraries, research centers and sports complexes.

Village of Hope is EMW's disadvantaged children's center that provides children from the most difficult circumstances with a safe haven where they receive a full education, job training and skills to help them reintegrate into society.[7]

EMW Breath of Life program, Vietnam

Through the healthcare programs, EMW provides direct assistance to individuals, supports families, trains medical staff and works to improve systemic capacity by developing and constructing improved medical facilities.

The Breath of Life (BOL) neo-natal health program treats over 50,000 babies a year through appropriate technologies. BOL provides custom-designed, low-cost equipment to hospitals, and targeted training to medical personnel, to save the lives of infants suffering from common newborn pathologies. To ensure sustainability, BOL works to strengthen linkages with local health authorities to involve them in integrating these technologies into the larger health system. EMW's neonatal health model was adapted and replicated to serve Laos, Cambodia, Timor Leste in 2008 and more recently in India, Myanmar and the Philippines.[8] BOL formed a major partnership with GE Healthcare in 2011.[9]

The EMW Dental Program serves 15,000 Vietnamese children annually through its modern dental clinic, school dental trailer and rural outreach project that utilizes portable field equipment.[10] The program recently treated its 100,000th patient.

The Operation Healthy Heart program addresses the most common birth defect, congenital heart disease, by providing lifesaving cardiac surgery to critically ill children. In addition, EMW provides training to medical staff in numerous hospitals.

EMW provides a comprehensive support system for the disabled through its Support Network for People with Disabilities (SN-PWD) and its INSPIRE Sports program. Many of these disabilities are caused by exposure to Agent Orange and dioxin, an issue EMW is addressing through a new campaign of healing for Agent Orange survivors.

EMW builds key medical institutions that are a crucial link between our grassroots development programs and large-scale capacity building. In the past decade, with major support from the Atlantic Philanthropies, EMW has invested over $50 million in building large-scale hospitals in Vietnam.[11]

In 2015, Embrace, an organization founded at Stanford University in 2008 to treat newborns suffering from hypothermia, joins Thrive Networks’ healthcare programs. EMW/Thrive's health portfolio strategy and scope of work is refined to focus on newborn health.

EMW Clean Water and Sanitation program, Vietnam

Through the Clean Water & Sanitation Program, EMW provides a sustainable water supply to communities and ensures that the local people are fully invested in the project. To maximize the health benefits, EMW incorporates a hygiene and sanitation training component to address the need for improved sanitation, another critical public health issue.[12]

Accountability and results of the EMW water system model are insured by the Output-Based Approach, where funders such as the World Bank provide reimbursement for a water system only after its functionality is tested and a requisite number of household connections verified. While most villagers pay for their monthly water usage, the program subsidizes the costs of pipe connections and fees for water delivery to the neediest through its “Poorest of the Poor” program.

The program's critical sanitation component supports hygiene behavioral change by promoting awareness of practices such as hand washing, installing hand washing stations in schools and building hygienic latrines in communities with existing EMW water systems.

To date, EMW has helped finance the construction of 12,500 latrines in partnership with Watershed Asia and USAID. Since the Clean Water & Sanitation Program's inception, EMW has built over 200 water systems and brought improved sanitation to almost 62,500 people.[13]

EMW received a US$10.9 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve sanitation and hygiene practices among the rural poor in Vietnam and Cambodia. EMW's program will benefit 1.7 million people in 344,000 households and 290 communes in Vietnam and Cambodia while working with local organizations, government partners, banks and private enterprises.[14] The grant uses a results-based approach to sanitation and hygiene aid, which requires an initial investment from recipient families and communes, and then rewards them when results are achieved.[15]