Learning survival skills is absolutely vital to those living in the rural areas of Vietnam, who often do not have direct access to hospitals and immediate care – this is why we at SEN Charity will be hosting a SEN Charity x Survival Skills Vietnam (SSVN) event that will take place at the Hồng Hà Hotel in Hanoi. The event is a workshop organised by SEN Charity in cooperation with SSVN, with the aim of teaching teachers from schools in rural areas (that SEN Charity donates towards) survival skills in cases of accidents and natural disasters.
Over two days, all participants in the workshop were able to learn a range of survival skills – the critical lesson being that if you are trying to help a hurt victim, the most important person in that situation is you. Albeit long, the sessions were highly informative and kept us all engaged as SSVN encouraged us to step up and volunteer to act as the hurt victim, creating a friendly learning environment. There was also time for Q&As after each skill we learnt, making sure that we covered everything the participating teachers would want to know in order to learn how to protect themselves and hurt victims in their villages. This made the lessons even more vital, as everyone got their questions answered – including whether certain medical myths were true! At the end of the two-day workshop, participants took a quiz and SSVN handed out certificates of attainment to everyone, including an extremely handy guide including all the survival skills we’d learnt.
This workshop experience was particularly valuable to us at SEN Charity, because the teachers we invited were from the various schools (of different levels and locations) that SEN Charity continues to donate towards. We did this in order to continue to help those respective schools grow and prosper in knowledge and quality, as we believe health and safety should be a guaranteed priority at every good school. We also hope to establish a deep-rooted and long lasting relationship with them, in the hope that we can continue to support them and help them and their students grow. Furthermore, we hope to establish a long lasting and enduring relationship with these schools, as we want to continue to help alleviate the stress that comes with running schools in rural areas, where resources and teachers are often scarce. Many of the schools that the teachers come from are located in the rural areas of Vietnam, where the roads can be rough, which affects the children. Therefore, by hosting this workshop, we hope to help the people in the community understand what to do when someone is hurt – particularly in stormy seasons where floods become common.
Often in Vietnam, victims of accidents can pass away before getting to the hospital because the people do not know how to treat or deal with the victim before and on the way to the hospital, resulting in crucial blood loss that causes them to be untreatable once they reach the hospital. Therefore, teaching survival skills to them is important, as it could be the factor that saves their life since hospitals and nurses are so far away from the more rural areas. Particularly in the monsoon season (July-August), when floods throughout the country are widespread, knowing how to properly rescue hurt victims when the hospital is far from rural land is absolutely critical and can often be the deciding matter between life and death. Through working with SSVN, we hope that the teachers present at the workshop will be able to learn valuable knowledge and put it to practise in any life-threatening situation. SSVN works to teach participants a range of survival skills, from simple skills such as how to use a First Aid Kit, to more complex skills such as handling victims experiencing sudden cardiac arrest or soft tissue injury. This will hopefully spread more awareness regarding the importance of survival skills and perhaps teach basic knowledge to anyone who will view the photos and video. We at SEN Charity recommend anyone looking to take a course on survival skills to contact SSVN, as they are a trustworthy organisation that teaches accurate technique for first aid/survival skills that we consider to be essential knowledge in life.
All in all, we would like to deeply thank everyone who participated but most particularly towards SSVN, who gave the lessons at a discounted price for us to provide to the teachers whilst the logistical fees were covered by us. Their expertise and helpful resources are greatly appreciated by us at SEN Charity.
