The eighteen-month long project of Klub Hanoi supported by the Open Society Fund Prague and implemented partly in the Ústí nad Labem Region (due to the high number of Vietnamese residents and lack of information about their lives) and partly in Prague, was completed at the end of this September. In the following paragraphs, you can read about its successes.
The main objective of the project was to strengthen the orientation of Vietnamese immigrants in the Czech institutional sphere and the possibilities of the labour market without being dependent on the paid services of Vietnamese intermediaries (so-called dich vu), providing limited and often incorrect information in their own interest.
Training of Czech-Vietnamese intercultural assistants
One of the tools used within the project was to expand the education of people with skills and capacity to become professional Czech-Vietnamese intercultural assistants and interpreters – a functional bridge between the Vietnamese immigrants facing language and cultural barriers and Czech institutions and NGOs. This was the second intercultural assistance course implemented by Klub Hanoi and the first course of this kind in the Czech Republic and its methodology is being followed by other NGOs who are building upon it with our help.
Selected participants with knowledge of both Czech and Vietnamese have completed 150 hours of training (blocks of seminars dedicated to communication, law, professional counselling, intercultural assistance, and interpreting) and successful graduates have been certified by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and received an official positive reference by Klub Hanoi. As expected, they then participated in all activities of the project: research, field counselling, interpreting, lecturing, and accompanying clients. Services of some graduates have been (and still are) used also by other organizations and institutions such as Prague 4 – Libuš, InBáze Berkat, Meta, Lačhe Čhave, La Strada, IOM, the Refugee Facilities Administration of the Ministry of the Interior (SUZ MV ČR), and the Police of the Czech Republic; all these organizations are also very interested in future cooperation with a Czech-Vietnamese intercultural assistant/interpreter.
Research on the current situation of the Vietnamese in the Ústí nad Labem Region
Even though the Ústí nad Labem Region hosts the second largest community of Vietnamese immigrants in the Czech Republic after Prague, this was the first time a research project focused on their socio-economic situation and problems was conducted here.
The research included 46 interviews with the Vietnamese inhabitants of the Chomutov district. We chose Chomutov as a research location for several reasons: it belongs to districts with the highest number of Vietnamese inhabitants in the region and at the same time it is one of the traditional Vietnamese centres connected to Prague and recently it also forms a relatively distinct community. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative research, we looked into the specificities of the life of the Vietnamese in Chomutov in comparison with the realities in Cheb and Prague where we have already done similar researches.
The detailed final research report contains the characteristics of the respondents in terms of their education, the reason for migration to the Czech Republic, the description of their usual working day, their economic flows, family background, and their relationship with the majority and its culture as well as their socio-economic problems and the strategies for their solution. We consider the research report to be a significant contribution not only to the further development of integration strategies in the region. We believe that it will be useful for interested non-profit organizations and state institutions as well as students writing diploma and bachelor's theses, etc. The research report is available for download on our website.
Legal counselling in Prague and Chomutov
The core activities of the project also included the much-needed legal counselling that was thanks to the support of the OSF Foundation Prague provided to Vietnamese clients free of charge. Its aim was to mitigate the most widespread problems of Vietnamese immigrants such as debts, distraint, problems related to residence, labour law relations, and so on.
The legal counselling was taking place once a week in the Klub Hanoi counselling centre at Sapa in Prague and in the newly established Klub Hanoi office in Chomutov. At both places, the counselling was provided by a long-time associate and a member of Klub Hanoi – Dr. Matouš Jíra. The counselling did not aim to solve the clients' problems for them but to help them solve their problems themselves with the support of the lawyer. Every client was deliberately involved in the process which encouraged their independence in resolving similar cases in the future. This approach can be considered the basic principle of our counselling centre and it is in opposition to the practices of illegal intermediaries who intentionally do not disclose to their clients how to deal with their issues or how to avoid the problematic situation completely.
The total number of supported clients between June 2011 and September 2012 was 139 people. However, it should be noted that some clients return to the counselling centre and usually visit the centre 3–6 times before the problem is resolved; some cases need to be reopened, supplemented, or the problem moves to another area of the client's life. The number of consultancy cases is therefore much higher. The awareness and preventive activities which we consider to be of no less importance represent another benefit of the counselling.
Field counselling and accompanying clients
The last activities of the project were also carried out in connection with the above-mentioned counselling and research. We decided to include field counselling based on our experience gained from past researches conducted in the Vietnamese community while most of the respondents used the interview as an opportunity to solve a problem they were struggling with in terms of their stay and work in the Czech Republic. Trained assistants in the role of inquirers were able to respond to these queries much more effectively and with more flexibility. We were also building on our experience which repeatedly showed that personal contact is the most effective way of communication within the Vietnamese community also when it comes to the dissemination of information about the project and free legal counselling in Chomutov and Prague.
The aim of accompanying clients to the authorities was to teach the clients the correct ways to solve issues with the authorities. We consider this method of support to be very important in relation to the counselling – it is not enough to give clients theoretical advice at the office; the client must go through the process together with the assistant in order to be able to handle the issue himself the next time, or to help someone else.
Overall, we supported 91 clients by accompanying them to the authorities. However, as some clients required to be accompanied several times by the assistants, the overall number of realized accompanying of Vietnamese immigrants to various authorities and institutions in the Ústí nad Labem Region (Chomutov, Most, Teplice, Bílina, etc.) and in Prague was more than double.