Queen Mathilde visited two schools in a mountainous rural area in Vietnam on Wednesday, the second day of her humanitarian mission to the country as honorary president of the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF.
After a four-hour expedition from the capital, Hanoi, to the northwestern province of Lào Cai, on the border with China, the Queen and her delegation were warmly welcomed with singing and dancing at the two schools in Ham Rong.
The Queen did not hesitate to join the dancing initiated by the children, most of whom belong to the H’mông community, an ethnic minority.
In one of the schools, the focus was on using innovative resources. In the other, bilingual education is provided through a UNICEF project.
Some 6,000 people live in Ham Rong. The area is predominantly populated by H’mông, which is why UNICEF has decided to finance lessons in both H’mông and Vietnamese in one of the village’s schools.
On the spot, Queen Mathilde attentively followed a lesson without neglecting to interact with pupils, teachers and UNICEF staff.
“We find that children from an ethnic-minority background tend to have less schooling,” UNICEF’s head of education in Vietnam, Tara O’Connell, explained. “They already go to kindergarten less than others and when they do, they do less well. This pattern is perpetuated at higher levels.”
The solution, she says, is mother-tongue-based bilingual education. This approach is showing good results, the Queen was told.
Ethnic minorities make up 65% of the population of Lao Cai, one of the poorest provinces in Vietnam.
