Using technology to develop voluntary activities is an innovative approach that Vicongdong.vn is heading for. Launched in late 2008, Vicongdong.vn has actually become a playing field for volunteers across the country.

 

The idea of using technology to connect

 

It was on the fifth day of the Lunar New Year in 2008, in the house of elite artist Tuan Hai on Vo Thi Sau Street, Truong Gia Binh, President of the Board of Directors of FPT Corporation, joined a cosy meal with captains of voluntary communities in Vietnam and discussed ideas of sharing forces to help the community in the most effective way. Many ideas were put forth but they were remained too general.

 

At that time, the social networking page, 360yahoo blog, was very popular in Vietnam with nearly 5 million bloggers. There were a lot of volunteer clubs but their operations were extremely unprofessional and the information was overlapped.

 

They were operating separately and superficially. When there was a public event, dozen groups of voluntary groups came but they worked independently. After meeting, although the final conclusion had not made, Binh funded US$30,000 for the group to operate in 2008.

 

The first beta version of Vicongdong.vn was launched on October 5, 2008. This concurred the launching day of the Compassionate Nursery Award. This was actually a festival for voluntary clubs in Hanoi with the desire of shaping a better world.

 

When the first Compassionate Nursery Award ended, more than 100 ideas had been applied although they were quite simple. However, this showed the great prospect of developing voluntary activities in the country. The Organisation Board presented the awards to five best ideas, which were then brought to life.

 

At that time, the website Vicongdong.vn had only 200 views a day and more than 3,000 members. Although the number of daily views and members was small, the administrators of Vicongdong.vn were determined to continue adding new personalised features, which enabled users to set up projects and called others on the website to join.

 

Another interesting idea was the ‘Viên gạch hồng’ (Pink Brick Programme) initiated by Le Xuan Khoa, a member of Vicongdong.vn. This was later renamed to Chim Én (Swallow). The programme was launched on March 9, 2009 and presented awards on June 28, 2009. This award honoured outperforming voluntary organizations and individuals in Vietnam. Chim Én was greatly successful with 99 applications, 1,000 views a day and 7,000 members.

 

The third Chim Én Award 2011 was invested more meticulously in both preparation and implementation. The award was officially launched on June 8, 2011 on website Vicongdong.vn and Miss Vietnam Ngoc Han was named the ambassador. After three months, the award received 94 applications from voluntary individuals and organizations across the country.

 

Mr Phan Van Mai, Secretary of the Central Committee of Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, highly appreciated the Chim Én Award 2011. He said: "This is a suggestion for us to organise voluntary programmes better in order to honour the values we are creating and pursuing, sharing and bringing joy to others.”

 

Volunteers fancy Vicongdong.vn

 

Highly interactive, customised group website function for social networking, which is totally free of charge, is a good solution for organising users. This helped the volunteer network saved a large sum of money they used to spend on domain names, servers, programmers, construction, and other. This is a plus of Vicongdong.vn .

 

After three years with Compassionate Nursery Award, Chim Én Award together with other weekend programmes, Vicongdong.vn now has connected with 346 voluntary organisations, 40,000 volunteers, had 12,000 visits a day, and thousands of effective projects.

 

Vuong Dang Minh, administrator of Vicongdong.vn website, said Vicongdong.vn website is built as a social networking model where all voluntary groups are interconnected independently. Particularly, through Vicongdong.vn, a lot of miserable people have been helped in time.

 

“Another strong point of Vicongdong.vn is it is based on connectivity and interactivity features of a social network. Competitions and voluntary programmes organised on the website also caugt voting and participation of the community. Two typical examples are Compassionate Nursery Award, Chim Én Award 2011,” Minh said.

 

The website has networked volunteers across the country and coordinating efforts in joint programmes. Vicongdong.vn.vn has become an effective communication channel for charity entities to solicit donators and sponsors and recruit volunteers.

 

In 2011, Vicongdong.vn targets to establish a nationwide volunteer network with about 45,000 members and to be connected with 350 active websites.

 

Towards a further milestone, Vicongdong.vn strives to have 150,000 members by 2015 and 1 million members by 2010.

 

To sum up, the matter of connecting volunteers is temporarily resolved and the next step is to connect with business and donors. With its IT prowess, FPT Corporation continues supporting Vicongdong.vn to add new features for volunteering activities, hoping that volunteers will have all vehicles in the next 10 years.