The linen upcycling workshop was organized in collaboration with our partner the Crafty Cow at their venue 02 An Thuong 37, Danang. This workshop enabled the participants to experience painting on tote bag upcycled from used linen like bed sheets, pillow cases, table clothes of the resorts, hotels. The upcycled bags were made by the women with disabilities working in the Upcycling Project for Well being at CORMIS. More than 20 children and youths participated in this workshop. They were very interested in making arts for these upcycled bags and happy with their creative painting. At the end of the workshop, each participant has their own beautiful bag to use. This workshop is one of the ways that aims to raise awareness of the community on reducing wastes in a creative way.

We are happy to participate in the BRIDGEFEST music festival together 31 organizations coming from Central, North and South Vietnam. The message highlighted in this event is “Narrow down the gap and work together for a human economy”. At this event, we introduced about themselves, the mission and our operating programs. The Up cycling program was shared in detailed to the participants. We also organized the workshop right at our booth where the participants can experience how to do up cycling work. In doing so, they can have more awareness on environment protection via reducing, up cycling the wastes

The WHO estimates that about 5000 people commit suicide every year in Vietnam and around 3.564.000 people are suffering from mental disorders, accounting for 4% of the whole population. The shocking data also reveals the extremely stressful reality faced by a particularly vulnerable population, people with disabilities. Aiming at improving the quality of life of community, including the people with disabilities in Vietnam, CORMIS has established partnerships with international experts to develop and implement innovative Self and Collective Care Methods for Stress Reduction and Resiliency Building. Our primary supports include: providing TRE sessions for different target groups, including people with disabilities (online & offline); training of community TRE facilitators, trainings of TRE global providers for those who wish to master on TRE. All these activities will be implemented in close collaboration with our international trainers. Besides, we also collaborate with other healing experts to provide other related activities, including nature dance, yoga, meditation, breathing, etc.

The beneficiaries of this project is also women, including women with disabilities. They are the ones who have been suffering a lot from the COVID pandemic. Coming to this project, the selected women will be engaged in all steps of the implementation process, including collection of the garbage of coconut shells, cleaning, upcycling them into different products and even selling to the market. Through this project, we want to create more opportunities for more disadvantage women in Central Vietnam to be able to continue working, helping them to solve the basic financial problems due to Covid pandemic. In particularly, we want to empower, inspire them to use their inner strengths to work and from that they will have more power to overcome their challenges. We love to receive support, under any forms, for this project to create more meaningful values for the community, Please Contact us for more enquiries.

These programs will be implemented when emergency situations happen and require material assistance for affected communities, for instance natural disasters, COVID pandemic. It can be goods or money to provide for the people who need external assistance to fulfill their basic needs due to the disasters happen. Prioritized target groups include children, women, the elderly and people living in remoted mountainous areas. Our main supports include: support blanket, basic food for adults and children, help to rebuild houses and restart business for living (adults), study (children) after natural disasters, provide materials for pandemic prevention and disaster risk reduction (example: lifejackets, generators, facemasks, washing hand liquid), provide water filtering system for schools in mountainous areas.

Locating in the Pacific Northwest tropical monsoon climate, Vietnam is one of the countries facing lots of natural disasters in the world. This is the place which has been affected by many different natural disasters like flood, storm, wind, cyclon, landslide, flash flood, whirlwind, etc. Natural disasters have made tremendous impact on economic sectors, increased poverty, negative effect on households in particular and community in general, contributing to the depression of environment and serious health issues. Together with the partners and related stakeholders, CORMIS has been trying to support material facilities and technique for local goverment, Steering Committee of Disaster Prevention & Control, Technical Support Groups at disaster prone areas so that they can be active in responding to natural disasters, minimize losses that can be caused by natural disasters. In the mean time, we also help the local communities to recover quickly after natural disasters. Through our efforts, we have tried our best to promote the active participation of all stakeholders and community, including the at risk groups, women in all process of natural disaster prevention & control, especially before disaster happens. Our support include: (1) Training, capacity building on natural disaster prevention & control, Community based Disaster Risk Management; (2) Assisting in developing technical guidance materials on Inclusive CBDRM, (3) Developing policy briefs to support advocacy efforts with decision makers (4), Evaluating the implementation and providing guidance for improving the quality of activities at different levels, (5) Guiding how to integrate inclusion aspect in the projects for community, (6) Supporting to implement other technical problems related to disaster risk reduction, for instance, early warning system, develop disaster risk map using QGIS, (7) Supporting to develop strategic and advocacy plan at national level.

We have successfully completed the mental health workshop for people with disabilities and care takers for the Agent Orgent Victims living in Danang city. The workshop was organized by the close collaboration between CORMIS and VUSTA following the proposal from the CORMIS. This is the first time the mental health workshop for the marginalized group, especially the people with disabilities, was held with the collaboration among different stakeholders, from local government agency, researching, teacher from University to mental health practitioners/trainers. And the financial support was from the Government fund. 2 days were not a long time; however, it enabled the participants to understand what it means by the concept of mental health, increased their basic knowledge on mental health; had more information of the Government’s policies and programs on mental health; listened and answered directly their related concerns. Besides, they had opportunities to experience different methods for taking care their mental health (meditation, yoga, tension release exercises). We were so happy to receive so much positive feedback from the participants at the end of the workshop: “This is so meaningful workshop for us. We felt so lucky to attend this workshop. This is the place where we can share to release our sadness which was kept so long. A place that we have fun, happiness, gain more confidence, change our way of thinking for life and way of loving ourselves. The methods that we experienced are quite suitable with us. We can feel the immediate benefits after trying, for instance, less pain on our back and neck; we had better sleep last night. The knowledge we learnt on mental health in this workshop also help us to know how to talk/deal with the children at different age to encourage and not to harm them for their mental health later on in their life. We want to set up small groups in our communities, share the knowledge we learnt for more people. We want to involve more in this mental health program”. We are so grateful for the participants’ sharing and their active participation in 2 days workshop. See you all in our following activities. We are grateful for the close collaboration and dedicated support from the VUSTA, Dr Hang Phuong from the Danang Pedagogical University; the Danang trainer team of yoga, meditation from the Yellow Lotus Club; Vice Director of DoLISA, mass media in Danang, Danang DPO and Association for Agent Orgent Victims; Club of Women with disabilities from Quang Tri, Quang Ngai province and the CORMIS staff. Your amazing contribution had turned this workshop into a successful and meaningful event./.

Capacity building for Disabled People Organizations, Clubs of Women with disabilities to help them to be able to work independently and effectively. Without proper capacity, they cannot develop, implement and evaluate their implementation strategy which aim to help change the life of people with disabilities at communities. The capacity building also help these organizations to be able to implement effectively the tasks given by the local government. So, it will add their value and improve their active role in contributing to local sustainable development. Our topics of training include: meeting facilitation skill, operation strategy development and implementation, project management, club management, communication campaign, inclusive first aids, English etc…The needs of training will be consulted directly with the Disabled People Organizations before they are implemented to ensure they meet the requirements and solve the problems of Disabled People Organization. Besides the trainings, we have also tried to provide working equipment so that they can apply the knowledge learnt in their daily work

The Upcycling project is created and implemented by CORMIS, the social enterprise Green Youth Collective (GYC) and Sutenainet Japan. This project's key function is to up-cycle used finishing nets from the fisher men, the high quality discarded fabrics from luxury hotels, resorts and tailors into useful products that directly benefit the at-risk communities in Central Vietnam. We aim to educate local youth and women-with-disabilities with entrepreneurial skills that secures income generation; and build community by connecting people and resources into the loop of sustainability. Besides the efforts of upcycling wastes, we have also collaborated with Clothes for Compassion from the Workshop to collect and give used high quality clothes for the poor people who need clothes in many provinces of Vietnam, including Danang, Quang Nam, Lang Son, Son La, Yen Bai Our main supports include: collaborate with partners to study and execute upcycling models using different kinds of wastes, set up and train the upcycling team on the knowledge and skills related to the model of upcycling, upcycle products and find the markets to sell the upcycled products, provide free upcycled products to the marginalized people for instance: hats for patients with cancer, school T-shirt for children living in mountainous areas….