Another day of travel today. We were picked up at our hotel in Danang at 7.30am and arrived in Huong Hoa (Khe Sanh) at about 1:30pm.

The countryside here is just spectacular. Beautiful green lush mountains, it's great to be out of the city. It's hard to imagine only a couple of decades ago, it was being destroyed by war.

We stopped along the way to pick up other members of our evaluation team. The photo with this blog is all of us, except for Phuong, who is the Disability Officer for World Vision Vietnam (he was taking the pic). The team is made up of WV staff who work all over Vietnam, and Chau (the woman next to me) will be my translator for the interviews. She works in the National Office in Hanoi and is a member of the sponsorship team. She's only with us at the Huong Hoa project before she has to return to Hanoi, and I will have a new translator (which I will need despite my little thrill today, read on...)

Many of these WV Vietnam staff have been working for WV for many years. I found out over dinner that three of them met their wives through WV and two have small children less than a year old. They travel regularly for their jobs and Ken is away from his family and 2 month old boy all week and only sees them on weekends. I imagine it must be tough.

In this photo we are all sitting in a small, very tight squeezed room with no air con, just a fan. It's probably about 27 degrees outside and I can't begin to estimate how warm it was in there. All I know is that I definitely needed a shower after this.

This afternoon, we all came together to get an overview of the Huong Hoa ADP from the ADP Manager and also an overview of what the Disability Mainstreaming project has achieved so far as well as its challenges.

So what can I tell you about the Disability project in this area? Well, they have done a lot of great things! The four outcomes the project is looking to achieve are:

1. Increase capacity of local partners and WV Vietnam staff in Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR)and Disability Mainstreaming.

2. Increase medical rehabilitation and prevention services for PWD

3. Increase inclusion of PWD and households with CWD in economic activities

4. Increase inclusive eduation at primary school.

Some of the great achievements to date have been things like:

i) training for health staff on CBR and physiotheraphy. They have come back and trained local staff on how to do this

ii) created PWD clubs, where PWD can come together and build skills to help them increase possibility for employment as well as include them more in program activities

iii) kindergarten and primary school teachers have been trained on inclusive education

iv) a lot of work on awareness raising, particularly with parents on the importance of sending CWD to school

There are many more, but I won't go into detail here.

The main challenges for this community is that PWD live in very poor communities and the majority of people in the Huong Hoa ADP are ethnic minorities - meaning that the concept of disability mainstreaming and the 'social model' of disability development is such a foreign concept that it's hard for them to grasp it. Along with these challenges, there is still a lack of capacity, skills and resource, particularly for the PWD clubs.

I was so impressed by how much work has been done in only 2.5 years. It really is incredible. And they are so proud of what they have achieved, it's wonderful. The big question is, can these activities continue without the heavy focus it's had over the past couple of years? Sustainability is going to be a key focus for our evaluation. We need to ensure that the activities that have been put in place will be able to be continued once this project finishes at the end of September. This is why mainstreaming is so important.

Julie gave us some training on the evaluation process and the critical thing is that the evaluation is a qualitative one, not quantitative. Meaning that we want stories not numbers. Rather than asking 'what', we should ask 'why' and 'how'.

So, the interviews start tomorrow, and I'm quite nervous as the first interviews are with the district and local governments, particularly in the education and health sector. All the interviews are either at the ADP office or local buildings, which are close to the hotel, so we won't be in the car tomorrow, but everyone will travel by MOTORBIKE!!! Phuong has said that we should have some time later tomorrow to do a little exploring and we'll be going to see some historical sites around Khe Sanh, which I'm really looking forward to.

Oh, and today I used my Vietnamese in a shop and the shop owner understood what I was saying! So much so that when I asked how much it cost, she told me in Vietnamese and I understood her! Small I know, but it was a thrill for me!!!

I can't wait to tell you all about my day tomorrow!! I'm exhausted, so off to sleep for me.

P.S. Given I don't eat meat, I'm thinking it's going to be a long two weeks when all I'm having for dinner is plain rice and some green veggies (bit like spinach). So glad I bought the snacks, but something tells me they ain't gonna last long!!!