Green Innovation and Development Centre

23/07/2018 | Author : Thanh Huyen

Bringing the message "The air is not free", the seminar was organized with the aim of contributing to raising the awareness of Vietnamese youth about the current status, causes and impacts of air pollution on public health. Thereby attracting, increasing the participation of young people in particular and promoting the voice of the public in improving air quality

Hanoi, 22 July 2018, Green Innovation Development Center (GreenID) organized the " Air Pollution: Silence or Speech?", summarize the social media campaign "Once voice, once breath 2018 "on the topic of air pollution in the last two months, 06-07/2018. The program took place from 18h30 to 21h at TOONG Coworking Space, 8 Trang Thi Street, Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi to provide a useful information sharing session.

Bringing the message "The air is not free", the talkshow was organized with the aim of contributing to raising the awareness of Vietnamese youth about the current status, causes and impacts of air pollution on public health. Thereby attracting, increasing the participation of young people in particular and promoting the voice of the public in improving air quality.

As the name, "Air Pollution: Silence or Speech?" is a meeting place for experts in energy, environment and health such as Mr. Tran Dinh Sinh - Deputy Director of the Green Innovation Development Center (GreenID); Mr. Nguyen Trong An - Former Deputy Director of Department of Child Protection, MOLISA, Vice Director of RTCCD; Ms. Trinh Thai Ha - Project Coordinator of Clean Air - Green City of Live & Learn; Mr. Han Huy Dung - Member of the research team of air quality measurement instrument at Hanoi University of Technology; with many young people attending.

At the seminar, each person has an overview of air pollution through the views, perspectives of the professionals and from personal stories. The seminar also opened an intimate chat room, so that each audience was able to speak, discuss and criticize directly the problem of air pollution. The story of the utopian journey of the persistent people, the effort every single day for Clean air – Green life has become an endless inspiration to promote the voices and actions of young people.

Besides that, the seminar also has interesting activities such as exhibition space with an interactive game show, award true and creative documentary film of young people participating in the contest "Looking for air".

Part 2 Discussion: Debate on the viewpoint: "Should we be silent and adapt or speak up and act against air pollution?"

"My perception changed differently after the discussion. At the present time, I feel that I keep silent and adapt to air pollution is right. But silence does not mean indifference. Waiting for silence to find the opportunity to critique with experts, researchers ... and receive multi-dimensional information to find out the direction is the choice of the problem of air pollution (From a teacher participating in the discussion)

GreenID Vietnam would like to express our sincere thanks to all the guests, experts, journalists and young people for sharing the time of the evening of July 22^nd, speaking up and giving each other motivation on the journey "Rescue the air" of each individual in particular and the whole community as well!

GreenID also believes that: Each gold dust will know how to shine, each flower will give the garden fresh green, added happiness; All they need to do is fulfill their role, persistently every single day.

THE CAMPAIGN ”Once Voice, Once Breath”

The campaign is inspired by the results of the Report on Air Quality in 2016, published by the Green Innovation Development Center (Green ID). Accordingly, many young people - those who are directly affected by severe air pollution - have not really paid much attention to the impact of coal-fired thermal power plants on the air and are not aware of the health problem.

As a result, the social media campaign on the topic of “Air Pollution in Relation to the Coal-fired Thermo-Electricity Development Plan in Vietnam” was initiated with the aim of raising awareness of the community about the current status of Air pollution, encouraging young people to actively explore, accessing information sources to grasp the cause and affect the health of the problem; thereby promoting the voice, public participation in activities to improve air quality.