Vietnam

FOOTBALL FOR ALL IN VIETNAM

Football for All in Vietnam (FFAV) was founded in Hanoi in 2001 through a partnership between the Football Association of Norway and the Vietnam Football Federation.

FFAV aims to establish grassroots football programmes in schools to promote gender equality and teach life skills to primary and secondary school-aged children. They have a special focus on marginalised groups such as children from ethnic minorities, disabled children and orphans.

The organisation also provides training to adult teachers/physical educators so they can intergrate life skills into their football training.

ORGANISATION DETAILS

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PARTICIPANTS

Primary and secondary school-aged children; girls aged 11-15; adult teachers/physical educators.

LOCATIONS

Thua Thien Hue, Hanoi, Ben Tre Province, Can Tho, Lai Chau, Tuyen Quang, Ha Giang, Ninh Thuan.

Country
statistics

107 out of 189 in Human Development Index rankings (UNDP, 2022)

Average annual salary per person $4,110 (World Bank, 2023)

Typhoon Yagi in September 2024 displaced 3.6 million people across Vietnam (Relief Web, 2024)

Vietnam (also written Viet Nam) is a country in South East Asia bordering the Gulf of Thailand, the South China Sea as well as China, Laos and Cambodia. It has a population of 101.5 million and has one of the highest population densities in the world (Worldometers, 2025; CIA World Factbook).

The Vietnam War between 1954 – 1975 resulted in an estimated 3 million deaths of civilians and soldiers. After the war, the country was devastated and took many years to recover. Despite steady economic growth since the mid-1980s, the country still faces growing income inequality and corruption (CIA World Factbook).

Vietnam is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world with 75% of the population living in coastal areas which are at a continued risk of displacement because of natural disasters. Between 2008 – 2023, 5.5 million people were internally displaced within the country as a result of storms and severe flooding. (IDMC, 2023)

In September 2024, Typhoon Yagi, one of the most powerful storms in decades killed more than 300 people and displaced some 3.6 million people across 26 provinces. This put millions at risk of food insecurity and destroyed thousands of houses and hundreds of schools (Relief Web, 2024; Save the Children, 2024).

An estimated 20,000 children in Vietnam are homeless and at risk of violence, abuse and human trafficking. Despite child marriage of anyone under 16 being illegal in the country, in poorer areas children are still at risk of being trafficked for forced marriage (UK Government, 2024). For women and girls who are forced into marriages to foreign men, they are at risk of becoming stateless as when they can often renounce their nationality but fail to attain a new nationality. (Global Citizenship Observatory, 2021).

There are currently an estimated 30,000 people who are stateless in Vietnam, the majority of these belong to the Hmong ethnic group who predominantly live in the north of the country and face increased levels of persecution based on their ethnicity (UK Government, 2024).