Collectives and individuals rewarded in the 2015 Green Summer Volunteer Campaign (photo: tienphong.vn)

Vietnam now has 25.08 million young people, accounting for 27.7% of the country’s population; in which, 71% of the youth live in rural area, 29% in urban area, 20.3% is students, 18% is workers, 15.08% is ethnic people. Each group of youth forms a distinct shade in the youth gathering work.

Adhering to the guideline that gathering the youth by building organizations and typical examples, and conducting revolutionary action movements, the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union has unceasingly expanded the youth-gathering front, basing on main principles as follows:

First, attaching great importance to strengthening and developing movements in each group of youth. Youth Union levels have diversified and concretized 2 great action movements of the Union, namely “Volunteering in economic-social development and the Homeland protection” and “Helping youth prepare for their careers” into branches in line with each group of youth. Accordingly, it has promoted proactiveness and creativity of the youth for the cause of Homeland construction and protection.

Second, expanding activities and building organizations for specific groups of youth are the prerequisite for maintaining stability and development of the front to gather the youth. The motto on construction and development of the Vietnam Youth Federation is “there live the youth, there exist organizations and activities of the Federation”. In places without organizations of the Federation, it focuses on conducting movements to support the youth and build core youth staff to found organizations. As for worker youth, it focuses on improving their cultural, spiritual life. As for ethnic youth, it focuses on improving social welfare and proposing measures to eradicate hunger, reduce poverty, and foster economic development. As freelancer youth, it gathers them throughout activities in residential areas. As for believer youth, it gathers them throughout activities to improve social welfare in religious areas, create favourable conditions to help religious people to practice their religion in accordance with law, search and honour typical religious youth. As overseas youth, it focuses on closely working with leaders of students and the youth, and with embassies and Overseas Party Committees to encourage information exchange mechanism, counsel, support, and sponsor Vietnamese youth and students.

Third, applying information technology into the gathering of the youth. To catch up with the trend of using social networks among the youth (increased from 82.7% in 2013 to 91.8% in 2014), levels of the Union and Federation have begun to use social network to proactively connect and orientate the youth. Central, provincial, and municipal levels have created many public pages on a number of social networks, such as Facebook and Youtube, in order to disclose and propagate guidelines and activities of the Union; publishing programs on the Internet and social networks to communicate and commemorate the country’s holidays and significant political events. In many localities, celebrities and famous administers of public pages have been invited to take part in activities of the Union and Federation. They have also organized groups of core youth getting access to cyber forums to grasp feelings and wishes of the youth and convey messages of the Union to them. The Vietnam Youth Federation, the Vietnam National Union of Students, and press organs of the Youth Union have connected and gathered the overseas youth through social networks and online forums.

That innovation of principles mentioned above has facilitated the expansion of the youth-gathering front organized and led by the Union and Federation in terms of groups and areas.

To strengthen and expand the youth-gathering front to bring into play voluntary role of the youth in the cause of national construction and protection, the Union should have a renovation within itself, from raising quality of cadre staff and structure, innovating modes of operation, to enhancing practicality, efficiency, and attractiveness of each revolutionary action movement, with a focus on the following measures:

First, renovating structure of the Union and Federation in line with the current situation, especially in areas inhabited by a large number of young people, and by ethnic, religious youth.

Second, focusing on adopting new method to gather the youth. The Union and Federation’s institutions should be brought into play to organize and develop movements, and build organizations in industrial parks and export processing zones. It is necessary to gather the youth throughout the Internet and telecommunication networks by building, completing, and connecting websites of the Union and Federation from central to grass-roots level.

Third, well planning, training, and cultivating cadre staff of the Union and Federation. There should be a focus on detecting, cultivating, and commending typical examples in movements to have widespread effect on the youth.

To meet the requirements set by the tasks of Vietnamese revolution in the new situation, the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union will make every effort to be a really great school for the youth, making contributions to strengthening great national solidarity, stepping up the reform comprehensively and synchronously, turning Vietnam into a modernity-oriented industrialized nation, firmly protecting national independence, sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, successfully realizing the Resolution of the 12^th National Party Congress.

Assoc Prof, Dr. Nguyen Dac Vinh

Member of the Party Central Committee, First Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union's Central Committee