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Vietnam: How cash transfers helped families rebuild their lives after Typhoon Wutip

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In 2013 Typhoon Wutip made landfall in Central Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of houses were unroofed and over 500 collapsed. Hectares and hectares of paddy fields were damaged.

With support from the EU, Plan International, as well as Save the Children, joined the local government in providing emergency response support and recovery assistance to the people in the affected areas. A cash transfer project helped locals re-establish their livelihoods.

When Typhoon Wutip hit her house in Hung Trach commune, the situation was “worse than a B-52 Bomber raid”, recalled Than thi Vinh, who lived through the Vietnam war as a child.

With wind speeds reaching around 185 kilometers per hour, houses with tiled roofs such as the one she called home bore the major brunt of the storm. Besides a rattling roof and flying tiles all around, Than thi Vinh had another more pressing concern: saving her disabled 16-year-old son.

A year and a half later, tears still flow down her cheeks when she narrates her experience of that horrible day. In the end, she and her son escaped unscathed, but they lost two pigs and four chickens in the storm – the only prized possession they had to earn a livelihood.

Typhoon Wutip hit the central provinces of Vietnam on 30 September 2013, bringing heavy rains and strong winds for days and causing widespread damage to coastal and midland communities in Central Vietnam. A few days after the first, another typhoon, named Nari, hit the same areas, though luckily with less strength. Quang Binh province, where Than thi Vinh lives, was among the worst hit by the typhoon and the subsequent floods.

As part of a project funded by the European Commission, Than thi Vinh received a cash grant of 2 million Vietnamese Dong (VND, around €83). With this, she was able to buy five chickens and three pigs. Unfortunately all the chickens died due to the avian flu, and one of the pigs also didn’t make it.

But that did not affect her unwavering will to get back on her feet: she continued to rear pigs, and eventually sold the remaining two she had for 4 million VND – thereby making a net profit of 1 million VND. With this, she repaid the money she had had to borrow after Typhoon Wutip to repair her roof. And today, she plans to use the income she earned to buy another piglet, in order to keep her small business going. “I am extremely happy with this 'cash in envelope' system, as in the end it was my choice to decide how to spend it, and my choice proved a good one”.

In another nearby village called An Ninh, Truong This Dung, a 58-year-old mother of four, was badly affected by both Wutip and Nari typhoons. She not only lost all her harvested rice crop – meant to feed the family for an entire year –, but also saw her backyard fruit plantation damaged, and the roof of her house partially torn off. She recalls having lost hope of regaining her livelihood before the EU-funded project supported her with 30 kilogrammes of rice seed and fertilisers. An input which ensured a bumper harvest of more than 2 000 kilogrammes of rice from 4 500 square metres of land – “25% more than the usual yield from this land!” she exclaimed.

“The reason for this good harvest was the good quality of seeds provided, which were procured from the government authorised dealer”, she added. Behaving as a real businesswoman, she explains how she sold off 600 kilogrammes of the rice crop for 4.5 million VND (€187), saved 55 kg to sow the next crop, and kept a little less than 1 450kg for her family consumption – enough to last the entire year.

“After the typhoon, I was really traumatized, and without this support, I would have had to borrow money, which would have only added to my trauma”, she explained, demonstrating how a relatively small livelihood support can make a huge difference in the lives of supported beneficiaries.

Overall, the project benefitted more than 4 000 families in 22 affected communes in the Quang Binh province of Central Vietnam.