Hong Hanh (Vietnam)
“Water is about people,” says Nguyen Hong Hanh, engineer and IWC Masters student from Vietnam. “Everyone needs water and sanitation for life. If you understand that, everything else will follow.”
Like so many students at the International WaterCentre, Hong Hanh grew up wanting to make a difference for people and for her country, and she realised that her interest in water management was the perfect avenue to do this.
This interest led Hong Hanh to apply for an Australian Leadership Awards scholarship granted by AusAID to study integrated water management. “I wanted to get skills to work with people as well as knowledge of water,” she says. “Water management is managing people, not just water.”
The process of moving overseas and taking on Masters level study was initially quite challenging, Hong Hanh says.
However, when the students began to work together in the program, it was not long before friendships were formed and Hong Hanh’s English and social life benefitted enormously.
“You have to work hard in the program,” she says, “but the learning environment is great. Lecturers provide advice on how to actually solve real world problems ourselves, rather than just imposing knowledge. This enables students to go out into the field and do the same. And I have learnt so much from my fellow classmates. They have been always supportive and encouraging. Now I am so happy to have good friends from all continents.
“This course has changed the way I communicate with people, how I work. I focus more on the process now – working with people.”
Hong Hanh plans on using her new skills in her third semester research project called ‘Integrating sanitation marketing into a national program: A case study in Vietnam’, looking at going to scale with a market-based approach to providing sanitation service to rural people of Vietnam, with a focus on sustainability and cost-effectiveness of sanitation services.
Through this project, and the work she does when she has completed her Master’s program, Hong Hanh hopes to take her message back to her country:
Water is about people. If you understand that, everything else will follow.
