Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc highly spoke of efforts by the Australia – Vietnam Friendship Society (AVFS) to promote friendship and mutual understanding between people of Vietnam and Australia while talking to AVFS President Kim Sampson on March 15.
PM Phuc met with Kim in Canberra on the second day of his official visit to Australia from March 14-18.
He informed Kim the results of his talks with Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull, especially the official establishment of the Strategic Partnership between the two countries.
He urged the AVFS to further step up cooperation programmes and projects in economics, trade, investment, culture, sports, healthcare, and people-to-people exchange between Vietnam and Australia to match the new level of ties.
Welcoming the PM, Kim said the society has carried out many projects to support Vietnam, particularly the settlement of Agent Orange/Dioxin consequences, and to enhance exchanges in education and healthcare. The society’s members, who work in different fields, have played an active part to aid its effort to develop the relations and make the bilateral cooperation more effective, he added.
The members then updated the PM on the society’s new projects, most notably the young doctors’ exchange programme between the two countries that seeks to help Vietnam improve healthcare service quality. It also plans to develop projects to support disadvantaged people and people with disabilities and to promote both sides’ cuisine cultures.
PM Phuc, for his part, vowed that the Government of Vietnam will support and provide all possible conditions for the society to implement the projects in the country.
The AVFS grew out of the opposition to the war in Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s, marked notably by the moratoriums and an escalating anti-war movement. After some decades of change, the organization was re-launched on August 12, 2014. Its main focus is to support for the Children’s Fund in Vietnam where a lack of educational opportunity and especially malnutrition still exist and the effects of Agent Orange still linger.