ABOUT HAGAR

Hagar is an international trauma-informed care (TIC) specialist agency founded in Cambodia in 1994. Our focus is enabling women and children who are suffering from the impact of trauma resulting from slavery, human trafficking and abuse to recover and lead independent lives. We do direct client-based work, and seek to magnify the impact of our work through building the capacity of other agencies and individuals to increase the quality of their work with survivors in their own community, empower survivors to increase their voice and agency, and influence systems strengthening at all levels.

In Vietnam, we work directly with clients/survivors, and build the capacity of other agencies to respond to the needs of survivors in their own work, using our TIC model of providing support and social services to survivors. Since 2023 our client-based work has focused upon the Hanoi municipality and targeted provinces including Hanoi, Nghe An, Yen Bai, Lao Cai and Quang Binh. Additionally, we respond to the needs of potential clients nationally, if we are the best placed to respond to their complex traumas. At this time, we provide support and access to multi-sectoral social services for around 150 persons (clients/survivors), 400-600 family members, and 200 local authorities each year. Each client/survivor is served by Hagar for a period of 6-36 months, but depending upon the individual, can be much longer.

Our partnership work builds the capacity of, government, government-affiliated mass organisation representatives (predominately the Women’s Union), like-minded agencies and individuals to implement TIC case management responses for women and child survivors in their own work. We provide short-term training workshops, and longer-term training and supervision models, tailored to the individual needs of participants. We also provide leadership mentoring to female government staff, and seek to influence national case management and shelter guidelines, and survivor-friendly interviewing strategies by authorities. We provide on-going technical advice to national organizations and individuals with whom we collaborate, international telephone counselling for Vietnamese victims of trafficking and survivors of trauma, and support voluntary repatriation as requested. In this way, Hagar’s work impacts upon partners directly, and indirectly their clients/survivors. In 2023, our work impacted more than 60,000 vulnerable people, directly and indirectly.  

In 2024, Hagar Vietnam is implementing projects that contribute to achieving Hagar Vietnam's 2023- 2025 country program and Operational Plan, as well as Hagar International's 2023-2025 Strategic Plan and its five strategic goals: Heal, Prevent, Partner, Influence and Empower.

Our projects include:

• The Whole Journey (2009 to ongoing) - This pioneering program provides human trafficking survivors, or those that have suffered with gender-based violence and sexual abuse, with long term, holistic support for recovery and socio-economic reintegration.
• Trauma-Informed Care and Practice (2017 to ongoing) - This initiative strengthens trauma-informed principles and care practices among staff and partners.
• Various grants and projects focused on preventing gender-based violence, human trafficking, and sexual abuse in alignment with The Whole Journey program in 5areas including Hanoi, Yen Bai, Nghe An, Lao Cai and Quang Binh from 2022-2026. These are funded through diverse sources.