The July progress meeting of Viet Nam Geopark network

On July, 28^th, 2020 Vietnam geopark network held an online meeting to evaluate the progress of geoparks members and implementation of common activities in the Network. The meeting was participated by Mr. Guy Martini - Chairperson of UNESCO Global geopark council, representative leaders and official of geoparks: Dongvan kark plateau geopark, Non nuoc Cao Bang geopark, Dak Nong and Ly Son – Sa Huynh geopark, the Head of the Vietnam Sub-committee for global geopark under the Vietnam national commission for UNESCO chaired the meeting.

At the meeting, the representative of geoparks shared their progress report on some common activities in the network, especially the 9 August International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, september 19^th  World clean-up Day and Geopark educational activities at school. For those activities, all geoparks implemented some activities, such as: coordination with the relevant local units such as: Department of statistics, Committee for ethnic minority affiars and districts in geopark to collect data for implementing International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. All geoparks agreed to accelerate the implementation on schedule to celebrate International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples.

For the World clean-up Day, all geoparks discussed and agreed on the approach and time for implementation of this activity. The approach for implementation would be discussed in details in the next meeting. In addition, Geoparks also discussed the geopark educational activity at school. Since this is an important strand in the criteria of a UGGp. Currently, all Vietnam Geoparks are actively implemeting this activity with certain results. Particularly, the initiative suggested by Non nuoc Cao Bang UGGp on the “ Geopark ambassador club”. According to Mr. Guy Martini, this is an effective innitative that has not been implemented by any geoparks. He suggested Non nuoc Cao Bang UGGp share and support other geoparks in Vietnam geopark network. He stressed that this model should be similtaneously replicated and introduced to the Global geopark. The Network agreed to create a platform on social media and Non nuoc Cao Bang geopark would share the method and documents.