Annual activity report 2008

The year 2008 commemorates our 10 year old involvement in three countries: Yemen, North Korea and Vietnam, as an evidence of our NGO’s long term commitment.

During that decade we worked in Yemen in the fields of agricultural development, an improved water control, bringing close support to the Ethiopian and Somali refugees. Following two years of studies and discussions with North Korean authorities, a first project was born In North Korea in 2000, bringing support to the agricultural sector. Numerous projects followed, such as the installation of water piping, reforestation and environmental protection programmes, and especially starting in 2002, the rehabilitation of polders1 in the Province of South Pyonyang. We are currently working on a project covering over 3 207 ha of farming land. Finally, in Vietnam we created (in partnership with the “Département du Travail des Invalides et des Affaires Sociales”) a catering school for the underprivileged youth. That school trained nearly 500 teenagers most of whom graduated and currently work in Ho Chi Minh city restaurants and hotels.

In May 2008, cyclone Nargis coming from the Bay of Bengal swept through the Southern tip of Burma causing a humanitarian disaster in the Rangoon area. Triangle, which had been in the country for several months, working on the elaboration of food security programmes, was able to respond to that emergency situation notably thanks to the Humanitarian Aid Committee (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), to the French Embassy in Yangon, and to the “Fondation de France”.

*A polder is an artificial expanse of land which is bellow sea level. Polders are created by draining causing the drying of swamps, estuaries, lakes or coastal areas.