1. Volunteers will work within the local villages on education programmes, particularly teaching English; myths and legends; tree planting;

2. Hill tribes volunteers will live amongst the Moung Hill Tribes, recording stories and film making.

3. Social entrepreneurship Micro finance Fashion, Bamboo, Pots throughout the year.

4. Special AWF Expeditions May- June 2013 in search of Tigers in the Central Highlands; In search of Asian Elephants in Laos.

Hanoi is a bustling, creative and energetic city and the village communities from which we operate are charming and friendly. The AWF focus will be in helping local entrepreneurs establish themselves, in safeguarding cultural knowledge , in education and particularly in the English language, and in conservation and farming.

1. Fashion a local seamstress in our base camp Dai Cat, a very pretty woman with the somewhat unfortunate name of Dung, will be working with local village women to produce the AWF’s first fashion range to be labelled ‘Tribe’ and targeted at young adventure travellers. The AWF is currently holding interviews in London to select young designers to create our first range. The winning designer will be flown to Vietnam to work with Dung in selecting and buying the fabrics from local markets and in making the first creations. This activity will run through Summer 2012

2. Bamboo a neighbouring village specialises in bamboo production and we will be working with one of the household ‘factories’, run by a woman called Hai. With her we will be building prototypes of bamboo designs in the gardens of our house in Dai Cat during August. We will be bringing in a container of these products in kit form to the UK in September 2012, together with raw bamboo, and, we will be making a book on bamboo for sale.

3. Jewellry we are currently sourcing clay bead jewellery from local producers

4. Artists we will be buying art work from local artists with a view to organising art sales in the UK in the autumn of 2012. These sales will be designed to encourage local artists and to provide funds for our creative teams.

5. Terracotta another local village specialises in ceramics and terracotta. We have placed our first container order with one of the village families- expected early summer into the UK.

The objective of the micro finance work is threefold: A. to create wealth for local communities based on their cultural heritage and nature. B to create funds for developing AWF micro finance, conservation, women’s and education programmes locally C to help volunteers achieve sustainability through generating commissions on sales.

Normal AWF rates apply