Exciting emulation movement of "exemplary veterans" in Ninh Giang

In recent years, the emulation movement "exemplary veterans" has become one of the driving forces to encourage cadres and veteran members of Ninh Giang district to promote the qualities of Uncle Ho's soldiers, continue to contribute their intelligence and strength to build their homeland to develop more and more.

Be a role model, take the lead

As veterans returning to civilian life, the veterans of Ninh Giang district have been exemplary and pioneers in implementing patriotic emulation movements. "Every year, the district Veterans Association launches an emulation movement for exemplary veterans in conjunction with patriotic emulation movements and campaigns of the Central and local levels. This has attracted the participation and response of a large number of cadres and members," said Mr. Nguyen Dang Siu, Chairman of the Ninh Giang District Veterans Association.

After leaving the army and returning to his hometown, veteran Pham Van Thep (in Tan Hop village, Tan Phong commune) actively participated in local economic development. In 2015, many businesses came to the commune and neighboring localities to rent land, develop industry, create jobs and stable income for many people in the commune. However, due to being busy working at the enterprise, many people no longer have time to do agriculture, so the area of ​​abandoned land in the commune is increasing. Faced with this situation, Mr. Thep has applied to produce on these areas. From the initial 3 hectares of land, Mr. Thep has now applied to cultivate over 20 hectares.

Dong Tam people used to cultivate high-quality yellow sticky rice, but later, due to many reasons, this rice variety was no longer cultivated locally. In 2018, after Hai Duong Seed Joint Stock Company successfully restored this rice variety, Mr. Thep boldly brought it back to the commune's land with an area of ​​10 hectares. At the same time, he and another individual in the commune built the flower sticky rice product into an OCOP product with the brand name "Chuong village's yellow sticky rice" and achieved 3-star OCOP.

Since the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year, parents and students of Dong Tam Primary and Secondary School have become familiar with the image of the commune's veterans participating in maintaining traffic safety at the school gates. Twice a day, from Monday to Friday, rain or shine, 6 members of the self-managed Veterans Group at the school gate diligently perform their duties of guiding parents to stop and park their vehicles in the right places, dividing traffic lanes to prevent congestion and collisions...

The Veterans Association of Dong Tam commune is the only unit in the district that has implemented the model of self-managed Veterans Groups to ensure traffic safety at school gates. "The members of the Veterans Association of the commune have also taken the lead in donating land, labor, and money to build new rural areas, advanced new rural areas, and model new rural areas. The entire association has donated over 1,000 square meters of residential land, over 500 meters of fences to build roads, hundreds of millions of VND and many working days to build roads, plant flowers on the roads; upgrade and repair sports fields, and playgrounds in the villages... These supports and contributions of veteran members have contributed to the commune's goal of building advanced new rural areas by 2021," said Mr. Nguyen Van Thang, Chairman of the Veterans Association of Dong Tam commune.

Positive effects

From the specific goals and tasks in the district's emulation plan, localities have had different good and creative ways of doing things, suitable to the actual situation, so the emulation movement of "exemplary veterans" of the district has created highlights, arousing a spirit of enthusiastic emulation.

The emulation movement to help each other do business and reduce poverty has been actively implemented. More than 200 economic models of veteran members have been established in various fields, creating jobs and stable income for nearly 1,000 workers. To help members do business, the association at all levels has guided and created conditions for members to borrow capital from the Social Policy Bank with a total outstanding debt of over 45 billion VND, lending to 858 members. Members in the entire association supported funds with an amount of over 3.1 billion VND; supported the construction and repair of 19 dilapidated houses for poor members, worth 662 million VND. Thanks to that, the rate of poor veteran households has decreased from 1.1% (in 2019) to 0.55% (in 2024).

In the new rural construction movement, veterans in the whole district donated 45,687 square meters of land, demolished houses, fences... worth nearly 2.5 billion VND; supported over 2 billion VND in cash; contributed 18,865 working days to build rural roads.

The movement of educating the younger generation in tradition has been carried out by the District Veterans Association. Over the past 5 years, the Association at all levels has coordinated with the Youth Union at all levels and schools in the district to organize 170 exchanges and talks with the participation of about 45,000 students and 1,300 young people recruited for military service... Thereby, actively contributing to the work of educating the tradition of patriotism, building trust, and fostering the aspiration to establish a career for the younger generation.

With the achievements, over the past 5 years, the District Veterans Association has been awarded the Excellent Emulation Flag and 2 Certificates of Merit by the Central Committee of the Vietnam Veterans Association; many collectives and individuals have been awarded by the Provincial Veterans Association.