Healthcare and Education Projects
After COVID-19, the owner wanted to expand the investment portfolio into healthcare and education. I believe vocational training and elderly care are two fields with a bright future in Vietnam. Let’s go through each project:
Vocational Training School Project
We has a long list of major restaurants and hotels in Saigon, so we could guarantee job placements for students. But I wanted more than that—I wanted to focus on trades facing labor shortages in Australia and other developed countries, like chefs, hotel maintenance workers, or healthcare aides.
The proposal kicked off. We had nearly 9 ha of land from the owner. I presented the plan in the first and second rounds to the General Department of Vocational Training under the Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs in 2020 and 2021. They fully supported it.
But right before the college was set to be established, an unexpected event happened, and the project was paused with no clear restart date :)
Elderly Care Center Project
This started similarly to the vocational school project because we wanted to get involved in training healthcare aides. However, instead of building from scratch, the owner assigned us the base (5 floors) and public space of a serviced apartment complex for this project.
Basically, it’s like a model China is using: elderly people pay a refundable deposit (returned when they leave) and a small monthly fee. In return, they get daily care (morning to afternoon) or overnight stays (renting a serviced apartment in the city center by the month). In China, people have to sign up and wait for a spot, and we think Vietnam is at the start of this cycle.
In the end, this project was also paused, with no set date to resume.