Phan school girl shares journey of "Green Patch" project being selected to attend International Youth Festival on Climate Change
With the project "Green Patch" (REPATCH), student Pham Quynh Anh (grade 12 C7, Phan Boi Chau High School for the Gifted) has excelled over dozens of other contestants across the country to win the contest "Students build climate projects with Climate Box". This is also one of three excellent projects representing Vietnam to attend the International Youth Festival on Climate Change in Thailand.
Care for the disadvantaged
Pham Quynh Anhnot a new name because at the beginning of this year, I was the only student ofPhan Boi Chau High School for the Giftedwon first prize at the "Green Voice" debate contest and received a prize of more than 3.3 billion VND from Vingroup, including a full scholarship for a bachelor's degree program at VinUni University.
Participating in competitions seems to be a way for this female student to practice her foreign language skills and challenge her own abilities. Therefore, at the end of July, when she learned about the "Students build projects with Climate Box" competition organized by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), in collaboration with the Center for Living and Learning for Environment and Community (Live & Learn) Vietnam, Quynh Anh quickly came up with an idea for herself.
Quynh Anh shared: The contest is a creative playground for students nationwide, promoting climate action through knowledge to bring practical projects in responding to climate change. The time of the contest was also when Nghe An had just experienced many historic floods, so I really struggled to choose the topic and develop the project based on real stories in my hometown.
Quynh Anh’s project is called “REPATCH” (Green Patch or Green Weaving) and its main target is the disadvantaged, including students with disabilities or students in mountainous districts. Quynh Anh grew up in Tan Ky district, quite far from the center and life is still difficult.
Like many other localities, Tan Ky and mountainous communes are places where frequent affected by storms, flash floods and landslides. Here, ethnic minorities (Thai, H'Mong, Khmu...) live in high mountainous areas, heavily dependent on agriculture and forests, so they are especially vulnerable to climate change. Meanwhile, people lack opportunities to be provided with information and learn how to prevent and cope with natural disasters, storms and floods.
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Showing the image of “Patchwork”, Quynh Anh said that this is associated with her childhood memories when she was a naughty girl, often had buttons undone and her mother often sewed clothes for her. Vietnamese people also have the tradition of patching, sewing, and utilizing fabrics to save and reuse old items.
“The Patch” is also Quynh Anh’s wish when she wants to implement projects to support, provide and fill knowledge gaps for students in disadvantaged areas to raise awareness about the disproportionate impact of climate change.
Before implementing this project, Quynh Anh and her friends also participated in a project called Green Aura - a project with Workshop activities. From there, they guided people to use recycled fabrics to make meaningful handicrafts, raising funds to support orphaned students at SOS Children's Village Hanoi.
From the above project, Quynh Anh developed a further idea, which is to take advantage of resources from the traditional brocade weaving profession in Nghe An. Thereby raising funds for disadvantaged communities, spreading the story of climate change.
When implementing the project, I also took illustrative images of brocade fabrics of ethnic minorities in the communes of Western Nghe An. From there, I hope to connect generations and communities including: students - elderly women - handicraft villages - schools in mountainous and urban areas to join hands to prevent climate change. This is also a way to spread empathy, arouse dialogue about the environment through tangible, low-cost and easy-to-replicate "climate patches".
Pham Quynh Anh
Raising awareness about climate change
In addition to the above content, the "Green Patch" project also proposes ideas for implementing many other activities such as organizing meetings for students to embroider, patch, and tell climate stories by hand or combine with brocade to introduce mountain culture to urban friends; Organizing mobile patch exhibitions - "Mobile Patch Gallery" to display patches/embroidery and stories with QR codes for easy replication. The project will also build an exchange program - connecting urban schools and ethnic minority schools, sharing and discussing climate change issues. Finally, implementing an online campaign to spread images, videos, and student voices on social networks.
In addition to Quynh Anh, who came up with the idea, the project also involved Minh Khanh, an 11th grade student at Vinschool Hanoi. During the implementation process, although the two sisters had different study schedules and did not have many opportunities to meet regularly, both had a passion for environmental projects, so they found a common voice.
After completing the project, Quynh Anh and Minh Khanh also had practice sessions to prepare for the English presentation rounds.
A memorable moment for both of them was when their project entered the final round to compete with 6 other excellent projects from students across the country. At that time, near the official exam time, Quynh Anh and Minh Khanh discovered that their presentation slides had errors and if they did not correct them in time, it could lead to undesirable results. After that, both of them calmed down, found the errors and fixed the presentation within 30 minutes, in time to compete with their friends.
With many unique marks, Quynh Anh and Minh Khanh's project later also conquered the judges and both were very surprised to know that "Green Patch" became 1 of 3 projects awarded the best award of the competition.
With this victory, in November 2025, Quynh Anh will be the project representative and, together with two other students from across the country, will continue to bring the voice and climate solutions of Vietnamese youth to the region, attending the 3rd International Youth Festival on Climate Change in Bangkok, Thailand.
The competition “Students build climate projects with Climate Box” has brought us a very meaningful journey. In addition to learning and connecting, we hope that our ideas will be spread so that everyone can join hands to implement many actions to protect the environment and combat climate change.
Pham Quynh Anh
