Main activities to embrace the 2014 Earth Hour campaign, including switching off lights and other electrical appliances en masse, will take place today, Mar 29, in several major Vietnamese cities and provinces, including Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

The event will go on at Hanoi’s Cach mang Thang Tam (August Revolution) Square (1 Trang Tien street), from 8pm to 9:30pm tonight, and at HCMC’s Youth Cultural House (4 Pham Ngoc Thach, district 1) from 5pm to 10pm the same night.

A host of activities will go on at the event, including exchanging used light bulbs for energy-saving ones, exhibits of recycled product models and exchanges among participants and campaign volunteers.

All the lights at the venues and a number of public areas and streets including areas surrounding Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem Lake , Ngoc Son temple, The Huc bridge, Ha Noi Opera House and Truc Bach Lake will be switched off from 8.30pm to 9:30pm. Locals are also encouraged to turn off their unnecessary lights and electrical appliances during that time.

During the week before the main activities take place, more than 7,000 Earth Hour Blue volunteers in HCMC have taken part in several green projects.

Around 5pm every day during the week, the volunteers have stood at major intersections such as Hang Xanh and Nguyen Thi Minh Khai – Cach Mang Thang Tam, raising banners which write “Tat may 20 giay – cuu ngay Trai dat” (Turn off your bike engines for 20 seconds to save our Earth now).

On Mar 20, more than 50 volunteers launched an “Ecological school” project at My Hue Elementary School in HCMC’s suburban district of Hoc Mon.

Under this project, the volunteers replaced the school’s tile roofs with the ecological tole sheets made from milk cans, changed the lighting system to an energy-saving one, cleaned classrooms and grew trees in the school yard.

Groups of volunteers have also roamed major streets in HCMC, campaigning local café owners to take part in the Earth Hour Blue campaign by switching off unnecessary electrical appliances and handing out leaflets to raise locals’ awareness on energy saving and environment protection.

Other activities include creating a large painting themed “Action to make the Earth greener”, forming the campaign’s signature 60+ formation, cycling through several city streets, along with holding a quiz on “Energy saving for a greener Earth” and an exhibition themed “Green Fair”.

The local campaign, put on by Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade, aim to show support for the global Earth Hour campaign and raise awareness about environmental protection and power saving among locals, particularly youths, while getting them to make changes to their lifestyles to battle climatic change.

It’s the sixth time Vietnam has joined the global Earth Hour campaign. The country saved around 401MW during the 2013 Earth Hour.

The global Earth Hour campaign is the world’s largest grass-roots environmental movement towards action on climatic change. The campaign includes a simple yet significant action: switching off lights for one hour between 8.30pm and 9.30 pm every year in March.