On July 5thand 6thof 2018, 45 women and men from grassroots-level units of the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) joined a training workshop on supervision and social criticism, which are assigned tasks of the VFF and its member organizations. Mass organizations in Vietnam are entitled to be heard at all levels of local government, who in turn have to respond in kind to criticism and proposals. In the workshop, the VFF activists practically trained how to make their supervision plans, complete with the most relevant topics for monitoring the government decisions and actions at their administrative level.In the second part of the workshop, the participants worked to compose a qualified response to a real half-year report and half-year action plan of socio-economic development, submitted by the district government. In one of the evaluated district reports, the VFF activists found many flaws and “half truths” and demonstrated that the local government had no vision and coherent understanding of the local socio-economic development plan, while the training participants acted in a very knowledgeable and professional way. The workshop demonstrated how a constructive two-way communication between citizens and government can effectively improve the responsiveness and accountability of local governance.