Rural Program

Despite working on the land, remote ethnic minority women lack equal access to land and capital, and thus have limited opportunity to make decisions which affect their lives. Reliance on agriculture also renders such populations vulnerable to climate change and natural disasters. In addition, there are strong indicators that remote ethnic minority women are often subject to gender-based violence. Discrimination and social isolation further reduces their access to legal representation or protection.

CARE in Vietnam works in these areas with women of different ethnicities to increase their economic opportunities, voice and leadership, and resilience to shocks.

Since 2020, CARE introduces community development initiatives in Rural Program to ethnic minority communities. Click here to have an overview of our work with Rural Program. Below are some of the projects within the program and its precedent Remote Ethnic Minority Women program.

She Thrives

The project aims to promote sustainable livelihoods among rural smallholders, particularly women and ethnic minorities in the target location. The project has three main objectives that will help to achieve two Areas of Change: Access to inclusive markets, and Access to productive resources and women’s agencies.

(FBEA-SEA) Enhancing Inclusive and Gender-responsive Forecast-based Early Action for Effectiveness Disaster Preparedness in Vietnam and at Regional Level

FBEA-SEA project works to enhance inclusive and gender-responsive forecast-based early action for effective disaster preparedness among ASEAN countries, with a specific focus on Vietnam.

(Reach to Excel Phase II) Enhanced Financial Inclusion for Rural Women

The Reach to Excel Phase II works to enhance the economic empowerment of rural women through promoting VSLAs as a cornerstone of the Vietnam Women’s Union activities.

(P4EM) Partnership for Ethnic Minorities’ Equitable and Inclusive Development

This project focuses on strengthening partnerships for efficacy of national policy and programme formulation and implementation to support ethnic minorities’ development.

(T-LEAF) Transforming livelihoods & enabling market access for women tea growers

In this project, CARE works to to enable women tea farmers in Son La to equitably engage in the tea sector by increasing their their income and decision making power.

(SUSO) Stand Up, Speak Out against gender based violence in Dien Bien

Through the project, CARE works to break the silence around gender based violence among ethnic minority communities in Dien Bien province.

(WEAVE) Women’s economic empowerment via agricultural value chain enhancement

WEAVE is a joint project by CARE International in Vietnam, Oxfam in Vietnam and SNV Vietnam to enhance ethnic minority women’s position and voice in the banana, pork and cinnamon value chains in Bac Kan and Lao Cai.

(EMWE) Ethnic minority women’s empowerment in Bac Kan and Dien Bien

EMWE works with ethnic minority women to overcome challenges that they are facing in remote areas. Women in remote ethnic communities in Vietnam are not equally benefiting from the remarkable economic growth over the past decade. They experience high levels of poverty, unequal participation in economic oppor-tunities, limited options to adapt to changes in the climate, and have a limited voice in decisions that affect them.

(FBF) Reaching the Furthest Behind in Quang Tri and Hoa Binh provinces

The “Reaching the Furthest Behind” programme supports disadvantaged ethnic minority communities in mountainous areas of Quang Tri and Hoa Binh provinces.

(EFSEM) Enhancement of Food Security for Ethnic Minorities in Northern Vietnam

This project works to ensure ethnic minority women and their families improve food security through agriculture livelihood diversification and climate resilience.

(TEAL) Technologically enhanced agricultural livelihoods in Arabica value chain

This project works to promote the role and benefits of ethnic minority women and their productivity in the Arabica coffee value chain.

(BRIDGING BONDS) Effective monitoring of public policy in hydro-power plant operation

The Briding Bonds pilot initiative enables ethnic minority communities to proactively and effectively participate in monitoring the impacts of hydropower plant operation on their lives and the implementation of relevant policies and legal regulations.

(ACIS) Agro-climate information services ethnic minority farmers in South-East Asia

This project enables women farmers, ethnic minority farmers and agricultural planners, in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, to better anticipate and respond to risks and opportunities from changes in the weather, through participatory and equitable agro-climate information services.

(ICAM) Integrated community-based adaptation in the Mekong Delta

ICAM works with women and men who are most at risk from the impacts of climate change and natural hazards, to increase the resilience of communities in the Mekong Delta.

(Land rights) Promoting land rights for ethnic minority people in Vietnam

This project aims to contribute to the protection and promotion of ethnic minority people’s rights to community forest lands.

Voice and Rights for ethnic minority women in Ba Be - Bac Kan province

This project contributes to securing the rights of women from Tay, Nung, Dao and Hmong communities by enhancing their voice, and ensuring that both government agencies and civil society value, respect and respond to it.

(SFtW) She Feeds the World Vietnam

SFtW Vietnam will build capacity for small-scale farmers to improve their cultivation practices, increase yield, diversify livelihood options to generate more sustainable income, and save for the future.

(AWEEV) Advancing Women Economic's Empowerment in Vietnam

AWEEV is a gender-responsive and integrated project designed to contribute to increased economic wellbeing for ethnic monority (EM) women in Vietnam.

(InfoAct) Agro-climate information for adaptation in Vietnam

InfoAct works to strengthen the livelihood and resilience of poor ethnic minority women and men in rural areas to climate change and climate shocks by improving their access to and use of climate information and resources such as insurance.

(I2I) Increasing ethnic minority women’s access to information in northern Vietnam

This project aims at enabling civil society organisations to legitimately represent ethnic minority com-munities to enhance government transparency and accountability for promoting ethnic minority rights.

(CASI) Civil action for socio-economic inclusion in northern Vietnam

This program is for sustainable improvements in livelihood security for natural resource-dependent people in ethnic minority communities who lack access to resources and have limited opportunities to influence decision making. Representatives of marginalised and excluded groups and civil society organisations are involved in setting the agenda for more inclusive development approaches and policies.

(FinLINK) Financial linkage for inclusion for women from remote ethnic minority communities

This project works with the private sector to increase access to formal financial products and services for women from ethnic minority com-munities in remote areas, to enable them to empower themselves economically.

Please contact us for more infor-mation on this project.

(Water Window) River basin cross-border flood resilience support platform in Vietnam

Through this project, CARE works to improve the consultation process between affected communities and relevant stakeholders.
This multi-stakeholder and cross-border dialogue for win-win solutions can be adapted in similar context throughout Southeast Asia.

Increasing the ability of community-based disaster risk management

This project works to reduce vulnerability to natural hazards by building community capacity in community-based disaster risk management, with a focus on the participation of women.