Empowering women and raising incomes in central Viet Nam

Pamposh Dhar, ADB Consultant

An integrated, participatory development project brings women and members of ethnic communities into the planning process The undulating hills of central Viet Nam hide the ravages of 50 years of war, disease, and floods, but these natural and man-made calamities have taken their toll on the largely rural population. Poverty levels are high in the remote villages and hamlets of the central uplands, particularly among the ethnic groups, which make up 60% of the local population. In 2001, ADB introduced a project to reduce poverty, increase household food security, and raise incomes in 153 of the poorest communes in the four provinces of Kon Tum, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, and Thua Thien Hue. The Central Region Livelihood Improvement Project provided income opportunities in an area dominated by subsistence agriculture, and built socioeconomic infrastructure, including roads, water supply schemes, and community centers. Overcoming Barriers to Empowering Women The project was especially helpful to poor women in the central uplands, who have consistently lower literacy and education levels than men, limiting their skills development and income-earning opportunities. Women from ethnic groups face the additional problem of a language barrier. A majority of the people in the uplands come from indigenous communities that form part of two minority linguistic groups, the Malayo-Polynesian and the Mon-Khmer, which are distinct from the countrys major Kinh linguistic family. With the help of Viet Nams Womens Union, ADB encouraged the active participation of women and members of ethnic groups in implementing the project, in particular in training and demonstration activities. The Womens Unions experience on the ground, and its reach into the villages and communes, went a long way toward effective planning and implementation. The project overcame educational, cultural, and language barriers to teach women fish cultivation, livestock rearing, and vegetable growing in home gardens so that they could augment the meagre family income from rice farming. Women learned good nutrition and hygiene practices to help counter malnutrition, especially among their children, and improve family health. The vegetables from the home gardens and the meat or fish from the skills development schemes helped the women provide more nutritious meals to their families. By involving them in development planning for their villages, the project gave women the self-confidence to speak up for themselves and their villages, and to interact with government and other development officials. At the same time, the project trained commune, district, and provincial officials to be more responsive to grassroots voices. In the very first year of its implementation, the project introduced a participatory rural appraisal (PRA) and, more generally, a consultative approach that has improved development planning in the project areas.

To ensure participation by women, the project required each commune to select one woman and one man to act as facilitators to help the community draw up its own socioeconomic plan. Each of 153 communes covered by the project produced a plan, which was then accepted by the provincial authorities for implementation. Women, along with men, gained access to loans to help them start microenterprises, including poultry farming, pig rearing, and fish cultivation in ponds. Women made up 52% of the borrowers and ethnic groups, 40%. The Viet Nam Bank for Rural Development (VBARD) established a Revolving Fund, while the Womens Union organized savings and credit groups to make smaller loans to members of the groups. The Womens Union schemes, although not part of the project, also supported the projects income-generating schemes for women. The project supplied improved rice varieties to male and female farmers and taught them new farming techniques to raise productivity. In some villages, it built or improved irrigation infrastructure to increase rice yields and also enabled farmers to grow higher value crops. Roads, Water, Community Centers Based on the priorities identified by the communities, the project also financed infrastructure development. At the planning stage, women tended to place a higher priority than men on health and education. The project built roads connecting remote villages to commune centers with schools and health facilities. Other roads provided links to markets, boosting incomes from agricultural production, especially for those farmers who used the additional irrigation facilities to cultivate higher value but more easily perishable crops. Other infrastructure schemes provided easier access to clean drinking water, improving health and cutting the time women spent fetching water. Water was also brought to the new home gardens to enable the women to grow vegetables. Home gardens were new to the ethnic communities, who had in the past relied largely on the bounties of the forests, which were slowly getting depleted. Another priority to emerge from the participatory planning was the need for community houses where villagers can meet for political, social and cultural activities. The community houses are now also used for development planning meetings. These houses are important to ethnic communities with long-established cultural traditions, helping them by providing a physical space to carry on their traditions. Training, Training, Training The project included training for officials at all levels to ensure the success of the participatory approach whereby villagers drew up their own socioeconomic development plans (SDPs). More than 1,700 officials from communes, districts, provinces, and the Womens Union received training in participatory rural appraisals, farmer field school techniques, and communication skills. Nearly 1,000 staff learned how to implement the SDPs once they were incorporated into commune-level plans. Another 3,300 people received training in planning and administration. Training played a key role not only in building institutional and project management strengths, but also in developing the skills of beneficiaries and ensuring the sustainability of livestock rearing and other income-earning schemes. More than 100,000 people learned techniques of agricultural cultivation, home gardening, poultry rearing, fish production, 2

livestock rearing, and nursery and forestry development. Another 4,800 village-level animal health workers and livestock specialists were trained to identify diseases and provide an effective vaccination service. Growing Yields and Rising Incomes By the time the project ended in 2010, the average rice yield in the project area had risen from 3.2 tons to 4.9 tons per hectare and 87% of households were able to have three meals a day. Protein intake had increased, with 70% of households having fish or meat every day. The average monthly household income jumped seven times in the project area between 2005 and 2009, to reach $238 (at the rate of exchange on 30 September 2009). Agricultural income still made up 51% of total income, but 40% came from animal husbandry. A sample survey of 11 communes in the four project province revealed a heartening decline of 14% a year in poverty levels, thanks in large part to the project. Although the 11 communes constitute only 7% of the total 153 covered by the project, this figure does provide an indication of the overall trend. An Integrated Project with a Participatory Approach The Central Region Livelihood Development Project was one of the first large ADB-funded projects to follow a consistent participatory approach at village level. Consultative development planning became entrenched during the course of the project and contributed to improved planning processes in the area. The project empowered women and men in remote upland communities to plan their own development and to interact with the bureaucracy. At the same time, it trained bureaucrats at all levels to respond positively and constructively to development initiatives originating at village or commune levels. This was the first major externally supported integrated socioeconomic development initiative in the region. It created physical infrastructure to reduce the isolation of upland villages, providing easier access to development opportunities and markets, clean drinking water in the villages, irrigation for home gardens and fields, and community centers to facilitation planning and help preserve ethnic cultures. The project also provided skills development and income opportunities to the poor, including women and members of ethnic communities.

The views expressed in this paper are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), or its Board of Governors, or the governments they represent. ADB does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this paper and accepts no responsibility for any consequence of their use. The countries listed in this paper do not imply any view on ADB's part as to sovereignty or independent status or necessarily conform to ADB's terminology.