Dak Nong’s ethnic minority women engaged in accelerator lab journey to sustainable development

Saturday, 28/09/2019 20:19
(CPV) - More than 40 ethnic minority women groups gathered in Gia Nghia Town, Dak Nong province, on September 26th to meet with partners from the Government, business sector and non-government organizations to explore the opportunities to apply Industrial Revolutionary 4.0 technologies in expanding their businesses.

This Meet and Match networking event kicked off the UNDP-supported initiative “Economic empowerment of Ethnic Minority Women via application of IR4.0 technologies”, which is expected to enable 450 ethnic minority women to expand their business and escape from poverty. The event in Dak Nong is built on the initial success in Bac Kan province.

Viet Nam has recently made remarkable progress in reducing multi-dimensional poverty, lifting 6 million people out of poverty in only 4 years between 2012 and 2016. The challenge now is addressing persistent poverty concentrated among ethnic minorities in geographically challenging environment.

In Dak Nong province, ethnic minority groups account for 34 per cent of multi-dimensional poor households. Ethnic minority people are mainly engaged in low productivity agriculture with limited access to markets; finance; and new technologies. Moreover, their productions and livelihoods are vulnerable to the extreme weather events while the access to micro-insurance is limited.

H' Binh in Dak Nia commune, Gia Nghia town, Dak Nong province. (Source: UNDP)

At the event, Mr Ngo Truong Thi, Head of the National Directorate for Poverty Reduction, MOLISA shared his thought: “I have been engaged in poverty reduction for 22 years but one question struck me: why ethnic minority people are still poor. They have great potential, how can we help them unleash their inner strength, connect to the market to expand their production and business”.

Through this initiative, poor ethnic minority women and their business partners, investors, government policy makers and service providers will be engaged in an Accelerator Lab Journey, building on the 3M (Match, Mentoring and Move) model* in 2017 and 2018.

Ms Ton Thi Ngoc Hanh, Vice Chair of Dak Nong People’s Committee, welcomed the initiative: “Connecting partners to help ethnic minority women expand their production and business with IR 4.0 technologies is an innovative and timely way to tackle poverty. This is exactly what we aspired to. We will need to understand the strength and potential of each group and region to help them unleash their potential, find the key products and escape from poverty”.

Contributing to Viet Nam’s commitment of leaving no one behind, the initiative utilizes opportunities offered by IR 4.0, including E-commerce platforms which enable small production units to approach the market and value chains; Innovative finance solutions; Social media and other e-platforms; New production technologies; and Data and tools for real-time citizen feedback and policy maker learning.

“Additional resources, both technical and financial, are important to help Ethnic Minority people escape from poverty,” said Mr Nguyen Tien Phong, Head of UNDP Inclusive Growth Unit. “Accelerating the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal ‘eradicating poverty in all its forms and everywhere’ means that poverty reduction programs also need to serve as a living laboratory that engages partners from government, business sector, social-professional organizations and the Ethnic Minority women and men themselves in generating and experimenting innovative solutions and directing the benefit of innovation to reach the furthest behind”.

Engaging poor ethnic minority women, their business partners, investors, government policy makers and service providers in an Accelerator Lab Journey, in which actors:

Meet for understanding emerging challenges and opportunities in the local context and looking for solutions, particularly at how citizens are already addressing these challenges and opportunities; Match their efforts in assembling a portfolio of potential solutions and continuously testing them until actors are confident, they can work; Move for handing over the tested portfolio of solutions to actors for development programming, advocacy for policy change or spinning solutions off as private ventures./.

Khac Kien

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