'Supporting' ethnic minority women to start businesses

(PLVN) - One of the key contents of the Project “Achieving gender equality and solving urgent issues for women and children” (Project 8) is to support ethnic minority women to start businesses, take control of their lives and enhance their power in society. To do that, the Women's Unions (WUs) in the province and localities make efforts to organize training courses and help women borrow credit to start businesses.

Develop business ideas from training courses

18km from the center of Thanh Son district, Phu Tho province, there is a poor commune called Van Mieu, where many ethnic minorities live. Their economic source depends on the vegetable beds, pigs, and chickens that their families raise themselves. Ms. Ha Thi Hong Thai (Muong ethnic, born in 1980) also had a similar life.

Her life revolves around the vegetable garden and the poor commune, Ms. Thai's family was previously in a difficult situation. Later, she began to participate in economic training classes of the Provincial Women's Union. From the fun-filled lessons, she gradually realized the economic development potential of her family. She was guided on expanding the sales market, livestreaming, taking photos of products and posting them on e-commerce platforms. In addition, she learned how to preserve, package, exploit, and develop her family's potential agricultural products.

Up to now, thanks to the support from the Association at all levels, she has gradually completed her family business model. Currently, her family sells clean vegetables, homegrown honey, wild bamboo shoots, etc. She has not only escaped poverty but also gradually risen to stability, raised her children to study, cared for their health, and improved their quality of life.

In fact, according to many statistics, women in some ethnic minority communities are the main labor force in the family. They have the potential to become business owners, bringing good income for themselves and their families. For example, ethnic minority women in Vietnam have a background in agriculture , indigenous culture, and exquisite handicraft skills. However, due to many limitations, they fall into poverty in the midst of their potential "resources".

According to Master Le Thi Thanh Tam, Vietnam Women's Academy, there are many difficulties that make ethnic minority women not confident in starting a business. For example, they lack guidance on how to do business and manage production facilities. In particular, they do not know how to borrow credit capital to have an economic foundation to prepare for starting a business. And some other limitations on gender inequality in the community, forcing ethnic minority women to spend a lot of time taking care of their husbands and children, in addition, there is also weak infrastructure (lack of communication network) and a support ecosystem that is not close to the characteristics of women in the highlands.

Currently, provinces and localities are also actively opening training courses to help poor women and ethnic minority women do business, innovate, and bring their agricultural products and handicrafts to consumers. According to the summary report of Project 8 up to March 2025, the Project has supported 239 livelihood groups, cooperatives, and cooperatives owned/co-managed by women, reaching 48% of the target.

Creating conditions for ethnic minority women to access capital

One of the difficulties of ethnic minority women is poverty, they do not have enough capital to start a business. Therefore, even though they have knowledge about gender equality, are willing to break the mold to come up with business ideas, they still do not have enough economic foundation to start. Therefore, credit loans are a way that many Women's Unions support and help ethnic minority people start a business.

In Binh Dinh province, Project 8 will be implemented from 2022 in 5 mountainous and midland districts: An Lao, Vinh Thanh, Van Canh, Hoai An and Tay Son. In order to widely communicate gender and gender equality issues to members, women and children in ethnic minority areas, the Women's Union at all levels has established 120 community communication teams, with the participation of 1,337 members, of which 818 are male.

In addition to opening training classes, the Association also encourages women to boldly borrow capital to develop the economy, participate in vocational training classes, apply scientific and technical advances in production and animal husbandry, and provide livelihoods for women.

In addition, in order to help ethnic minority women develop their economy and improve their lives, the Women's Union at all levels in the province regularly organizes connecting markets to enhance connection activities, introduce local agricultural products, traditional products typical of ethnic minorities and mountainous and midland areas in the province. Thanks to this support, many ethnic minority women are confident in doing business.

In Phu Tho province, the Phu Tho Provincial Fund for Poor Women always accompanies the activities of the Women's Union, well organizing activities to support women in economic development and humanitarian and charitable activities. The Fund provides suitable loans from 10.5 million VND to 50 million VND. Since Project 8, activities to lend capital to women for business have been promoted and operated more strongly.

In the first quarter of 2025 alone, the Fund awarded the livelihood model "Garment processing workshop" in Phu Khe commune, Cam Khe district worth 10 million VND; directed and guided establishments to continue to effectively maintain the operation of livelihood models for poor and disadvantaged women members such as "Raising black chickens" in Thanh Ba town, Thanh Ba district,...

Huong Ngoc

Source: https://baophapluat.vn/tiep-suc-cho-phu-nu-dan-toc-thieu-so-khoi-nghiep-post550959.html