Economic empowerment for ethnic minority women through developing a clean bamboo shoot value chain – Bamboo Shoots Van Ho

 PERIOD: From 2019- 2022

INTRODUCTION                                                                     

Bamboo Shoot Van Ho project derives from the Gender-Responsive Equitable Agriculture and Tourism (GREAT) Program funded by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in Vietnam to promote gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, with a specific focus on ethnic minority women.

KEY PARTNERS

• People’s Committee of Van Ho district; Van Ho Women Union.
• Kim Bôi Bamboo Shoot Company, and others.
• Management board of Xuân Nha Forest.

OBJECTIVES

• Develop sustainable material areas for bamboo shoot commodity, associating with enterprise’s value chain;
• Strengthen capacity for women through support to production re-organization, production process application, sustainable bamboo shoot harvesting and preliminary processing according to the market demand;
• Enhance awareness to improve the economic power, voice and position of EM women in the family and community;
• Assist the improvement of policy environment to support sustainable bamboo shoot production in Van Ho district in order to promote the cooperation between enterprises and farmers/women.

APPROACH

• Develop market based and pro-poor value chains, Market System Development;
• Skill and knowledge development to support the production of high-quality and organic certified bamboo shoots;
• Mainstream Economic, Environmental, Social and Cultural sustainability dimensions in project interventions;
• Promote People – Private – Public Partnership for the development and marketing of bamboo shoots;
• Advocate government authorities to offer enabling policies for the development of sustainable bamboo shoots collections.

KEY RESULTS

• 2654 Ethnic Minority women had increasing income and seasonal employment, participating in social activities thanks to a series of training on production skills and value chain.
• 2595 Ethnic Minority households improved their livelihoods and benefited from increasing their income.
• At least 450 husbands of women participating in the cooperative groups and 2000 people in the three communes have access to information on gender equality.
• Provincial policy-making agencies related to material areas (People’s Committee, Phong Nha Forest Protection Unit Management Board) approved recommendations of the 3 communes and enterprises to exploit and develop sustainable bamboo shoots, and replicated the model to 4 districts of Sop Cop, Song Ma, Phu Yen and Bac Yen of Son La province
• Three 20-years business contracts were signed between Yen Thanh Company to produce and export bamboo shoot to Japan and Taiwan