EMWE - Ethnic Minority Women’s Empowerment

With the Ethnic Minority Women’s Empowerment (EMWE) project, CARE has an overarching goal that remote ethnic minority women are empowered to actively participate in local socio-economic development planning and decision-making.

Background

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 opportunities, limited options to adapt to changes in the climate, and have a limited voice in decisions that affect them..

Objective of EMWE

The overarching goal of EMWE is that Remote ethnic minority women are empowered to actively participate in local socio-economic development planning and decision-making:

Remote ethnic minority women have an increased voice in local development planning. Working with local authorities, EMWE strengthens People’s Councils, Socio-Economic Development Planning processes, and other community decision-making forums to be more inclusive of women. As a result, women have reported increased confidence to make requests to authorities and a stronger voice within their households.
Remote ethnic minority women use climate-resilient livelihood options. EMWE provides ethnic minority women with information including agro-climate information, skills, and other support to adopt new livelihood options – such as biologically safe chicken raising, bio-fertiliser, and rice and corn cultivation techniques – that are resilient to changes in the climate. EMWE also links women with markets to earn an income from these activities.
Women’s groups are recognized platforms for women’s empowerment. Women’s group members learn about and discuss legislation and policies that affect them, establish savings and loan systems to increase their incomes, and practice new financial and communication skills.
Local duty bearers and communities respect ethnic minority women’s voices. Through analysis and community planning, EMWE supports crucial changes in the attitudes of men, communities, and local authorities to support ethnic minority women’s empowerment.

EMWE’s achievements

Supported over 1,720 remote ethnic minority women to learn about their rights and access finance for income generation activities through establishing 41 women’s VSLAs and strengthening 30 existing women’s groups.
Trained project participants and partners on climate change and worked with 426 remote ethnic minority women to identify and implement new climate-resilient livelihood options.
Introduced authorities to CARE’s model of dialogue between ethnic minority communities and People’s Councils, building their willingness to listen to ethnic minority women’s concerns.
Completed a participatory gender analysis to identify women and men’s roles, responsibilities, and harmful gender norms, and worked with communities to develop Action Plans to address any harmful norms.
Engaged over 400 project participants and partners in dialogue about gender-based violence, with women’s group facilitators showing an increased commitment to addressing the issue.

Participants of EMWE

4.463 women	2.595 men
from ethnic minority communities, authorities and partners