Vietnam Unilever Fund Expand Cooperation to Improve Women's Lives

On 17 April, the Conference on reviewing the inter-sector cooperation programme “Vietnam Women Empowerment” between Vietnam Unilever Fund (UVF) and Vietnam Women's Union (VWU) in 2008 and announcing the Program for 2009 was held at the Centre for Women and Development, 20 Thuy Khue, Hanoi.

 

This long term cooperation programme between UVF and WUV was signed and carried out from August 2006 with the following objectives: To increase incomes, improve life for poor women and residents in the project’s communes; to enhance health for women and children through improving environment and to maintain, practice personal hygiene and health care in the correct way; to improve capabilities for staff, collaborator of VWU in propagandizing and developing capabilities of women and communities.

 

After 2 years of operation, the programme carried out several projects to create jobs for poor women in rural and urban areas; to enhance living environment of families through education programs on hygiene and nutrition; micro finance to help women access to small loans for breeding, cultivation, develop household economy, improve incomes.

 

 In 2008 alone, with the sponsored budget of over VND17 billion from UVF, the program created works for 200 poor women in rural and urban areas, helped 839 needy households access to small loans; trained and enhanced knowledge of personal and family health care for over 136,000 women and residents in over 40 cities and provinces.

 

From the results and experience lessons learnt from the implementation of the programs in 2008, UVF and VWU set up a plan for 2009 with larger scale to multiply the number of women benefiting from the program. 2009 will mark 5^th anniversary of UVF’s foundation and UVF committed stronger cooperation through intensifying investment for cooperation projects with VWU with the total budget up to over VND20 billion.