The Enhancement of Food Security for Ethnic Minorities in Northern Vietnam (EFSEM) project will strengthen food security for ethnic minority small-holder farmers in Lai Chau province in the Northwest region of Vietnam. The project’s overall goal is: Ethnic minority women and their families have improved food security through agricultural livelihood diversification and climate resilience. This goal will be achieved by developing and adopting climate-resilient livelihoods, improving agricultural productivity, enhancing women’s capacity to cope with climate shocks, and their participation in climate change (CC) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) planning. The EFSEM Project targets four communes in Lai Chau province. The proposed project will reach at least 1,000 ethnic minority women, directly benefiting 4,500 people.

EFSEM is part of CARE’s long-term programme on Remote Ethnic Minority Women, and will be implemented in InfoAct locations. The project will leverage a lot of InfoAct’s capacity building interventions, savings groups and other infrastructure such as loudspeakers to disseminate climate information, and mini-meteorology stations. EFSEM is also built on CARE’s 30-year experience in supporting ethnic minority women’s economic empowerment in Vietnam. EFSEM will adopt CARE International (CI) SuPER approach to smallholder agriculture that promotes Sustainable, Productive, Equitable and Resilient livelihoods, and food and nutrition security, in a changing climate.

The baseline study was conducted in June, July, and August 2021 in four communes participating in the Project, namely Than Thuoc, Trung Dong, Ho Mit and Nam So communes of Tan Uyen district. 

The baseline study’s purposes:

(1) To establish baseline information that serves for before-and-after comparison with the final evaluation;

(2) To identify gender differences and the gender norms that potentially constrain the project achievements;

(3) To provide the gender-sensitive recommendations on the overall project’s interventions in terms of designing and planning project’s activities, with potential adjustment in interventions;

(4) To inform setting achievable targets for project indicators.

Reference link: https://www.care.org.vn/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/EFSEM-LOreal-project-brief-ENG-VI.pdf