Challenges to Rural Poverty Reduction in Viet Nam - Oxfam Blogs

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14 and improve monitoring and evaluation systems, develop concrete regulations so that people and communities can practice their supervisory rights. Target social security based on multi-dimensional poverty criteria rather than the income poverty line. 4. To design policies that both do not discriminate against migrants and actively support them in their efforts to find and secure safe employment. 5. To encourage investments in education in models such as “Semi-boarding general schools”, “Staff supporting teachers”, “Bi-lingual education” for kindergartens, and “Education and community development - Reflect”. Issue specific regulations on additional contributions, both compulsory and “optional”, in order to reduce the costs of sending children to school. Develop concrete regulations to improve the roles of parent’s representative boards in supervising the school’s affairs. Increase vocational counselling services to enable students to select courses that will help then find employment on graduation. 6. To reform agricultural extension services in mountainous ethnic minority areas that are more beneficial to the poor. Replace conventional training methods and models with participatory approaches such as “Farmer Field Schools (FFS)”, “Participatory Technology Development (PTD)”, “Farmer to Farmer”. Provide specialised training, increased allowances and direct support for the establishment of demonstration models for village agricultural extension workers. Encourage gender analysis and gender mainstreaming in agricultural extension. Increase the budget for agricultural extension projects aimed at improving and changing the livelihoods of the poor, paying special attention to low-cost investment models, suitable to conditions and livelihood strategies of poor ethnic minorities. 7. To undertake comprehensive investment (e.g. in the form of Community Development Fund - CDF) in poverty reduction programmes at the commune level via a decentralized financing mechanism with community ownership (i.e. “block grant”), along with substantial and continued assistance in enhancing participatory socio-economic planning, financial management and communitybased supervisory capacities. Recommendations obtained in participatory planning exercises at the grassroots level should be consolidated and reflected in plans to deliver public services (e.g. agriculture, agro- extension, and education, health, and water supply services). To institutionalize the participatory socio-economic planning approach and regulation on the use of decentralized financial at commune level, based on experiences and lessons learned from some provinces taking part in this initiative over the past years. Tools promoting the voice and empower farmers should be applied widely (such as “Citizen Report Card”, “Community Score Card”, and “Social auditing”).
INTRODUCTION 15 Objectives of the Report Viet Nam has changed rapidly over the last 25 years. Once one of the world’s poorest nations, Viet Nam has made tremendous achievements in economic growth and poverty reduction. In 1993, nearly 60% of the Viet Viet Nam population was living in poverty. This figure dropped to only 14 percent in 2008 3 . The Government of Viet Nam (GOV) undertook a number of reforms between 2007 and 2012, with the objective of promoting further economic development and lifting the remaining poor households out of poverty. Viet Nam’s full accession to the WTO in early 2007 marked an important milestone in the country’s integration into the global economy. The country’s new role in the world economic order has brought both opportunities and challenges, particularly for poor communities and ethnic minority peoples in mountainous areas. Oxfam and ActionAid International Viet Nam (ActionAid), in cooperation with local partners decided to monitor the impact of WTO accession and subsequent reform by establishing a participatory poverty monitoring network to: “Carry out periodical poverty monitoring of vulnerable groups in specific communities, in the context of WTO accession and the government’s projected reform policies up to 2012, to provide analysis and recommendations for policy dialogue and implementation of programmes and projects by ActionAid, Oxfam and their partners.” The goals of the annual poverty monitoring exercises are to: • Provide qualitative information on poverty and development for use in conjunction with statistical and survey data collected from other sources. • Establish an ‘early warning’ network to identify negative impacts, especially on poor and vulnerable people, following accession to the WTO. • Improve local capacity and enhance people’s participation in monitoring, with a view to making poverty alleviation more effective and equitable. Methodology Survey Site Selection A rural poverty monitoring network was established in nine provinces where Oxfam and ActionAid were already active. One typical commune in each province was selected for fieldwork, with the exception of Ninh Thuan province where two communes were selected. In each commune two villages were chosen, one close to the commune centre, and the other further away and facing more difficult conditions (Previous involvement in an ActionAid or Oxfam project was not a precondition for a commune being chosen). A total of ten communes (twenty villages) were selected (see Table 1). The goal of the monitoring network is not to generate representative statistical data; rather, the goal is to provide qualitative evidence, including people’s own testimony, as a platform for policy dialogue and development programme formulation. Monitoring points were specifically chosen to sample typical livelihoods and poverty status and to reflect the complex diversity of conditions across the sites surveyed. 3 GSO, “Viet Nam Household Living Standards Survey 2008”, Statistics Publishing House, Ha Noi, 2010
Page 3: PARTICIPATORY POVERTY MONITORING IN
Page 7: PREFACE 1 7 In early 2007, Viet Nam
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Part 3 Toward Sustainable Rural Pov
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