For Nghe An women to start businesses and start businesses effectively
On the occasion of the 94th anniversary of the founding of the Vietnam Women's Union (October 20, 1930 - October 20, 2024), Comrade Nguyen Thi Quynh Hoa - Member of the Provincial Party Executive Committee, President of the Nghe An Provincial Women's Union had an interview with Nghe An Newspaper about the start-up and economic movement of Nghe An women today.
On the occasion of the 94th anniversary of the founding of the Vietnam Women's Union (October 20, 1930 - October 20, 2024), Comrade Nguyen Thi Quynh Hoa - Member of the Provincial Party Executive Committee, President of the Nghe An Provincial Women's Union had an interview with Nghe An Newspaper about the start-up and economic movement of Nghe An women today.
Plum Blossom(Implementation) • October 20, 2024
Reporter:Dear Comrade! At the 2024 National Final Round of the “Women’s Creative Startup and Green Transformation” Competition, which has just ended, Nghe An won 2 prizes, including the highest prize - the Special Prize. Could you please share some information about this competition with readers of Nghe An Newspaper?
Comrade Nguyen Thi Quynh Hoa:The “Women Start-up” Contest was initiated and launched by the Vietnam Women’s Union in 2018. The contest is held annually with different themes with the aim of arousing the spirit and creativity of women in economic development; encouraging women’s proactive and active participation in the start-up movement, bringing economic benefits to women and the community. The contest also aims to promote the effective implementation of the Project “Supporting Women Start-ups for the 2017-2025 period” approved by the Prime Minister in Decision No. 939, dated June 30, 2017.
In response to this competition, every year, the Women's Union of Nghe An province has organized a startup festival to promote and spread products and startup projects led by women. The association focuses on evaluating and selecting quality projects based on the principles of "transparency, equality, and competition" with clear criteria, the level of evaluation is adjusted to increase competitiveness, requiring increasingly high perfection and assessment of the maturity of startup projects to participate in regional rounds and national finals. Thanks to that, Nghe An has continuously won high prizes in this competition since 2018.
In 2024 alone, the Contest with the theme "Women's creative startups and green transformation", the Provincial Women's Union selected 5 ideas to participate in the rounds and there were 2 winning ideas: 1 winning the Encouragement Prize, 1 winning the Special Prize and the idea winning the Special Prize of Ms. Nguyen Thi Men with the Project "Nutritional ecosystem from green agricultural products" participated in the national final round with 40 startup projects winning from Third Prize and above in 3 regions: North, Central, South. More specifically, Nghe An province, in addition to Ms. Men's project, also has the Project "Growing pennywort in the direction of circulating hydroponics" by Ms. Nguyen Thi Phuong of the Association of the Disabled, winning Third Prize at the regional level and being the only disabled woman in the country to participate in the national final round.
As a result, the two projects of Nghe An participating in the final round both won prizes, in which the project "Nutritional ecosystem from green agricultural products" by Ms. Nguyen Thi Men - Director of Mom Beauty Production and Trading Company Limited (Vinh city) won the Special prize and the project "Growing pennywort in the direction of circulating hydroponics" by Ms. Nguyen Thi Phuong won the Encouragement prize.
The results of the contest over the years have contributed to building and spreading the image of Nghe An women who dare to think, dare to do, dare to commit to starting a business, developing the economy with projects and ideas for green production, clean production, environmental protection and climate change response; creating products with high scientific and technological content, bringing benefits to the community.
Reporter:Could you please share more clearly about the current economic and entrepreneurial movement of women in Nghe An?
Comrade Nguyen Thi Quynh Hoa:Supporting women in economic development, starting businesses, and successfully starting a business is one of the two breakthroughs in the 2021-2026 term of Nghe An women, term XVI. Therefore, in recent times, the Provincial Women's Union has actively directed all levels of the union in the province to organize many specific and practical activities with the spirit of companionship, fueling and inspiring, helping women to boldly overcome themselves, rise up to develop the family economy and start a business, confidently pursue their passion and realize their dream of legitimately getting rich.
Specifically, from 2021 to 2024, the Provincial Women's Union also directed all levels of the union to increase the opening of training courses to improve capacity, support economic development, start-up businesses, and start-ups for 3,117 women who are business owners, cooperative managers, cooperative groups, and business owners, and support 1,222 women to start a business. Coordinated to mobilize and support vocational training for more than 25,000 female workers, and after training, more than 20,000 workers have jobs; coordinated to organize conferences, seminars, and job introductions for more than 20,000 female workers.
Women's Unions at all levels maintain connections and support loans for economic development and startups with a total outstanding loan balance of nearly VND 5,000 billion, with more than 77,000 borrowers. Unions at all levels in the province also actively support the establishment of 8 cooperatives and 73 cooperative groups led by women with 1,200 members, along with supporting knowledge on the process of building OCOP products associated with market building to spread products and promote the development of models.
The Provincial Women's Union also directed all levels of the union to pay attention to supporting members and women in developing start-up ideas, encouraging creative start-up ideas, applying science and technology, and participating in "Women's Start-up Day" organized by the Vietnam Women's Union, Nghe An Provincial People's Committee and the Provincial Women's Union. As a result, from 2018 to present, all levels of the union have mobilized and supported 715 ideas to participate in the Central and Provincial Women's Start-up Competitions.
Through specific and practical activities, women's associations at all levels have helped many women overcome many worries, boldly change their thinking, innovate in labor, production, job search and self-employment, economic development, income improvement; especially boldly start a business, confidently pursue their passion and realize their dream of becoming rich legitimately. The economic and business movement among cadres, members and women has contributed to promoting economic development and reducing poverty in the province, including more than 2,297 households headed by women escaping poverty in the past 3 years.
Reporter: Dear comrade! In the coming time, what activities will the Provincial Women's Union continue to have to continue promoting and strongly spreading the start-up movement among women in the province?
Comrade Nguyen Thi Quynh Hoa:Startups and innovation are identified as one of the important driving forces for the development of the country and homeland. And as shared above, supporting startups is one of the two breakthroughs in the 2021-2026 term of Nghe An women.
Currently, the Central and the province have issued many policies, mechanisms and support policies to encourage start-ups and innovation, including women. In our province, based on the advice of the Standing Committee of the Provincial Women's Union, the Provincial People's Committee has approved two projects: "Propaganda and mobilization to support women in developing OCOP products; promoting and connecting the consumption of goods to contribute to local economic development in the period of 2023 - 2027" and the project "Supporting cooperatives managed by women, creating jobs for female workers by 2030". Every year, the Provincial People's Committee always pays attention to allocating funds to implement Project 939 - "Supporting women to start a business in the period of 2017-2025" of the Government.
In order to continue to effectively implement the policies and projects of the Central Government and the province, contributing to promoting and spreading the start-up movement and economic development among cadres, members and women; Women's Unions at all levels in the province need to further strengthen activities to support women in starting a business, especially capital support, legal advice, training to improve women's comprehensive capacity, and promote the realization of women's business ideas. Along with that, it is necessary to spread the response to the "Women's Start-up" Contest associated with the "Start-up Festival", forums, activities to commend and honor to encourage, motivate, inspire, spread the desire to start a business, innovate, develop the economy, and strive to get rich among women of all classes.
To do so, women's associations at all levels continue to proactively and actively advise local Party committees and authorities on activities to support women's start-ups in particular and support economic development for women in general. At the same time, strengthen coordination and connection with all levels, sectors, organizations and enterprises to implement activities to support women in innovation, creativity in business development and start-ups, and select feasible business start-up ideas and models to support implementation.
In addition, continue to promote the development of cooperative models, cooperative groups, and large-scale production linkage groups in the direction of linkage, application of high technology, safe production, adaptation to climate change; organize activities to support product consumption connection, trade promotion for women entrepreneurs; contribute with the whole province to realize the aspiration of making Nghe An develop rapidly, sustainably, comprehensively, civilized and modern, imbued with the cultural identity of Nghe An in the spirit of Resolution No. 39 of the Politburo.
Reporter:Thank you for this exchange!
