With poor, uneducated parents, ethnic minority girls and young women residing in Vietnam’s mountainous Central Highlands region are likely to live in extreme poverty and miss out on life-enhancing educational opportunities. Poverty and low levels of education expose the girls and young women to dangers such as human trafficking. Tragically, some girls and young women leave their rural villages to find work in larger cities, but end up trapped in a life of labor or sexual exploitation. The situation is exacerbated by a language barrier: many girls and young women from minority ethnic groups cannot understand Vietnamese, which is the official teaching language in schools across Vietnam. Owing to their inability to comprehend and participate in the lessons, many girls drop out of school.
W4’s field program works to protect and empower vulnerable girls in Da Lat and in villages, such as Phu Hiep and Pleiku, by providing adapted educational opportunities and vocational training. Equipped with skills and qualifications, these girls and young women can secure safe and sustainable livelihoods, lifting themselves, their families and their communities out of poverty and breaking a damaging pattern of exclusion.
This program helps ensure that the girls enjoy their right to an education and can build for themselves a life of dignity, free from poverty and exploitation!