PROJECT SUMMARY: 

The project supports vulnerable ethnic minority women, their households, household businesses, and cooperatives disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 to become more resilient and adaptive in the fast-changing post-COVID-19 context by ensuring that they can equally access the cash transfer and support needed to protect their livelihoods and build a sustainable & resilient recovery plan for building sustainable input supplies and logistics, diversifying markets and expanding businesses.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES:

Objective 1: Support the Government of Viet Nam (GoV) in developing the social cash transfer scheme

• Develop a process for identifying and providing cash transfer to people in rural and EM areas impacted by COVID-19, who have not been reached by the GoV social protection support package
• Accelerate digitalization of cash transfer for enhancing the timeliness, transparency, and accountability of the social assistance services in Viet Nam

Objective 2: The project complements and builds on the broader UNDP response to COVID-10 in Vietnam

• Build on the Country Office (CO)’s experience in supporting the GoV’s/Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in digitalizing the cash transfers of the GoV’s COVID-19 social protection package and
• Work in close cooperation with the UN COVID-19 Response and Recovery program that is funded by the Multi-Partner Trust Fund (MPTF), especially on the CO-led component that involves cash transfer to poor people in Ha Giang province.
• Experiment and test approaches for simple (digitalized) process of self-registration, verification by local authorities, iv) strengthen partnerships with local mass/women organizations and communities and
• Identify feasible digital solutions for making cash transfers.

EXPECTED RESULTS: (bullet points)

• Recovery capacities of EM women strengthened through social cash transfers: Social cash transfer provided through digital/e-pay services to at least 1,100 vulnerable EM women/households (especially women-headed and People with Disabilities) including new poor or near-poor households, households with informal workers who are not or under-served by the Government’s COVID-19 social protection package, to cover their essential needs.
• Recovery action-plans of EM women-led cooperatives developed and tested through coaching and mentoring services: 100 affected EM women cooperatives in two provinces of Bac Kan and Dak Nong (including 49 that were supported by UNDP since 2019) developed and tested their sustainable and resilient recovery plans with feasible actions for building  sustainable input supplies and logistics,  diversifying markets and expanding their businesses in the fast-changing post-COVID-19 context
• The results from the coherent implementation of several CO initiatives will inform national policymakers’ efforts in refining the expansion of the social assistance system, making cash transfer programs reach the vulnerable groups in a more inclusive, timely, and effective manner in crisis situations such as COVID-19.