CARE in Vietnam and Son La Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD), on March 21 launched the SURE – Sustainable and Resilient Livelihoods for Women Coffee Producers in the northern mountainous province of Son La.

Funded by The Starbucks Foundation, SURE will be implemented over 36 months in four communes in Thuan Chau and Mai Son district.

At the launching ceremony. Photo: CARE in Vietnam

Arabica coffee is one of the province's key cash crops for poverty reduction in the northwest region of Vietnam. Among approximately 20,700 hectares of arabica coffee, according to the 2023 data, Mai Son and Thuan Chau districts have the largest coffee cultivation areas in the province at present. However, natural conditions, including rising temperatures, irregular rainfalls and extreme weather events, have directly impacted farmers’ productivity and income.

Moreover, 85% of Son La’s population is from ethnic minorities, whose vulnerability to climate change is aggravated by poverty and marginalization. Given structural gender inequalities, women have limited access to knowledge, capital, social networks, and decision-making power to cope with climate change impacts.

Unpaid care burden further restricts their time availability to improve their skills and pursue diverse sources of income. Despite these barriers, women play a substantial role in climate change adaptation due to their involvement in agriculture and gender roles as caregivers.

Given these contexts, livelihood diversification is vital to improving community resilience for coffee-growing communities in Son La province, and ethnic minority women need to be part of the solution. In three years of implementation, the project is expected to reach and enhance women’s economic empowerment by increasing climate-resilient livelihood diversification for 1,500 ethnic minority women farmers in coffee-growing districts in Son La province.

Applying CARE’s Women’s Economic Empowerment Framework, SURE will introduce interventions to increase women’s decision-making power to benefit themselves, their families, and their communities. This requires equal access to and control over economic resources, assets, and opportunities as well as long-term changes in social norms and economic structures that benefit women and men equally.

According to Le Xuan Hieu, Rural Program Manager at CARE in Vietnam about the overarching aim of SURE, CARE’s inclusive economic empowerment approach will tap into resource and technical support to give women access to financial resources to improve their farming scale and access to markets. Moreover, the project also prioritizes climate change adaptation solutions to help them build sustainable livelihood various activities. The project will not only improve their farming practices, it also seek to build their capacity, which enables them to have better agency within their living environment.

SURE’s interventions also align with Son La agriculture priorities to build focused production areas and apply climate change adaptation practices.

Highlighting the strategic move of Son La province in practicing climate change adaptive farming, Cam Thi Phong, Vice Director of Son La DARD said that proactive adaptation to climate change is an urgent requirement for agriculture to develop. Son La's deeply aware of the impact of climate change on agricultural production and take strategic actions to advocate for the best practices, along with introducing farmers to appropriate adaptation solutions.

Integrating and developing agricultural production in each specific field will require different approaches, and the Son La DARD's happy that SURE will help improve local farmers’ capacity to be climate-resilient, Phong added.

Students Showcase Traditional Ao Dai and Vietnamese Coffee at Kuwait University Students of the Arabic language learning program sponsored by the Kuwait Government brought many Ao Dai, traditional food and souvenirs to Kuwait University (Arabian Peninsula) ...

Dual Impact of EVFTA On Vietnam's Coffee Exports to EU The EU is the largest market, consuming 40% of Vietnam's coffee exports. The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) is bringing both opportunities and competition in ...

Sa Pa, Vietnamese Coffee Are Praised By International Press Argentina's Infobae newspaper reported that Sa Pa is one of the 16 most beautiful small towns and Vietnamese coffee is in the top 10 best ...