The challenge

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. Families of these girls and young women are often unable to afford the costs of sending their daughters to school and are forced to rely on their daughters to take care of domestic chores and/or farm work. 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.

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, such as Da Lat, but end up trapped in a life of labor or sexual exploitation. Da Lat is considered one of Vietnam’s major destinations for the internal trafficking of girls and young women.

The solutions we're proposing

You can help break the cycle of poverty and protect a vulnerable girl from a poor ethnic minority community in Vietnam by helping her to secure an education and vital skills and qualifications, so that she can obtain safe employment.

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.

The impact of giving

A small donation can make a life-changing difference for a girl from an impoverished ethnic minority community! By donating to pay for a girl’s school fees and/or her school uniform, you can help ensure that she enjoys her right to an education and can build for herself a life of dignity, free from poverty and exploitation!