Vietnam is experiencing rapid development in its digital sector. A growing proportion of the population has a smartphone (around 80% according to various studies). The Ministry of Information and Communications aims to continue supporting this increase. The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector is expanding, and provides new opportunities. However, workers are not sufficiently trained to meet these needs. This is even more pronounced for low-skilled workers, creating a growing digital gap between those who are able to acquire these skills and those who are too far away.
Indeed, digital skills are a key factor for economic and social integration and empowerment of youth. Disparities in access to digital skills learning are therefore a factor of social inequalities. Moreover, inequalities in access to digital skills are rooted in entrenched social inequalities. Access to digital skills is lower in rural areas, and women tend to have less access than men, due to traditional gender norms that confine them more to care and domestic life.
The Industrial Workers Go Digital (IWGD) project aims to strengthen young women’s digital skills in the rural area of Quảng Nam Province before and after joining the labour force in Industrial Zones (IZs) to improve their prospects for a better education and access to decent employment. It also aims to strengthen civil society organisations in building digital skills and awareness among youth to accelerate an inclusive digital transformation in Vietnam.
The project targets young people before they migrate to work in industrial zones, by working on digital education with school teachers in Nam Giang district, so that young students in formal schools in Nam Giang district are better educated on information and technology through improved digital education curriculum and extra-curricular activities. Nam Giang district is one of the 62 poorest districts of Vietnam, with a poverty rate of 44.34%. It is also one of Quảng Nam’s mountainous districts with the largest number of young people moving to work in IZs.
IWGD also deals with informal education among ethnic minority communities in the district, to ensure that young women in the communities, who may potentially leave home to work in IZs, have strengthened digital capacities before joining the labour force in IZs.
Meanwhile, the project is engaging with workers (mostly women) already working in the industrial zones of Dien Ban district (one of the districts in the province with the highest concentration of IZs), in collaboration with the Women’s Unions present in these zones, ensuring that young migrant IZ workers, including female workers, strengthen their technical skills and gain confidence through the improvement of their social and digital skills and networking capacities.
The Women’s Union will be strengthened in terms of digital capacity building when WU members become trainers after joining the Training of Trainers course. In the meantime, digital content will be better integrated in formal and informal education, and generated in high schools in Quang Nam province.
The project aims to address digital education issues from an intersectional perspective. The consortium takes a “gender and development” (rather than “women and development”) approach, i.e. it will be aware of the power dynamics at play in the digital education of men and women targets. Emphasis will be placed on empowerment opportunities provided by digital technologies, while remaining vigilant about issues of gender-based violence that may emerge online. This is why the gender approach also intersects with a youth and inclusive approach, since the aim is to make vulnerable young men and women actors in their own education and empowerment.
Since 2020, GRET and its partners have been exploring new ways to support young people through the JADE programme (Young people as stakeholders in the future). This initiative aims to promote a comprehensive approach encompassing the economic, professional, social, civic, environmental and climate aspects of youth integration. The idea is to strengthen young people’s power to take action, both individually and collectively, so that they can become stakeholders in their own development and that of their communities.
JADE benefits from the support of Agence française de développement and is being rolled out in 9 countries: Cambodia, Congo, Guinea, Haiti, Madagascar, Mauritania, Myanmar, Senegal and Vietnam.
Strengthen young women’s digital skills in the rural area of Quảng Nam Province before and after joining the labour force in the industrial zones to improve their prospects for a better education and access to decent work.
