Nestlé Vietnam contributes to enhancing women's role throughout the supply chain

In order to contribute to improving women's empowerment and gender equality in the workplace and the whole value chain, Nestlé Vietnam has accompanied the Partnership for Sustainable Agricultural in Vietnam (PSAV) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to organize a workshop about gender in agrifood value chains with the topic "Sharing experiences in strengthening the role of women in some agrifood value chains".

NESCAFÉ Plan contributes to enhancing the role of women in coffee farming

As a pioneer, Nestlé Vietnam has shared practical models applied in the NESCAFÉ Plan Program, aiming to enhance women's empowerment and gender equality. According to Ms. Le Thi Hoai Thuong, Senior Corporate Affairs Manager, Nestlé Vietnam, in addition to implementing a sustainable coffee farming program towards the regenerative agriculture to improve the quality of Vietnamese coffee beans, reduce emissions and supporting to improve farmers' income, the NESCAFÉ Plan program implemented by Nestlé in the Central Highlands provinces since 2011 has also contributed to enhancing the role of women in sustainable coffee farming.

Within the framework of the NESCAFÉ Plan program, Nestlé company organizes training to improve knowledge of sustainable coffee farming for farmers, especially encourages the participation of women. In the coffee farming sector, women are often direct workers. Therefore, female workers mastering farming techniques will greatly contribute to promoting sustainable and effective agricultural practices. Nestlé focuses on training a team of female coffee farmer group leaders, helping them become a bridge to convey the project's farming knowledge and experience to other farmer households. By 2022, through NESCAFÉ Plan, 274 farmer groups (with 21,000 farmer households participating) have been established, of which 30% of farmer group leaders are women.

In addition, the program also helps women equip themselves with knowledge of farm household financial management and proficiently use digital applications to manage business activities, replacing paper management. Thanks to that, more than 80% of women have participated in investment and production decisions, as well as managing farm households' financial reports, helping women to be autonomous in farm household economic management and upgrade their roles in the family as well as in society.

Not only Ms. Nhung's family, by 2022, Nestlé has supported 21,000 farming households to access and practice sustainable coffee production according to the 4C criteria, and deployed training for 330,000 farmers. Accordingly, farmers' income increased by 30 - 100% compared to before participating in NESCAFÉ Plan.

In addition to the NESCAFÉ Plan, the "Nestlé accompanies women" program based on strategic cooperation between Nestlé Vietnam and the Vietnam Women's Union has attracted more than 4,600 rural women in the period 2020-2022. The program has helped empower rural women, equipped them with business skills and helped women have opportunities to increase their income.