Case study on women's empowerment in Mai Chau

The SWITCH-Asia project ’Sustainable Product Innovation’ (’SPIN’) was implemented in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam with the objective of fostering innovation across several sectors, in particular food processing, furniture, footwear, textile and handicrafts in order to improve the environmental and societal quality of products and enhance their competitiveness. 

SPIN supported 500 companies in various ways that encompassed development of new products, re-designing products, marketing support and training on sustainable product innovation, resulting in better design, improved quality and higher value of products that were created locally through cleaner processes. 

In this part of the project, SPIN provides supply for the social enterprise Hoa Ban+ to benefitted local poor, low-educated, disabled and socially marginalised H'Mong ethnic women in Mai Chau district in Vietnam’s northwest Hoa Binh province. 

Center for Creativity and Sustainability Study and Consultancy (CCS), which developed out of the SPIN project, still acts as a channel for further networking and dissemination of the social enterprise Hoa Ban+ products in the project. 

For more details, please read SWITCH-Asia's publication here. (p.30-31)