The Mekong Vitality Expanded (MVE) is transforming women from micro-enterprise operators to entrepreneurs who are business leaders, fully engaged in their communities. The project will enable women by equipping them with an understanding of sound business practices, market forces, and trade related opportunities. Facilitated by mobile technology, the program increases women’s access to key sources of market information and guides them to use that information to identify and seize more business opportunities.

Pact is augmenting the business development training for an estimated 300 of the 6,000 participants in its WORTH program. At the start of the project, Pact conducted a rapid assessment of barriers to women’s full engagement in business, adapted from the USAID Diagnostic of Women Entrepreneurs. The purpose of the assessment was to garner an in-depth understanding of the business environment as well as the capacity and needs of Vietnamese participants. Pact then developed an augmented business training curriculum based on the results of the startup assessment.

In order to introduce mobile technology for an e-learning application/platform of the business materials, the assessment integrated information about participants’ current level of capacity, the type of technology and devices currently most used by the women and their frequency of use. Members of existing WORTH groups will be given the opportunity to self-select into the MVE activities.