Accompanying social impact businesses

An expert from the project giving a speech at the seminar

This is an activity under the project on “Leveraging Vietnam's Social Impact Business Ecosystem in Response to COVID-19” (ISEE-COVID Project), which is jointly developed and carried out by Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD) and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in collaboration with the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) (through the Enterprise Development Agency). The project focuses on improving the capacity of social impact businesses; strengthening the coordination between intermediaries to support the social impact businesses, as well as strengthening the capacity of policy formulation and implementation of State management agencies.

The seminar focused on sharing the role, the status of operation, along with challenges and opportunities facing social impact businesses in the trend of economic development associated with the achievement of sustainable development goals; and on guiding the implementation of State policies to support small and medium-sized social impact businesses according to current regulations of the State.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Hong Lam, Deputy Director of the ISEE-COVID Project Management Board, expected that through the seminar, policy makers and the intermediaries supporting the social impact businesses would better understand the difficulties and needs of the social impact businesses. From there, specific and practical solutions will be provided so as to accompany the social impact businesses, contributing to ensuring livelihoods for vulnerable groups (especially women, people with disabilities, and ethnic minorities). As a result, promoting the businesses to further contribute to the sustainable development.