Market System Development (MSD)
GREAT 2 aims to enhance the economic empowerment of ethnic minority women in Son La and Lao Cai by targeting agriculture and tourism markets with growth potential that involve these women. Through rigorous analysis, it identifies barriers to their market access and forms partnerships with relevant market actors to address these obstacles. GREAT 2 supports partners with technical assistance and financial co-investment to mitigate risks and foster innovation.
Building on the results and learning of phase 1, GREAT 2’s ambition is to turn innovative ideas into sustainable solutions that go beyond a single actor or market and will realise benefits for large numbers of ethnic minority women. To do this, GREAT 2 works to promote and replicate innovative and inclusive market solutions, as well as to stimulate policy dialogue, in order to enable other market actors and, importantly, more ethnic minority women to benefit from what we call ‘systemic’ change.
Key principles
SYSTEMIC INTERVENTION
GREAT 2 applies the Market Systems Development (MSD) approach to address systemic dysfunctions impacting ethnic minority women in Vietnam. The MSD approach aims to strengthen system functions and key actors, targeting critical constraints to improve the system’s responsiveness to the needs of ethnic minority women and their communities. This involves building system capacity and resilience to ensure those systems better serve these populations.
FACILITATIVE ROLE
Facilitation is key to achieving sustainable, systemic change by embedding functions and services within the system through actors with long-term capacity and incentives. GREAT 2 aims to catalyse public and private sector actors to adopt new roles and practices through temporary support and without becoming reliant on the support of GREAT 2. The Program actively seeks to minimise intervention distortion, guided by a clear exit strategy.
SUSTAINABLE CHANGE
The MSD approach aims to create the foundation for lasting, inclusive change by equipping systems and system actors to adapt to future needs, enhancing resilience amongst ethnic minority women and their communities. It emphasises addressing systemic constraints and ensuring that solutions evolve with changing environments, sustaining impact and reducing dependency on Overseas Development Assistance (ODA).
LARGE-SCALE IMPACT
By targeting long-term, transformational change the ambition of GREAT 2 is to benefit large numbers of ethnic minority women engaged in the systems in which the Program works. As more inclusive practices, services and business models emerge, the Program actively supports the process of wider uptake and replication across systems so that benefits reach beyond the immediate partnerships supported by GREAT 2.
Women’s Economic Empowerment
We are working to enable women to access economic opportunities, determine their own involvement, be recognised for the value of their contributions and receive equitable economic returns. Our approach to women’s economic empowerment focuses on:
Approach
REACH
REACH
Market actors work to ensure economic development, income-generating opportunities, financial and support services, market platforms and networks reach and actively involve ethnic minority women.
BENEFIT
BENEFIT
Adjustments to market systems (i.e. systemic change) work to benefit ethnic minority women through gainful employment, business opportunities, access to services and networks that increase their income and capabilities.
EMPOWER
EMPOWER
Adjustments to market systems enable ethnic minority women to make and implement economic and life decisions that bolster their quality of life, leadership and social status within the household, community and market.
WEE Focus
The vision for GREAT is for “Women living in the Northwest Vietnam have improved social and economic statys abd ubcreased resilience. “Achieving women’s economic empowerment is fundamental to this vision. Women’s economic empowerment is more than achieving increased incomes for ethnic minority women. This is why GREAT is addressing social norms and beliefs, cultural and institutional practices for behaviour change by market actors within communities, market value chains, government and with ethnic minority women themselves.
GREAT’s market investments across agriculture, tourism, access to finance, policy engagement, women’s entrepreneurship and leadership and digital transformation include a set of inclusion agenda (known as GEDSI Objectives) that guides the design of each investment and holds them accountable for achieving specific inclusion changes.
GREAT works towards achieving explicit GEDSI objectives. These include increasing: (1) market skills and knowledge (capacity); (2) confidence, bargaining power and leadership; (3) access to market goods and services; (4) incomes and livelihood opportunities; and (5) the enabling environment – both formally, through policies and regulations, and informally, through cultural practices that reduce work burdens on ethnic minority women and enables them to participate in markets on equal footing.