Unilever Vietnam has just been awarded with the highest position in the category “Community engagement and partnership” of Women's Empowerment Principle – WEPs Awards 2022 by UN Women and the Vietnam Council of Women Entrepreneurs.
Recognition for relentless efforts
The “Community engagement and partnership” category WEPs Awards this year aims to recognize businesses that promote gender equality through engaging with the community and driving partnerships, which incorporates gender equality into sustainability strategies, social responsibility activities or charity programs, especially support and cooperation activities.
This award is a recognition and proof point for the efforts of Unilever Vietnam and Sunlight in inspiring and collaborating with partners to join hands to enhance women's empowerment, create favorable conditions for women to do business to achieve economic autonomy, thereby have a stable and happy life and contribute to the country’s sustainable development regarding economic, social and environmental aspects. This is also the 3rd consecutive year that Unilever Vietnam has been honored at the WEPs Awards.
Previously, the company won “Gender-responsive marketplace” in 2021, and two categories including “Leadership commitment” and “Gender-inclusive workplace” in 2020 at this award.
“Unilever Vietnam always bears in mind the mission and commitment to promote the sustainable development of the country. SDG 5 on gender equality of the United Nations is one of the top goals that we have always promoted during the past 16 years. We think that Unilever itself could have done this well, but in order to create greater impact and reach more women across the nation, we need to drive cooperation and inspire the community to join hands with us. The award from WEPs Awards this year has once again proven our approach efficient, thereby motivating us to continue to invest and promote further cooperation relationships. Because only when society develops with harmony and equality, will businesses prosper” Ms. Le Thi Hong Nhi, Head of Communications & Corporate Affairs, Unilever Vietnam said.
Women’s economic empowerment
In order to win the prestigious award from UN Women and the Vietnam Women Entrepreneurs Council, Unilever Vietnam and Sunlight have always strived to promote cooperation with the Government, organizations and partners to implement the program “Women do business” since 2020 under the outburst of Covid-19 pandemic in Vietnam. Under that context, it had become increasingly important to help tackle the unemployment issue and provide timely support to vulnerable people.
Bearing the belief of investing in women’s economic empowerment is an effective means to drive positive progress towards gender equality, “Women do business” has inspired and facilitated women to pursue their business dreams through education and training and financial support. The program also released "double pressures" for the women who had to fulfill parallel duties: taking care of the family and making financial contributions.
In order to reach Vietnamese women through an extensive network, Unilever Vietnam and Sunlight have partnered with Vietnam Women's Union to deliver offline training courses locally with the professional trainers majoring in women start-up.
The training has been extended to online running in parallel with offline thanks to the partnership with Google, which has been enriched in content while opening the accessibility to anyone using the Internet. The training content is delivered via Youtube livestream in an engaging video format and learners can easily interact with trainers through live question & answer sessions.
In 2022, “Women do business” continues to successfully carry on the offline model with Vietnam Women's Union at scale while launching a new online model under the strategic partnership with Meta and Vietnam Women's Academy.
Collaborating with Meta, the program has built a course platform on Facebook to reach millions of Facebook users. Besides, an exclusive-designed chat bot on Messenger is also used to provide a personalized and 1-on-1 experience for women to learn online at their own convenience in terms of time and location.
Regarding the partnership with Vietnam Women's Academy, Unilever Vietnam and Sunlight have created an e-learning course for women to learn training content in full and receive a certificate from Vietnam Women's Academy when completing the course.
After nearly 3 years, the program “Women do business” has helped 100,000 women to be trained to start a business through online and offline classes; sponsored 125 typical start-up projects of women. Besides, 88% of more than 13,200 attendees surveyed said they feel more confident after participating in the training course and 99% of those will apply the lessons to their business and recommend the course to others.
By 2025, the program aims to enable 1 million Vietnamese women to follow entrepreneurship thus have better income and better life, contributing towards the gender equality movement in Vietnam.
