Short Name
PI
Address Line 1
8th floor, Song Kim Building
Address Line 2
Street - Number and Name
278, Thuy Khue Street
District
City
Ha Noi
Province – Vietnam
Phone
+84-4-3728 1629/30/31
Fax
+84-4-3728 1632
Email Address
Contact Person – Vietnam
Chu Mai Le, Office and Human Resources Manager
Vietnam Website
International Website
International Headquarters
Mission Statement
Prosperity Initiative‘s objective is to achieve large scale poverty reduction through market forces.Our portfolio of activities in Viet Nam, Lao PDR and Cambodia span a project cycle of analysis and planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation and impact assessment. Prosperity Initiative’s team of national and international staff from the private and development sectors engages in the following activities related to market chains and commodity sectors relevant to the poor: (1) Conducts analysis of markets and supply chains, including competitiveness in a global market system, to identify opportunities and weaknesses and assess the likely poverty impact on different groups of people through different interventions. (2) Works on pilot projects or at full scale implementation along the entire supply chain to create more value in the industry that can be captured by poor farmers and workers. (3) Builds partnerships with progressive businesses and policy makers to demonstrate new opportunities and improvements in rural industries and ultimately assist them to lead the local change in market sectors that reduce poverty. (4) Provides training to farmers on improved production and management techniques, typically through partnerships with specialist service providers. (5) Provides technical support to small rural businesses to develop new market opportunities and build successful businesses. (6) Facilitates investor linkages and provides advice to larger businesses that can act as lead firms in the domestic market chain for products ultimately sourced from poor farmers. (7) Assists local and national government agencies to analyse the market and poverty reduction opportunities in different sectors and use this to integrate economic and poverty reduction strategy and policy. (8) Conducts routine M&E of key indicators of project activities and the market system. By maintaining a focus on high level indicators such as farmgate price, adapts activities and resourcing as needed to respond to changed market conditions. (9) Conducts detailed poverty impact evaluations of its work and the industries it supports. (10) Measures established MDG1 indicators of people moving across formal poverty lines in terms of poverty headcount and poverty gap
History of operations in Vietnam
Prosperity Initiative started as a bamboo supply chain project in northern Viet Nam. The poverty impact potential uncovered in this project, and the methodologies developed during it, eventually led our strategic partners to support the creation of a separate organisation called Prosperity Initiative. In 2005, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) began work on a bamboo supply chain project in Thanh Hoa Province, Viet Nam. In 2006, Oxfam Hong Kong and IFC-MPDF built on this experience and jointly coordinated a bamboo sector feasibility study in Viet Nam, Lao PDR and Cambodia. Prosperity Initiative was created by Oxfam Hong Kong in 2006 to provide a long-term home to the Mekong Bamboo programme and early stage work in other sectors. After the bamboo feasibility study was released in mid 2006, Oxfam Hong Kong, IFC and a growing number of partners continued to build on the work in the Thanh Hoa bamboo supply chain, working with local bamboo processing factories. Work began on a number of other pilot supply chains and bamboo sector initiatives in the region. A database of over 350 bamboo businesses in Viet Nam was created, and links with bamboo business associations and investors in China were formed to assist in kick-starting the sector. This work also began to build a strong base across government, development agency and private sector partners. These activities are now coordinated under Prosperity Initiative's Mekong Bamboo programme. In November 2007, the programme formally separated from Oxfam Hong Kong to form Prosperity Initiative CIC, a UK-registered social enterprise.