GeoComply and VinaCapital Foundation support ethnic minority female students in Vietnam

On April 19, 2023, in Ho Chi Minh City, GeoComply generously donates 207,900,000 VND to the Brighter Path program of VinaCapital Foundation (VCF) to support Brighter Path Girls’ Clubs in ethnic minority rural mountainous high schools. Girls’ Clubs activities improve the lives and livelihoods of millions of disadvantaged ethnic minority female students, supporting them to become self-confident, well-educated, and able to take responsibility for their futures. The donation will implement extracurricular clubs and upgrade rural ethnic schools with multi-media technical capability, providing other digital avenues for not only the ethnic minority girls but for all students to self-educate and explore the world wide web. Multi-media capability is necessary to be sure the Club groups can access the correct BPGC digital educational material and ensure consistency of program knowledge transfer across Vietnam.

VCF created the Brighter Path program and works alongside the government to empower disadvantaged, vulnerable and marginalized rural ethnic minority girls in Vietnam through formal and informal education and training.  In 2010, VCF launched the Brighter Path Scholars Program, a 7-year scholarship and empowerment program for Vietnam’s brightest ethnic minority girls, providing them opportunities to fulfill their dreams, change their lives, and bring benefits to their communities through education. Formal education is crucial for personal and community improvement, but it is the coupling of that formal education with informal empowerment education and training for the girls and its power to cascade through the community, that is so vital to overcome harmful traditional beliefs, outdated customs, and practices and build a sustainable economy in rural ethnic communities.

In 2019, VCF initiated the Brighter Path Girls’ Clubs (BPGC) in ethnic minority rural mountainous high schools. Brighter Path Girls’ Clubs is a practical, low-cost model to combat social prejudice and outdated paternalistic customs that create insurmountable obstacles to the girls’ development in rural Vietnamese communities. By teaching the four core education elements: sexual and reproductive health, financial literacy, leadership skills, and legal rights, the girls benefit from “strength in numbers” and are provided with empowering knowledge, confidence, and essential skills to overcome individual and collective barriers to sustainable cultural change and poverty reduction. This creates a positive force for change by practicing activities that support the understanding and implementation of gender equality and the improvement in the status of women. The Brighter Path Girls’ Club is implemented in Thai Nguyen, Quang Nam, and Tra Vinh Provinces, benefiting thousands of local ethnic minority female students and significantly improving club members’ knowledge and perceptions. GeoComply has accompanied and sponsored the program since 2022.

This year, with the continuous support from GeoComply, the Brighter Path Girls’ Club will begin national implement in over the next three years in the provinces where discrimination is worst. The selected initial areas reflect the priorities of the Prime Minister in Decision 353 for the 74 most impoverished and underdeveloped districts in Vietnam. The Brighter Path Program aims to transform ethnic culture by supporting the government of Vietnam in targeted education for ethnic minority girls, developing their self-reliance, confidence, and determination to overcome outdated customs. This will also reduce the unacceptably high school drop-out rate, lower the rate of child marriages, increase high school graduation and college enrollment, reduce trafficking, decrease infant and maternal mortality, and promote gender equality in ethnic minority communities.

“GeoComply has been actively involved in charitable activities for several years, extending a helping hand to orphans, individuals with disabilities, and families affected by Covid. Our main focus is on empowering girls through partnerships with non-profit organizations like VCF. Every year, we proudly award scholarships to female students who have demonstrated outstanding academic achievements at universities, providing them with valuable career opportunities as interns. In 2021, we also launched a special initiative called <Code> Like A Girl-Vietnam, which hosts annual coding tournaments to inspire and motivate more females to pursue careers in the information technology industry and this program is now entering its third season.” – Happy Nguyen, General Director of GeoComply shares.

“We are deeply thankful for the support from GeoComply to many of our programs, especially in providing quality education opportunities for vulnerable, disadvantaged, and often marginalized ethnic girls,” states Rad Kivette, CEO of VinaCapital Foundation. “The partnership between GeoComply and VCF will prepare and enable hundreds of disadvantaged children and ethnic minority girls to become strong independent citizens who contribute substantially to the economic growth of Vietnam.”

Beginning in 2022, the partnership between the two organizations has provided free education assistance and scholarships to 38 disadvantaged Covid-19 orphans in Ho Chi Minh City, established one Girls’ Club to annually empower 40 high school ethnic minority girls transforming them into agents of change in their rural communities, and provided life-saving heart surgeries to 10 disadvantaged children with congenital heart defects. GeoComply exhibits a dedicated collaborative commitment to the development of underserved communities in Vietnam, especially children and women.