World-renowned Japanese-born violinist Midori will travel to rural Viet Nam this week to meet and perform for villagers in a remote and poverty-stricken community where projects supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) have been working to improve conditions, the UN agency said on Monday.
As part of her annual outreach tour, Midori, who is UN Messenger for Peace, and three young musicians, will visit ethnic minority communities Vietnam's Tuyen Quang province and perform for local audiences.
While there, Midori will also meet with rural women to learn more about the challenges they face, which include extreme poverty, food scarcity and malnutrition, and the impact the IFAD-supported project has had on their lives, said the agency.
IFAD said it and the Government of Viet Nam, has recently completed the Agriculture, Farmers and Rural Areas Support Project in the Tuyen Quang, Ninh, Thuan and Gia Lai Provinces.
The goal of the project was to improve overall quality of life by increasing household incomes, food security and nutrition levels by getting local people to take part in on-farm and off-farm economic activities, as well as by increasing smallholder producers’ access to markets and private agribusiness investors, IFAD said.
Households that participated in the improved marketing of agricultural production, otherwise known as “value chains,” increased their incomes by more than 25 per cent by the end of the project, IFAD underlined.
Private investment in agribusiness in the project areas increased by 47 percent in Tuyen Quang, 123 percent in Ninh Thuan and 49 percent in Gia Lai, all exceeding the original 25 percent target.
By improving household incomes and increasing food production, the chronic malnutrition rate in children decreased by 12 percent in Tuyen Quang, 18 percent in Gia Lai and 28 percent in Ninh Thuan, exceeding the original 10 percent target.
In addition, the proportion of rural households suffering from a lack of food was reduced by 25 percent in Tuyen Quang, 47 percent in Gia Lai and 96 percent in Ninh Thuan, exceeding the original 20 percent target, said IFAD.
A total 696,801 rural people (73,800 households) benefited from the project which was carried out in 117 poor communities between 2001 and 2016. Of these, 260,834 were women, 446,964 were ethnic minorities and 249,837 were part of Viet Nam's Kinh ethnic majority.
The project, which cost US$60.9 million, was financed by an IFAD loan ($46.1 million) the Government of Viet Nam ($9.8 million) and the beneficiaries themselves ($5 million), according to IFAD.
IFAD has financed 15 rural development projects in Viet Nam since 1993 at a total cost of $565.4 million, with an IFAD investment of $377.5 million. These projects have directly benefitted more than 748,470 rural households, IFAD said.
