Nguyen Thu Hue

Business mentor, Change Agent, Connector, Social entrepreneur

I am a founder and CEO of Centre for Marinelife Conservation and Community Development (MCD), a nongovernmental organisation pioneering in environmental protection and community development in Vietnam. Over the last 18 years since 2003, I have been fortunate to lead in a shared leadership our organization going through various stages of development. Being a women leader myself, I faced moments being so vulnerable, addressing various challenges of leadership development, and overcome these challenges through continuous learning, adapting and mentoring. My leadership journey has led me to be one of 20 outstanding community driven leaders of the Obama Fellowship 2019-2020.

I hope by sharing my own story, other younger women leaders take less time and efforts in doing the right things and doing things right for themselves, their organisations and community, not necessarily taking nearly two decades having so much struggling like I did. I would like to share our story to other part of the world, letting leaders understand that if they invested in women, not only families but the community and generations got benefit. We encourage women in all circumstances look forward to self-development and have access to learning opportunities. We will inspire all men and women that both gender have key role to play in advancing women. Other important story we would share relate to how important women led adaptive livelihoods in the journey for women and girl’s advancement especially in context of climate changes. We really want to learn from other partners on how digital and leadership skills would narrow gaps these vulnerable groups of women face and how best to implement these empowerment programs at scale.

Investing in women leaders, more resilience for all

Doing silient community work for nearly two decase in small coastal area of Vietnam, what brought me to meet President and Mrs Obama and started my journey to mentor younger leaders in my community My organisation MCD works with stakeholders to support the most vulnerable coastal communities advancing their livelihoods while conserving marine ecosystems. I am most passionate about our work supporting local coastal communities who are most vulnerable to climate risk like women and children, thriving to be recognized in their own community, advancing their economic empowerment. We address SDGs 5 for gender equality, 13 for climate actions, 14 for life below water and of course 17 for global partnership. MCD started integrating climate actions into its conservation and community empowerment program since 2008. We co-founded the network of VNGOs and Climate Change with dozens of organizations, contributed to development of action plan for climate change adaptation at district level in Red River Delta and bringing field practices to various policies dialogues relating to climate programs at national level. MCD worked with youth at coastal areas, empowered them with knowledge and skills in climate related issues. Hundreds of youth interns both internationally and domestically have joint MCD programs providing support to local grassroots community members in their adaptive livelihoods. Thousands local youth in red river delta have taken part in development of district action plan for climate change adaptation as part of local socio-economic development plan. MCD has facilitated interprovincial coordination in addressing climate change issues in biosphere reserves covering 4 provinces Nam Dinh, Thai Binh, Ninh Binh and Hai Phong, which served as foundations for 2 regional forums on red river delta. We supported women led adaptive livelihood options along coastal areas of Vietnam including red river delta, Mekong delta and central coast. MCD approach is integrated: i) directly supporting local women champions, empowered them to lead these grassroots initiatives ii) working with local leaders both men and women influencing larger groups by technical training, capacity building events, leadership and networking opportunities iii) organizing policy dialogues bringing best practices to decision makers to support women led initiatives Women empowered by MCD taking part in various livelihood options: aquaculture (shrimp, clam and others), improvement of their own garden, livestock pratices, using bio fertilizers, improvement of rice and other crops productions to be more adaptive, and reccently in addressing marine plastic waste management, better collection, sorting and reduction practices and co-management of marine resources. MCD early success in preserving Trao Reef, a local marine protected area in central coast, has been replicated in other provinces, and our work has led to broad recognition of the role of community members, including their legal right to co-manage fisheries recognised in Vietnam fisheries law 2017. MCD’s approach serves as a model for navigating the human-centered complexities of environmental conservation. Recently MCD engaged in combating IUU efforts, by building capacity for local partners on eCDT- electronic catch documentation and VMS data monitoring analysis. These efforts help conserve the remaining marine ecosystems of coral reef, mangroves along coastal areas and deltas. With extensive practical field experience in multi-stakeholder engagement and building local capacity, MCD has made meaningful contributions to enhanced local community position in partnerships for coastal resource management and provided recommendations in various national level policies. Highlights include the national action plans on climate change responses, marine plastic waste management, and co-management of aquatic resources. Experiences and successful approaches from MCD’s project implementation have also been disseminated widely to partners and the public.

cross generations partnerships building