Tran Thi Thanh Toan

Tran Thi Thanh Toan is currently working as a Program Manager in the central region of Vietnam for the Sustainable Rural Development (SRD), a Vietnamese civil society organisation supporting poor rural communities to sustainably manage their own livelihoods through capacity building and supporting pro-poor policy advocacy. Toan has more than 20 years of working for both governmental and non-governmental organisations in different sectoral concerns including landmine/unexploded ordnance (UXO) victims assistance, mine risk education, public administration reform, gender equality, poverty reduction and community development, grassroots democracy, healthcare, people with disabilities, climate change adaptation, and natural disaster mitigation.

APWLD interviewed Toan in January 2021 and below is her story.

Women can do everything

Working with non-government organisations (NGO) since 1998 has provided me with many opportunities to learn about gender equality and collaborate with various NGO projects, including community-based rehabilitation. I have learned the reality at the community level. 

I joined SRD in 2010 as a program manager based in Central Vietnam and learned a lot about climate change adaptation and community-based reduction, as well as many interesting things. When we set up a team to respond to disasters, only men joined. When we asked why, women said it was because the place of men is in public and ours is the home. Seeing this made me think about why women don’t have more opportunities to explore, learn about work outside the home, and step out rather than accept what they have been given. With this idea, we launched some activities like capacity-building training.

I got the opportunity to join the second APWLD CJ FPAR. We had training in Indonesia and initiated a project to encourage and mobilise women to join the rapid response team together with men. The chairman of the People’s Committee officially recognised that it was our success in advocating for women to do what people thought they couldn’t do in the past. Women assumed that their place was at home doing chores and taking care of children and parents. However, they can also do other jobs, such as preparing for disasters and adapting to climate change. It took time for women and us to realise it. Step by step, more women realised that they could do that job as good as the men and even better. For example, in persuading people for early evacuating, women do better because many of them are very skilled at communication.

Gender inequality is significant in Vietnam. However, I can see many changes in women since I began working on projects in the rural area. Nowadays, women have more opportunities to go out and interact with others. When one of my projects started in 2012, very few women were on the management board for people with disabilities, but now there are many. We also have a community-based class run by women. As a result of joining the project, doing many activities, getting more knowledge, and building their own capacities, women have gained skills and experience and even changed their attitudes and behaviour.

Growing together with APWLD

In October 2013, I was invited by an APWLD member to attend a women’s consultation in Bangladesh. I also participated in the second Climate Justice (CJ) Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) training in Indonesia and Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I learned how to mobilise women in my community.

I have had many opportunities to engage with APWLD in different activities or events. I witnessed the Asia Pacific Feminist Forum (APFF) in 2014. I saw so many women, so many feminists. It was amazing and so impressive. The third CJ FPAR training was organised back-to-back with COP20 (Conference of Parties) in Peru. I had the opportunity, for the first time in my life, to attend the COP. It felt like I was swimming in a big pool of information! I had another opportunity to attend the next COP in Paris. I shared what we did and learned from CJ FPAR in an annual workshop of Sida in Bangkok. I joined numerous activities like pre-COP activities in Bangkok, the Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD), and the next APFF in Chiang Mai in 2017. The journey is fascinating. Never in my life had I thought it would happen that way. 

APWLD could mobilise many grassroots organisations, and it made voices from the community be heard at a global level like COP. I appreciate all these opportunities that I have had with APWLD. I accepted APWLD invitations with confidence to share what I do. As a program manager and a trainer for different activities, I facilitated training about disaster risk reduction, climate adaptation, and child protection. I shared many experiences during these meetings and activities, such as using folk songs or plays to convey the message rather than going door-to-door and telling people this is climate justice. The latter is not a good way for community mobilisation. Contrary to this, songs and drama can effectively convey messages about climate justice.

When I was in the APFF in 2017, the CJ Programme Officer asked me if I wanted to become an organising committee (OC) member, and then I got the votes needed. Soon after, I joined the Regional Council (ReC), which happened naturally like breathing. I shared my points of view and the information I have. 

I learned a lot and continued my journey with FPAR, APFSD and APFF. I shared what I have learned with my colleagues and my community. If I were not engaged with APWLD, how would I have those experiences to share with people in my community? I think any opportunity with APWLD is valuable, and I highly appreciate it.

Ways moving forward

APWLD has a vast structure and maintains good communication with its members.

For Development Justice, we link it to climate justice. I shared the video made by APWLD with my community and explained what Development Justice is and why we need it. The video is exciting, and the story of the garment women worker in Bangladesh is also attractive. I attempted to link this framework to specific issues that the women in the community found familiar in the area rather than any big issues at the international level. 

Last year, on International Women’s Day, we called the Women’s Global Strike in our communities to help women be aware of their rights. For women in Central Vietnam, it was an opportunity to share their voices with women in other countries. They were free of any responsibility that their families or society, even themselves, had placed upon them that day. Dressed well, they wrote down what they want on paper.

We face many challenges. Big corporations create debt to get their profits, and we need to protect the tradition of small farmers and small communities. Although we are affected by mainstream development models, with our voices rarely heard, I prefer to keep the small farming communities, indigenous traditions, and spaces we have so far been in. Development Justice and GFMP (Globalisation, Fundamentalism, Militarism and Patriarchy) have taught me that, and I will continue to protect what we have, such as indigenous traditions and spaces in our communities, using what I have learned from APWLD.