Factory Workers and Poetry: How Vietnamese Organizations Are Reaching New Audiences with Creative Family Planning Approaches

By Jordan Hatcher, Associate, Asia and Rapid Response Mechanism

In a journey
Suddenly
we met
And we were in love
Then we became a family

Early marriage, incest, sexual violence, and unwanted pregnancy: generally not the common subjects of a book of poetry, yet they’re the themes that emerged from 70 paintings, stories, and poems featured in a collection developed by the Center for Creative Initiatives in Health and Population (CCIHP). CCIHP is a Vietnamese nonprofit organization finding new and creative ways to support the sexual reproductive health and rights of young people, including LGBTQ and ethnic minority youth.

Through support of the FP2020 Rapid Response Mechanism, CCIHP collected and disseminated art and stories as part of a broader advocacy agenda to inform policy makers on the needs of ethnic minority youth to promote an inclusive review and update of the Vietnamese youth law. Evidence has shown the current youth law and youth development strategy (2011–2020), which specifies the rights of young people and responsibilities of youth organizations, the state, family, and society toward young people, has not proven very effective in practice. These creative pieces were presented to UNFPA and the Ministry of Home Affairs alongside a set of recommendations on continued government investment, promotion of gender equality, and youth empowerment in family planning programs in order to revitalize the law and improve its impact in supporting the rights of young people. Additionally, the project aimed to address low uptake of modern contraceptives by ethnic minorities. It educated more than 1,500 ethnic minority youth on family planning and reproductive health and rights, and ultimately supported Viet Nam’s FP2020 commitment to increase the MCPR for married women from 67.5% in 2015 to 70% in 2020.

In a similar effort to reach the hardest to reach, last year UNFPA wrapped up an additional RRM-supported project to improve access to and use of family planning information, counseling, and quality modern contraceptive services for unmarried young migrant workers. The project counseled 117,563 migrants on family planning, 24,416 of whom chose to use a modern method. Additionally, UNFPA trained more than 900 public and private providers on family planning information and service provision, resource mobilization, and behavior change communication.

In addition to inching Viet Nam closer to reaching its MCPR goal for married women, these projects support Viet Nam’s Costed Implementation Plan for Family Planning (2018–2020) goal of providing quality contraceptives to all people of reproductive age, with a specific emphasis on adolescents, youth, migrants, and other hard-to-reach populations. This expanded goal aligns with FP2020’s rights and empowerment principles, fostering a more enabling environment to meet the demand for family planning among the 6.9 million women of reproductive age (15–24) in Viet Nam.