A salon owner guides Ngan on how to care for nails during her vocational training.
You maneuver your motorcycle along a sun-splashed road, with trees that reach out to touch you. You spot the sign for the salon - Nail and Makeup by Kim Ngân - and park. There is chatter from other clients in the waiting room, a pile of overflowing potted plants in the yard. Finally, it’s your moment to relax.
In her salon, Ngan gives a regular client a manicure.
A pulled-back sheet reveals Ngân’s home, which doubles as her beauty salon. She greets you and offers you a place to sit and a pot of tea. A corrugated tin roof protects you from the humid heat.
In her salon, Ngan gives a regular client a manicure.
As Ngân expertly shapes your nails, you wonder for a moment how she became so good at this. Then, you get distracted by the shelves lined with nail polish, creams, and makeup brushes, and remember why you’re here in the first place.
Child labour in Viet Nam
In Viet Nam, 5.4% of 5- to 17-year-olds are engaged in child labour, mostly in the informal economy within small-scale household enterprises. In 2018, that amounted to more than 1 million children in child labour.
Nguyễn Thị Kim Ngân was one of them.
“Child labour tends to take place in informal household enterprises further down manufacturing and production supply chains, which makes it difficult to detect,” said Chang Hee Lee, former ILO Viet Nam Director.
Despite this challenge, efforts to tackle child labour in the informal sector are ongoing. Promisingly, the child labour in Viet Nam is slightly lower than the regional average. However, it is still a problem in the country. Only about half of children in Viet Nam who are in child labour go to school, which means their chances of getting a decent job and improving their livelihood are slim. It’s clear that the youngest members of society bear the brunt of the problem. But what happens to those children when they grow up?
"My parents used to leave home early for work," Ngân recalled. "Nobody had time to take care of me. When I was hungry, I managed my own meals. These memories haunt me."
Ngân’s rough beginnings
Ngân is a 21-year-old from An Giang, a rural province in Viet Nam. The area is criss-crossed by rivers and canals and covered with lush green vegetation. Despite the beauty all around her, her childhood was marked by instability.
“We had so many difficulties,” Ngân remembered. “My parents made a lot of effort to raise me until I completed the 9th grade.”
Grateful but worried about her family’s financial situation, Ngân dropped out of school and started working when she was about 14 years old. She had a positive attitude, at first. She looked forward to making enough money to live on her own.
Ngan hangs some laundry as part of her daily household chores.
She traveled to Binh Duong province - 270 kilometers away from An Giang. It took her about eight hours to travel there. But it wasn’t as easy to find a job as she’d hoped.
“I submitted my application to five or six companies, but they all refused me,” she said. “After a while, I found a job at a wood processing company. I had to carry and press wood, which was very heavy. But I tried to do it.”
Ngân became one of the estimated 519,805 children in Viet Nam engaged in hazardous child labour, accounting for 50.4% of all children engaged in child labour across the country. That means that more than half of children in child labour in Viet Nam are involved in work that poses significant risks to their health, safety, and morals.
Vocational training brings hope
Ngân’s life path took a turn for the better when she learned about a new vocational training programme implemented with support from a USDOL-funded project called ENHANCE, which is active in An Giang. Her name was on the local government’s list of families experiencing financial difficulties, so she was eligible to participate in the project.
She left her job in Binh Duong and returned home to complete the six-month course on nail and massage techniques, from July to December 2019. After training hours, Ngan also worked as an assistant for the beauty parlor of the vocational training institution to earn some income and further improve her skills.
“Lately, nail art and makeup has become the norm,” she explained. “Everyone wants this service. Both adults and teens go to beauty salons all the time. That’s why I chose this sector.”
Ngân’s dream never wavered; she hoped to land a stable job so she could help provide for her family. The only difference was that she was finally gaining the skills she needed to do so.
“I learned many things: how to do nails, give massages, and wash hair,” she noted. “I also learned additional skills, like skin care and acne treatment.”
After the training, Ngân finished a two-month apprenticeship, then received post-training support from the project to buy her own hairdressing and manicure tools, including pliers, nail polish, and mannequins.
Her mother, who has watched Ngân learn and grow over the past few years as she transitioned to child labour from entrepreneurship, is proud of her daughter’s accomplishments.
“Since Ngân completed that course, she has become more mature,” she said. “Now, she can take care of her own beauty parlor, her own family.”
Ngan plays with her baby in her free time.
Today, she has a new outlook on life; she recently got married, had a child, and opened her own hair and nail salon in her house in September 2021.
“My life has become more stable,” she said. “I can make some contributions to my family. I feel so lucky.
Local government in action
The ENHANCE project has made a lasting difference in Ngân’s life, and taken major steps toward eradicating child labour in An Giang as a whole.
Dang Huy Chau is the Head of the Children and Gender Equality Division of An Giang’s provincial Department of Labour, Invalids, and Social Affairs (DOLISA). An Giang DOLISA is an implementing partner of the ENHANCE project and helps to coordinate vocational training support for former child labourers like Ngân.
DOLISA identified that Ngân was in child labour. They assessed her situation and drew up a profile for her, so that she could benefit from the ENHANCE project.
"When Ngân participated in the vocational training programme, she proved to be very intelligent and creative," Mr. Chau noted. "She has developed herself very quickly in the beauty industry."
While the work is rewarding and improves the future prospects of children in An Giang, as well as the other provinces where the project is active, there are challenges and difficulties in managing vocational training courses for youth. “Their training needs change constantly,” Mr. Chau said. “During COVID-19, it was impossible to organize it well. Vocational training requires on-the-job coaching – virtual guidance is not always possible or adequate.”
Mr. Chau meets with his colleagues on the monthly work plan for the ENHANCE project.
Plus, participating children come from poor families, so they struggle to pay for travel costs to and from the classes. The project and local government have provided support where possible.
Still, Mr. Chau understands that training is crucial in improving livelihoods in An Giang. Girls like Ngân are at risk of child labour, and he is proud to be a part of a project that helps them learn and develop new skills for a better future.
The ENHANCE project in Viet Nam
Viet Nam has taken concrete steps toward solving the problem of child labour in recent years. And it is paying off. Between 2012 and 2018 - when the last two national child labour surveys were implemented - the school attendance rate of children increased by almost 20 percentage points.
It is also clear that the ENHANCE project has played a part in changing the lives of former child labourers in Viet Nam.
The goal of the project, which began in 2015 and is currently ongoing, is to build a comprehensive, efficient multi-stakeholder response for the prevention and reduction of child labour in the country.
In particular, the project supported the Government of Viet Nam in carrying out the nation’s second National Child Labour Survey, a multi-agency effort which also included the ILO. This important survey provides a detailed overview of the current situation and helps inform action aimed at reducing and preventing child labour.
In addition, ENHANCE provided technical support to the Government in implementing the 2016-2020 National Plan of Action on child labour, which led to the adoption of 27 provincial plans to address the issue at the local level. The project is now supporting the development and initiation of the second National Plan of Action, for the 2021- 2025 period.
Today, the project is working on:
Building the capacity of national institutions and stakeholders, so they can better identify, monitor, and respond to child labour;
Raising awareness around child labour, the associated hazards, and prohibition against it at all levels of society;
Implementing intervention models for preventing and ending child labour in selected areas and sectors, and documenting them for replication.
On that last point, the project has been collaborating with service providers, including formal vocational training institutions and informal training providers to provide training for 14- to 17-year-olds in a range of sectors, based on their needs, interests, and local market demands. These activities, which include short term training on motorbike repair, air conditioning maintenance, and training to become a nail technician, hair stylist, culinary chef, or barista, have reached more than 600 young people. Long term training on information technology, as well as general education, is also provided through the project.
High-quality vocational training is promoting the development of a skilled future workforce for Viet Nam, and disrupting the generational cycle of child labour and poverty.
An ongoing personal journey
The COVID-19 pandemic has had negative socio-economic impacts on child labour in Viet Nam and around the world. In general, more families are being forced to resort to child labour as a strategy to cope with the loss of income and livelihood constraints due to disruptions to global supply chains and social distancing measures.
In addition, devastating floods have been affecting central Viet Nam in recent years, further intensifying the risk for affected families. This double burden of the pandemic and a climate-related catastrophe has been extremely difficult on people.
A salon owner (middle) guides Ngan on how to care for nails during her vocational training.
Ngân was fortunate to have finished her vocational training before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2020, the ENHANCE project has continued, but due to pandemic-related challenges it struggled to provide the same level and quality of training opportunities as before.
For example, some beneficiary households migrated as a result of COVID-19, causing students to drop out of training. In addition, some training courses had to be postponed. Wherever possible, training was provided online during COVID-19 restrictions in the country.
Currently, Ngân only provides services to acquaintances who live nearby due to COVID-19 restrictions. She plans to expand her shop when the pandemic subsides.
A salon owner guides Ngan on how to care for nails during her vocational training.
Currently, Ngân only provides services to acquaintances who live nearby due to COVID-19 restrictions. She plans to expand her shop when the pandemic subsides.
Despite the odds, Ngân is grateful for what she has gone through and proud of the livelihood she has built. She has a positive outlook on life and is determined to succeed.
“My husband and child are my motivation,” she said. “I want to work hard so my child has good care and has whatever other kids have. I want to ensure a better life for my child.”
