A Denmark-funded community development project, which is designed for ethnic minority groups in Vietnam's northern region, will continue its second phase from 2010 to 2014.

An agreement on this phase was signed in Hanoi on Mar. 5 by the Agricultural Development Denmark-Asia (ADDA) and the Vietnam Farmers’ Association (VFA).

According to the ADDA Representative, Bjorn Jensen, the second phase will continue to be carried out in Hoa Binh, Son La, Dien Bien, Lai Chau, Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces.

Apart from developing farmers’ communities to help farmers map out plans to promote production and business, the project in this phase will provide farmers with issues on climate change to enable them to adopt proper farming methods.

Under this phase, 300 more groups of farmers will be established and 600 training courses will be held for farmers.

With a total funding of 1.8 million USD, the Community Development project launched its first phase in June 2006 at the six above-said localities, focusing on helping ethnic minority farmers improve their living conditions and at the same time assisting officials working for VFA chapters to enhance their capacity.

In the first phase, from 2006-2010, the project management board has coordinated with the Hanoi-based ADDA and provincial VFA chapters to train 78 farmers to become instructors who taught their peers with technical advances and sustainable farming methods.

This contingent of farmers-instructors organised 522 courses to train more than 15,400 farmers 434 hamlets and villages in the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices in maize and vegetable plantation.

The project management board has instructed localities to establish 293 groups of farmers to help each other seek more consumption markets for their products.

Training courses have helped ethnic minority people in the targeted localities partly change their awareness on sustainable farming practice and apply technical and scientific advances in their household-based production./.