The Vietnam Women’s Delegation Attending the 10th APEC Women Leaders’ Network Meeting (WLN) In Daegu – Korea

240 international delegates from the 20 economies in the Asia Pacific region and 600 delegates from Korea - the host economy had attended this meeting.

With the topic “Prosperity of Women Enterprise through Innovation; New Visions for Women Entrepreneurs”, the meeting had focussed to discuss the 4 main contents: Micro-credit policies and programs for women enterprise development; Co-prosperity through promoting the next generation women entrepreneurs; Access to Innovation ICT technology – U-world for women entrepreneurs. In this context, the delegates had vivid discussion to share information, experiences and introduce their best practices and successful models implemented by respective economy members.

The Vietnam delegation presented 2 speeches o­n “Economic development through growing women entrepreneurs” and “Vietnamese women with ICT” and acted as moderator for the panel discussion o­n: “Effective Micro-credit Policies and Best practices”.

Meetings of WLN focal points were also held at this occasion. Representing from the 21 economy members in the network, the focal points’ meeting proposed many ideas and initiatives to strengthen and develop network’s operation as well as to advocate for policies to develop women entrepreneurs. As a result, the meeting had approved the Statement and Recommendations which will be sent to the Small and Medium Enterprise Ministers’ Meeting of Asia and Pacific region held in Korea soon. Especially, at this meeting, WLN has agreed to establish the WLN secretariat which will operate under the supervision of the WLN chair of the host economy responsiple for APEC each year.WLN secretariat providessupport services to the host economy for the WLN o­ngoing activities. Vietnam is o­ne among the 8 members raise fund for the operation of WLN secretariat. This is an important outcome achieved at this meeting, reflecting high commitment of economy members in strengthening WLN network, in the 2^nd decade.

At the closing ceremony, Korea handed WLN chair position to Vietnam and Vietnam will host the 11^th WLN Meeting in Vietnam next year. At this ceremony, Mme. Ha Thi Khiet, President of the Vietnam Women’s Union made a speech expressing Vietnam’s commitment to host WLN meeting in 2006 successfully.

The meeting ended in the spirit of cooperation and friendship./.