Ms.Ninh Thi Hung was born in 1974. Currently, she is living in residential group no.4, Lam town, Y Yen district, Nam Dinh province. She has been a TYM’s member for 16 years. Thanks to that, the economic status of her family has been more and more grown. Their social understanding has been also improved from time to time. They have actively participated in community activities. Their children have been well taken cared of and educated..

After getting married, their source of income was mainly from cultivation like many other families. In addition, they worked part-time as carvers* for a furniture production workshop in the region. Carving is their family traditional job.

Their hometown is atraditional one specialized in producing wooden items, where carving has been maintained for a long time. However, there is no specialized carving facilities opened in this village. Most of them have just worked on a part-time basic for furniture production workshops. Realizing this business opportunity, they cherished a plan to open their own carving workshop.

In 1998, TYM expanded its operations to Lam town creating conditions for women to get loans for economic development. Like hundreds of other women, after the introduction of TYM’s officers, she discussed with her husband and decided to apply for TYM loans. With the first loan of 500,000VND, they used to buy engraving chairs, 20 chisels, and somesandpaper.

Despite of their available workmanship, it was not simple to win contractsand fulfill requirements of customers. Their initial investment was small. They were also in shortage ofmachines and instruments; therefore, at the beginning time they just took simple orders such as worshipping objects, wood panels, alters etc.

Shesaid that as TYM’s member she has gotten many benefits. In addition to loans, TYM has also provided her and other members with trainings on entrepreneurship skills and with scientific planning knowledge through loan weekly repayment mechanism.

With all of these supports, she was able to better manage money and improve sales skills. Together with her positive, careful, serious behavior in doing business, she got more and more orders from customers.

With enhanced skills, enriched experience, and inquiring mind, she and her husband gradually got successful in doing more sophisticated goods. They earned more income from their workshop and their scope of production was expanded. Ms. Hung continued to borrow more capital from TYM for investment in purchase of machinery and equipment and construction of production facilities. Many high-cost machines such as wood-processing machine, drilling machine, sanding machine etc. Were procured to serve their production activities. Besides, they bought an industrial vacuum cleaner to collect scrap so as to avoid air pollution in the workshop as well as the surrounding environment.

Involving in this job for years,she understands that such waste as sawdust, shavings, redundant wood powder without treatment measures will affect the environment. Thus, she always reminds her workers to regularly collect scrap, and clean the workshop. Around her premises, she plants many trees to prevent dust emissions into the environment and create fresh air. She uses the industrial vacuum cleaner to collect the amount of sawdust and shavings which are then sold to copper foundries to use as fuel. This can help not only protecting the environment but also taking advantage of these wastes in a useful way.

With this workshop they create jobs and stable income for 9 regular workers and 3 seasonal ones. Their economic development remains stable. They understand and love each other. Their children are fully educated. These are her pride and great happiness that she has achieved after many “cultivation” days.

Ms.Hung also plans to expand their services to neighboring provinces such as Thanh Hoa, Nghe An etc. And to improve the design of products to suit the tastes of consumers. In addition, another tremendous intention of their family is to continuously help others to have stable income, support young person with free apprenticeship and share business experiences and list of good providers for many other TYM’s members etc.

Based on these results andachievements Ms. Hung has been awarded a title of “Typical Micro-Entrepreneur with an effectively economic model of production and business” under the Citi-Vietnam Microentrepreneurship Awards 2014 sponsored by Citi Fund.

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(*) Carving: Fashioning decorative sections of wooden products. This job requires sophistication, craft and ingenuity.

Duy Truong