Our People
Trung, a young metalartisan
Reaching Out trains and employs people with disAbilities, and our store offers them a place to showcase their premium crafts to international customers.
About 45 employees work in our Hoi An workshop, while other producers from across Vietnam work from home or in other workshops. Reaching Out is a fair trade business. Each artisan receives training, a fair wage (about 35% above the wage of most producers making similar products), and additional support . We also use a percentage of our profits to fund other community programs for Vietnamese people with different abilities.
Though there are a number of other-abled artisans in Vietnam , they often receive little compensation for their work. Living in remote areas and with limited English or often even illiterate, they often end up relying on exploitative middlemen who take a large cut of their profits.
Le Nguyen Binh
Founder and Manager
Minh, decorating a lacquer
item with eggshells
Vietnamese people with different abilities also face additional barriers. Though about 7 % of the Vietnamese population is disAbled, government services for the disAbled people are severely under-funded and highly inefficient. Differently abled people face significant challenges accessing employment, health and educational services, gaining legal rights, and receiving emotional and financial support. As a result, they tend to have significantly lower education and income levels than the rest of the population.
With the opportunity to learn marketable skills and to work in a supportive environment, other abled people can break the cycle of poverty and exclusion. They can successfully integrate into mainstream society and become self-sufficient. In many cases, people with disAbilities find they can become exceptionally skilled in a certain discipline, regardless of their limitations in other areas.
At our workshop in Hoi An, we employ artisans with mobility impairments, hearing impairments, learning difficulties and Down Syndrome. We try to find handicraft trainings and tasks that correspond to the abilities of each person.
To learn more about people with disAbilities in Vietnam, click here.
To learn more about some of the very special people at Reaching Out, click on the photos below.
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