HANOI, Vietnam — In Thôn Tha, a Tày village of stilt houses and rice fields in Vietnam’s mountainous Ha Giang province, Nguyen Van Thien runs a homestay that can accommodate dozens of guests. A decade ago, his life was very different. He farmed, raised livestock and took casual work to make ends meet. “Things that we once lacked or could not afford are now things we are able to buy,” he told The Borgen Project. Thien’s path from subsistence farming to tourism entrepreneur runs through YESD (Youth Employment and Society Development), a women-led social enterprise that has turned community-based tourism in Northern Vietnam into a tool for lifting ethnic minority families out of poverty. The Borgen Project spoke with YESD co-founder Tuyet Trinh and with Thien, one of the villagers she has trained.
The Poverty Behind the Postcards
Vietnam has lifted millions out of poverty in a generation, but the gains have not reached everyone equally. Ethnic minorities make up roughly 15% of the population yet account for about 72% of the country’s poor, according to the World Bank. Most live in the northern and central highlands, where remoteness, thin infrastructure and weak market access hold incomes down. The Midlands and Northern Mountains — home to the Tày, Dao, Hmong and dozens of other groups — remain Vietnam’s poorest region. Poverty there fell by half between 2010 and 2020, yet highland minority households are still the most likely in the country to stay poor.
A Boom That Reaches the Villages
Tourism in the region is booming — and, increasingly, reaching the people who live there. Ha Giang welcomed almost 3.3 million visitors in 2024, up 8.8% from the year before, and the sector generated more than 8.1 trillion VND (more than $317 million) in revenue. As homestays and local tourism services have spread, Mong, Dao, Tày and Lo Lo families who once saw migration as their only escape from poverty are building incomes at home, VietnamPlus reports.
The link between this model and poverty reduction is measurable, not merely anecdotal. A 2025 study in the Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change found that where community-based tourism in Northern Vietnam and other regions grows more intensive, provincial poverty rates fall by 2.3 to 2.8 percentage points and household incomes rise by 15% to 18% — gains that flow mainly through job creation, skills training and new infrastructure.
Those gains are not automatic, though. Too often, outside operators capture the profits while local people get low-paid, insecure work. “The people living there were often not the ones benefiting most from tourism,” Trinh said — the exact gap YESD set out to close.
Building on What Communities Already Have
Three young Vietnamese women founded YESD in 2014. Trinh was just 23, and none of them had run a tourism business. What they had was years of community development experience and a conviction that training only helps if it leads somewhere. “Our approach starts with something that already exists within the community: people’s own knowledge and experience,” Trinh said. Villagers already know their land, history, food and crafts; what many lack is the language, confidence and tourism skills to turn that into income. YESD trains them in guiding, hospitality, customer service, responsible tourism and, above all, English, then links them to real travelers. “It is about connecting skills with an actual market,” she said.
To date, YESD has run more than 2,000 responsible tours and moved more than 200 people into training, jobs and livelihood projects — including more than 50 who now earn steady livings as guides and homestay owners rather than subsistence farmers or casual laborers. Crucially, the model adds to farming rather than replacing it. “We have never wanted tourism to replace farming because that would create another form of dependency,” Trinh said. “We see tourism as a way of diversifying household income.”
A Homestay Built Over a Decade
For Thien, that diversification changed everything. Trinh and co-founder Trang first came to Thôn Tha as volunteers, got to know his family, and later built the enterprise that would employ him; the two have worked together since 2015. YESD trained him in tourism and English and, in 2019, sent him to Italy to study community-based tourism models abroad.
The income has compounded over 10 years. “We used to have very little land, but now I have been able to buy more land, build a house, and improve our homestay,” Thien said. He started with a single traditional stilt house and reinvested steadily, adding bungalows built in the Tày architectural style. Today his homestay hosts between 36 and 46 guests at a time — 20 to 30 in the stilt house and around 16 in private bungalows — a business he runs alongside his wife and children. The work also lets him stay put. “I do not have to leave my hometown or my family while still being able to earn an income,” he said. “I truly appreciate and am grateful for this opportunity.”
Beyond Jobs: Investing in the Community
YESD’s impact reaches past individual households. The enterprise channels $2 from every traveler into a community fund that pays for scholarships and infrastructure, and it has run more than 14 development projects across Ha Giang and Yen Bai — building bridges, roads and schools that Trinh says have reached more than 6,000 people. Some projects hand families productive assets such as cows or buffaloes. “In an agricultural community, livestock can become part of a family’s longer-term livelihood,” Trinh said. To keep tourism income from pooling in a few lucky households, YESD also rotates homestay opportunities across the community — “a way of making access to tourism opportunities fairer,” she said.
Preserving Culture, Not Performing It
Community-based tourism has also given villagers fresh reason to hold onto their traditions. In Thôn Tha, more residents are learning the đàn tính, a traditional lute, partly because visitors want to experience it. “When I have the opportunity to share my culture with tourists, I feel very happy and proud,” Thien said, adding that it deepens his bond with home. Trinh is careful about where to draw the line. “Culture should not become a performance simply because tourists want to see it,” she said, arguing that communities themselves should decide what they share.
Why It Matters
The model faces real headwinds. Tourism is seasonal and fragile; when the COVID-19 pandemic halted international travel, Trinh said, YESD “had almost no tourism income for nearly two years.” Small responsible operators also struggle to compete on price against mass-market rivals. Yet the payoff is a form of development that turns a poor region’s own assets — its landscapes, culture and hospitality — into income that stays in local hands, with women and ethnic minorities leading rather than serving. Thien’s homestay, which he built room by room over a decade, shows what that can look like. As more of Vietnam’s highlands open to travelers, community-based tourism in Northern Vietnam offers a way to ensure the people who make these places worth visiting are the ones who prosper from it.
– Linh Lan Jen Phan
Linh is based in Hanoi, Vietnam and focuses on Good News for The Borgen Project.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons