The APEC 11th Women Leaders network Meeting in Hanoi from 19th to 22nd, September 2006.

Along with major the concerns of the Ministerial APEC Meeting about Small and Medium Enterprise, this year in Vietnam (September 2006) which will be chaired by the Ministry of Investment and Plan, o­n behalf of the host, VWU set up the theme of the WLN meeting: “Towards a dynamic community – Enhancing the competitiveness of women business for sustainable development and prosperity” From this theme, in order to get a successful meeting, marking the development of APEC women leaders’ Network step forwards to the 2^nd decade, along with created special marks with Vietnam – a prosperous economy with high and stable growth rate of the economy in recent years and go together placing special importance o­n ensuring social justice, VWU has developed sub-themes: Women entrepreneurs vs. dynamic and effective economic development; women entrepreneurs and sustainable development; WLN the second decade: Where do we go from here?. Enhancing the competitiveness of entrepreneurs to develop trade and investment will be a key focus throughout all of the themes. Key topics are defined as follows ”Enhancing ICT capacity and promoting business development service (BDS) to support women entrepreneurs, Creating a business-enabling and gender-sensitive legal environment for women to develop business in the context of globalization; Promoting women-owned micro enterprises and small and medium enterprises – an effective measure for poverty eradication; Women entrepreneurs coping with social and environmental issues. Capacity and networking development of WLN, Identifying priority concerns of WLN to better influence the APEC agenda…” for that very topics, created distinct features of meeting this year from meetings in the past.

The meeting is working from the 19^th to 21^st, September, with expectedly400 delegations from 21 APEC economies participating. The delegations will stay at the Melia hotel. There will be 8 plenary sessions, 5 theme-workshops and a Vietnam Round Table. The meeting will be held in the International Conference Centre. Expected outcomes of the meeting is theWLN Statement and Recommendations which is to be passed unanimously by delegations to submit to series of APEC’s activities taking place after that: meeting of Micro Enterprises Working Group (MEWG), Small and Medium Enterprises Forum (SME Fora Meeting), and final SME Ministerial Meeting will be held at the late of September, 2006. Apart from the meeting agenda, the delegates are going to meet with leaders of the State, trade fair introducing high quality products of Vietnamese women-owned enterprises and visit some development projects of the VWU ect.

The Central VWU’s Presidium has directed preparation works for the APEC 11^thWLN immediately receiving Chair of 11^thWLN in 2005 Korea the 10^thWLN meeting . This WLN meeting in Vietnam will be the biggest external relation activity of VWU in the year 2006. At present, VWU is taking prompt preparations from the contents (the most important phase is to set up a theme and sub-themes for drafting the Statement and Recommendations of the Meeting), inviting personnel (chair, speakers, rapporteurs of the meeting), logistics, communication, festivities, ensuring a successful and effective meetings, becoming an event worth remembering about Vietnam in history of APEC WLN, as well as contributing to the common success of 2006 Vietnam APEC.