Work Update

Over the past 5 months, we have been working closely with 3 cooperatives in the development of their business and marketing plans.

Cooperative Hoa Quy 1

This cooperative was facing some troubled times when I first arrived. The head of the management board had left to work with the farmers organization, the members were not aware of what was going on with the cooperative, and their main source of income; providing electricity; was taken over by the local government office.





Many of the farmers in are looking for alternative ways to gain their income aside from their small rice crops. So the local government recruited a new leader for the cooperative to develop a pilot project to train local farmers how to grow flowers and leafy vegetables. We are assisting them develop their marketing plan and teaching them the importance of doing thorough market research to verify demand, understand the competition and planning a sound and feasible distribution channel.

An Hai Dong Cooperative

An Hai Dong was formed in 2003 which makes it very different from the cooperatives formed in 1978 and 1979 to eradicate famine after the war. This cooperative was formed with the purpose creating employment for farmers who lost land to urban development. Growing mushrooms takes up little space so it is an alternative for farmers who live in or near the city. The leader of this cooperative, Mrs. Mui, is a true entrepreneur. She has new ideas for the cooperative everytime we meet with her. Rather than motivating her to take on something new as we do with many of the other cooperatives we have to encourage her to focus on one thing at a time! Currently, the cooperative is offering training sessions to households on the techniques to produce mushrooms, selling supplies (inputs) for mushroom production, and trying to coordinate a sound distribution channel for the households. Offering marketing and assistance to the households to help them sell their mushrooms is very important to the sustainability of the cooperative, especially since the training income will only be for the short term. Only so many people can be trained to produce mushrooms before the Da Nang region will be flooded with mushrooms and all the efforts lost. So we have been working with Mrs. Mui to develop a distribution channel and marketing strategy for the farmers. Mrs. Mui is also the only female cooperative leader out of all the 25 agriculture cooperatives in Da Nang and she is one of the most active and passionate about improving the cooperative and offering the best service possible to members.

Hoa Khuong Cooperative

This cooperative is in a very similar situation to Hoa Quy 1 cooperative mentioned above. It no longer had a core service to offer its members and had lost confidence with the members and people of the community due to some miss management of finances. This cooperative still operates within the local government body so much so that its office is in the local government office. They have started focusing on producing watermelons, frog farms, and fish farms to regain farmers confidence in the cooperative model. Their idea is that once each of these groups becomes stronger they can break off and become their own cooperative. We have been working with them on business plans for each of the models and put them in touch with several farmer interest groups in Northern Vietnam who are using a similar strategy to rebuild confidence in the cooperative model.

On another note, my contract here has been extended another 3 months to work more with the cooperatives on the impletmentation phase of thier business plans and also to work with another cooperative interested in producing organic vegetables, a project supported by the Asian Development Bank. I will be helping them develop a cooperative model similiar to what we use in Canada and with their marketing plan. In April, another Canadian will join us in the project to help set-up the financial management system. Stay tuned for details!!

Aside from work, I have 2 friends visiting in April and we have planned a week visit to Cambodia!

Workshop on Location

Last week we headed 60km south of Da Nang to a small town called Tam Ky to deliver a 3 day workshop to coop leaders from the surrounding provinces. This workshop was delivered in partnership between CECI and SOCODEVI. SOCODEVI is a network of Canadian cooperatives who assist with cooperative development in many developing countries. They have selected cooperatives to work with throughout Vietnam and asked if I would work with them to deliver a workshop on sustainable cooperative development and marketing. Together using their existing resources and the resources I have gathered, we developed a 3 day workshop which will be used all over the country and hopefully delivered by Vietnamese cooperative support workers. We had several participants from the local cooperative alliance and department of agriculture and rural development attend the workshop with the intention that they will be able to deliver this material to the cooperatives themselves in the future.

It was an excellent experience for me to work with cooperatives from different areas and to compare their issues and challenges with those of the cooperatives in Da Nang. Of course they had a lot of similar issues such as aging membership, difficulty catering to the new needs of the farmers, competition from the private sector, bureaucracy,loss of land due to urbanisation and lack of management capacity.

Several of the cooperatives had started successfully offering composting services to the members. This is something which would benefit the citizens and cooperatives in Da Nang. Currently, there is no waste management system and the farmers are in need of clean soil. Hopefully we will be able to arrange and visit to one of these cooperatives or at least make the contact so that several of the Da Nang cooperatives can look into offering this service in their own communities. Few Highlights from the workshop.

As an icebreaker one morning, a few of the cooperative leaders offered to sing for the group!
(click on the link to see a video of one of the coop leaders singing!)
As a gift for facilitating the workshop, the vice-president of the cooperative alliance gave me an ostrich egg. Apparently very delicious!! I have yet to try it!

The participants!