CECI has a program called Leave for Change in which people can volunteer part of their vacation time (2 to 4 weeks) to work on a project and the company they work for in Canada sponsors them. Last month, Francis Lavoie, who works for The Cooperators (an insurance cooperative) in Quebec City as a Manager and has many years of accounting and financial management experience, came to Da Nang to work with me on a special project for one week.We were asked to present a model cooperative for a plan the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) has to begin growing vegetables in 5 areas of Da Nang under the GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) certification. This means all the vegetables will be grown with safe fertilizers and processes. Many vegetables worldwide are so heavily fertilized and sprayed with pesticides they are incredibly damaging to the environment and a threat to human health. As this is becoming a growing concern for consumers to have guaranteed safe products, being GAP certified is becoming more and more important.
The DARD wanted our advice on how to manage this project in a cooperative model, specifically in these 4 areas 1)Structure & Governance, 2)Membership, 3) Marketing, and 4) Finance.
Initially, we visited a cooperative currently growing vegetables in Da Nang to give Francis a better picture of how a Vietnamese cooperative operates and to ask some specific questions about their current distrubution of the vegetables. We had the chance to speak with a cooperative leader, several farmers, and one distributor.
With only one week, we worked hard to provide Francis with lots of information. We were conscience of the fact that the exact model that works in Canada, won't necessarily work in Vietnam. Keeping this in mind we found an example from Thailand and presented it in a way that they can use parts of the model and develop some of there own best practices based on our suggestions and customizing it for them. This will be a long term project and the DARD has a lot of work to do towards implementing the project.
In the end the DARD was very pleased with our suggested model and they believe they will be able to use many of our suggestions.
If you or someone you know might be interested in sharing your expertise to help out in a development project feel free to check out available listings at www.uniterra.ca
With only about 6 weeks left here I am drafting my final recommendation report and final presentation. Trying to summarize and make recommendations on a year's worth of research and information has my head in a bit of a tail spin! Was thinking the other day I have learned so much during my mandate that it is difficult to remember what I didn't know to begin with...if that makes any sense!!
