FrieslandCampina Vietnam believes a successful business should be a good contributor to the sustainable development of the country. Therefore, the company has based its way of doing business on three core societal needs: health and nutrition, sustainable farming, and educational development, and has committed to a mission to help the Vietnamese move forward in life by getting more out of milk.
By Binh Nguyen in HCMC
Students in Nghe An Province are happy with Den Dom Dom scholarships - Photo: Courtesy of FrieslandCampina Vietnam FrieslandCampina Vietnam believes a successful business should be a good contributor to the sustainable development of the country. Therefore, the company has based its way of doing business on three core societal needs: health and nutrition, sustainable farming, and educational development, and has committed to a mission to help the Vietnamese move forward in life by getting more out of milk.
On the same path with farmers
Since 1995, FrieslandCampina Vietnam has been spending about US$1 million annually on a Dairy Development Program (DDP) to provide the local dairy farmers with quality farm services and training on dairy husbandry to improve farm productivity and produce high quality milk.
FrieslandCampina experts use hands-on training to guide farmers on how to build breeding facilities, feed their cows, preserve milk, and expand production efficiently within their capability.
FrieslandCampina Vietnam has also invested in the comprehensive milk collection system, quality control and incentive milk payment systems in the rural areas where local farmers could have a secure milk outlet for their farm milk product.
By this way, the DDP has helped create stable jobs and incomes as well as notable changes for 2,600 households, who supply high quality milk to FrieslandCampina Vietnam to produce products like Dutch Lady, Friso and YoMost.
A case in point is Pham Kim Le, who is now with her dairy cows and grass growing on her farm in HCMC’s outlying district of Cu Chi. Le recounted she started up her dairy farm with 20 cows in difficulty before she contracted to supply milk of her cows to Dutch Lady Vietnam, the present-day FrieslandCampina Vietnam.
But, after having attended courses on dairy cows held by the company, she found it easy to move forward. “Through these courses, I have learned how to feed cows economically but still have enough milk quality and quantity from my cattle,” Le said.
Le is harvesting what she has invested and learned from the DDP. Every day, she and her employees milk around 500 kilograms from over 35 dairy cows and can earn a profit of more than VND3,000 from each kilogram of milk sold to the company.
According to FrieslandCampina Vietnam, each household joining the program now has 11 cows on average, compared to less than seven five years ago, and can supply 72 kilograms per day, up from the previous 39.7 kilograms.
Luu Van Tan, head of the DDP, said farmers’ success in cow farming proved the program was supporting the sustainable development of Vietnam’s dairy farming sector.
Actually, FrieslandCampina Vietnam has developed various dairy farming models and programs suitable to Vietnamese farmers in different regions, based on the more than 135 years of experience the leading dairy corporation in the Netherlands, FrieslandCampina has gained worldwide.
Sharing happiness
The success of FrieslandCampina Vietnam also lies in the helping hand it is giving to light up the spirit of poor yet studious students on their path to school and a bright life.
Launched by Dutch Lady in 2002, the Den Dom Dom (Firefly) Program has brought scholarships to numerous disadvantaged students and built schools in poor areas of various provinces nationwide.
Tran Quoc Huan, deputy director at FrieslandCampina Vietnam, said the happy eyes and the bright smiles of young students in rural areas had given the company the motivation to run and fund the program.
“Their eyes and smiles are filled with hopes and the desire for learning,” Huan said. “They’ve motivated us and driven us to do our best and make sure those happy moments never fade away.”
Huan told the Daily that the goal after eight years was to spread the program’s spirit of “Sharing is Happiness” to the community, so that the program is no longer the only contribution of FrieslandCampina Vietnam’s Dutch Lady brand.
The company is looking to more benefactors in order to provide many more needy children with much-needed access to a better life and to lay the foundation for more new schools to go up.
“We expect that next year, the number of scholarships will exceed 20,000 and not only one Den Dom Dom school will be built, but there would be more two or three schools built from the contribution of the community,” Huan said.
Those contributions of FrieslandCampina Vietnam have been recognized by the Vietnamese community as well as the Dutch government. The visit by Her Royal Highness Princess Máxima of the Netherlands to the joint-venture company formed in 1995 by Protrade Corp and Royal FrieslandCampina on Wednesday is a reward for what the company has committed and done for Vietnam’s development and education.
The Saigon Times Daily