Co-operative News - Vietnam

Co-operatives build a better world through food

AnthonyMurray — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 11:48:36 +0000

Find out how Co-operative Enterprises Build a Better World in a new series of free eBooks that show how co-operatives provide an ethical alternative for business across the world.

To celebrate the International Day of Co-operatives (July 7), the first eBook tackles food security and how the sector from smallholder farmers through to multi-billion dollar organisations is working to provide key commodities for the global population.

Read about the fisheries sector in Vietnam that keeps millions of people employed through co-operation; the US co-operative that produces enough sugar for 12 million people; and how a group of African women gained equality through dairy farming.

Dame Pauline Green, President of the International Co-operative Alliance, who has written an introduction for the publication, says: “Co-operatives strengthen the bargaining power and livelihoods of small farmers who are less vulnerable to price fluctuations, through working together.

“Co-operatives from the UK, Sweden, Canada, the US, Norway, Japan and many other countries are working around the world to combat food insecurity and fight poverty.

“The United Nation designated 2012 as the International Year of Co-operatives demonstrating its recognition of the power of this business model to do good in the world. In a world where food insecurity threatens to increase in the coming decades,
co-operatives are an important part of the solution.”

The eBooks are being released each month in the run-up to Co-operatives United, the culmination event for the International Year of Co-operatives, and are a preview of the topics set to dominate the conferences, keynote addresses, seminars, workshops, fringe activities and other events during the week-long festival.

Key sessions on food security from Co-operatives United, which will be hosted in Manchester, UK (October 29–November 2), will also be streamed online (www.thenews.coop/virtualevent); and an interactive platform will connect delegates at the event and thousands of viewers across the globe.

• To download the first eBook, visit: www.thenews.coop/ebooks

Hop Tac cooperative: Improving coffee, improving community

AnthonyMurray — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:42:28 +0000

To Hop Tac San Xuat Ca Phe Sach Vi Suc Khoe Cong Dong (meaning the “Safe Coffee Producing Cooperative”) is one of three Fairtrade coffee organizations in Vietnam. This relatively small Asian country is the second largest coffee producer after Brazil, accounting for 14.3 percent of the world market for green coffee. Ninety-seven percent of their exports are Robusta beans, including those of the Hop Tac cooperative.

The co-op joined Fairtrade in 2009. It has just 43 members (34 men and nine women), making its achievements all the more remarkable.

Becoming Fairtrade certified has had many benefits, not least training on access to new markets and acquiring buyers. Fairtrade’s Asia Pacific Coffee Forum in November 2011 was a key event for the co-op. Members were not only able to meet new buyers face to face, but also gain a broader understanding on how to continuously improve their product. In a tough coffee market, this knowledge is crucial.

"I used to think that selling coffee is just looking for the buyers. After the forum, however, I understand that we need to do more: to improve our quality to make the buyer satisfied. Then I can sell the product," said a member of the co-op.

Thanks in part to the Forum, and the buyers the co-op met there, Hop Tac sold more than 270 metric tonnes of green coffee on Fairtrade terms in 2011-12, more than doubling the Fairtrade Premium they received. With an annual output of 600 tons, the group hopes to keep increasing their Fairtrade sales by continuing to invest in quality and productivity.

Since the Fairtrade Coffee Standard review in April 2011, coffee farmers receive a Fairtrade Premium of USD 20 cents /lb of which 5 cents is earmarked for productivity and quality improvement efforts. Hop Tac co-op has used their premium to provide fertilizer and equipment like tractors and grass cutters to their members, and has seen improved yields and quality as a result.

Dao Tich thi Tuyen is one of the co-op’s members. He has been working in the coffee fields as an employee since 1988 and then bought the right to use one hectare of land to grow his own coffee in 1995.

Since joining Hop Tac, Dao now uses organic fertilizer, no longer uses pesticides and has centralized his waste collection. Before joining the co-op he had only 30 minutes of training on how to grow coffee. Now he can join day-long trainings and access individual advice from the internal control system. He also understands how to better monitor his farm.

“Since I joined Fairtrade, I have changed the way we grow coffee to maintain the environment. In trainings I also learned how to improve cultivation,” said Dao. “Since we use less chemical fertilizer, the soil is richer and we have increased yields.”

The co-op members have also used the Premium for their communities and families. They have built a meeting space for the community, and children who perform well in school are given a stipend. Dao says he is happy because his children are able to attend school and study. He hopes they can grow up and work in the city, instead of have the hard life of the farmer.

One of the original objectives of the co-op’s founder was to reach poor or struggling farmers, with fields far from their homes like Dao. Now thanks to all their success, the Hop Tac cooperative is working with another small group of producers to help them enter the Fairtrade system.

“I used to be a poor farmer from the North, but I came here, worked hard and had a better life. My life is much better since my cooperative joined Fairtrade. I earn a stable income and I learned to share my wealth with the community using our Premium. I’m proud to be a Fairtrade member.” said Dao.

It’s Time for Nuts! Part IV

Rodney North — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:01:43 +0000

Read Part I here.

The Lempa River, Armed Conflict, Refugees and Repatriations

In November 1989, the FMLN launched a major offensive in the hopes of sparking an insurrection across El Salvador which would once and for ever end the devastating civil war. The Salvadoran military retaliated viciously. One of the most famous incidents, which drew international attention, shock, and outrage, was the brutal and audaciously cold-blooded massacre of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter. The Jesuit priests had long been outspoken advocates of a peaceful settlement to the war and the need for social justice in the country. Pulled out of their beds from their rooms at the University of Central America where they lay sleeping, and shot repeatedly in the head at close range, the soldiers wanted to make their point that they were killing those they accused of being the “intellectual authors” of the Salvadoran Left.

I was living in Somerville, MA at the time of the massacre, where 6,000 of the 20,000 Salvadoran refugees in the Boston area were living, trying to rebuild their lives. The Salvadorans had formed a local committee to provide assistance to the refugees, educate North Americans about the realities of the conflict and the struggle for justice in the country, and ultimately put pressure on the U.S. government to stop funding the war. There I was one day, volunteering in the office of this group, when they asked me if I could pick someone up at the airport. It turned out to be a prominent Catholic Salvadoran priest, Miguel Ventura. Miguel asked if I would mind setting up a projector, as he had just been given some slides he wanted to view. It turned out to be a box of the uncensored, close up slides of the massacre at the UCA, where some of his closest friends had just been assassinated.

A few weeks later, another Salvadoran visitor arrived. He informed us that 8,400 refugees, 85% of whom were women and children, who had been living for nine years in the refugee camp of Colomoncagua, Honduras, had made the bold decision to return home to El Salvador. All over Central America, Salvadorans fleeing the armed conflict had been living for close to a decade in exile. And now, the first organized returns were about to occur.

The Military Strategy in the Rural Areas

It was not an accident that millions of Salvadoran campesinos had fled the country. In the early days of the armed conflict, the Salvadoran military enacted a strategy they had learned from the North Americans, which had been tried and tested in Vietnam. They understood that many campesinos, living in poverty and repression, might support the FMLN as their last and only hope to change their conditions after all other peaceful and democratic means had failed. And so, in the early 1980s, in a strategy called, “draining the ocean to kill the fish,” the Salvadoran military began indiscriminately bombing swatches of the countryside where the insurgents were particularly active. Bombing; burning houses, fields, and everything in sight; and gruesome massacres succeeded in causing many campesinos to leave their homes, farms, and families and literally flee the country with just the clothes on their backs.

Sadly, the military had another tactic up their sleeves. This one, also learned by their North American advisors and employed in Vietnam, was called the “hammer and anvil” strategy. The Lempa (and Sumpul) Rivers separate El Salvador from Honduras in the northern parts of the country where poverty and oppression, and consequently insurgent activity was most high. In coordination with their Honduran counterparts, the military would undergo bombing raids to drive the campesinos from their homes. With nowhere else to run, the campesinos would dive into the rivers to swim over the border, presumably into safety in Honduras. But as they crossed the rivers, instead of the refuge they sought, many were instead met by Honduran soldiers lined up on the bank, where they would shoot and kill the Salvadorans as they arrived to shore. Those Salvadorans who managed to survive all of this accumulated suffering, were eventually given refuge by sympathetic Honduran families. Eventually, the United Nations stepped in and set up refugee camps along the Honduran borders.

The Repatriations

In mid-November 1989, following the brutal assassination of the six Jesuits and the two women, the refugees living in Honduras said, “basta.” Nine years of exile was enough and it was time to return home, lend support to their countrymen, end the civil war, and rebuild their country. The Salvadoran government opposed their return and told them “the time wasn’t right;” they would be entering a highly conflictive zone and their safety could not be guaranteed. But the refugees were determined, responding that they were Salvadorans and no one had a right to keep them out of their country any longer.

The U.N. refused to help the refugees without the government’s permission and so they decided to make the repatriations on their own. The first two groups of 500 people packed up their things, removed every nail, every piece of wood, every last item of use they could carry, and made the nine-mile walk across the border on foot. When the U.N. realized that the Salvadorans would do the whole repatriation themselves, they scrambled to save face and offer logistical support to the remaining thousands.

It was at this point that a representative arrived in Somerville. He let us know about the situation (which had received no press in the U.S. media) and asked if anyone would be willing to fly to Honduras and accompany the next groups of refugees across the border into Morazan. The war was going strong and the refugees were unwelcome by their government. International accompaniment would offer a measure of protection and, in those days before cell phones and internet, some international visibility. A friend and I raised our hands, “we’ll go.”

It would be a whole other story to write about the courage, determination, and high level of organization I witnessed in Colomoncagua; the trips across the border into the mountains of Morazan, where not a structure remained standing when the refugees made their returns; and the hard work of the Salvadorans to begin rebuilding a community from nothing. Their mottos, which hung from banners on the U.N. trucks that took each group of 500 Salvadorans across the border, proclaimed, “We left as individual farmers; we’re returning to live united in community”, and, “We are the hope for the future of El Salvador.” As they crossed the border into their own country, friends and family members who had remained behind throughout the war, lined the streets waving flags of welcome, laughing and crying. There were no dry eyes on those trips.

Segundo Montes City: “The Hope for the Future of El Salvador”

The former refugees renamed their community, “Segundo Montes City” after one of the six martyred Jesuits who, inspired by their level of organization, preparation and commitment while living in Colomoncagua, had written extensively about them, calling them “the hope for the future of El Salvador.” And they were. The refugees themselves said that their time in the camps was like a school for them. Determined to make use of their exile, they refused to accept traditional “help” from the international agencies working there. Instead of accepting clothing, they asked for sewing workshops where they could learn to make clothes. Shoemaking, bricklaying, carpentry, metal working workshops were all set up and each Salvadoran chose a job to do. They insisted that the international agencies providing health care in the camps taught them to become health promoters and administer basic health care. Communal kitchens and day care centers were opened to free the women to learn new skills. When they arrived at the camps, the literacy rate was 15%. Classrooms were established, and children taught the adults. No matter the level of education, the adults would teach those who knew less. In 1990, when they returned home they had succeeded in reversing their literacy rate to 85%.

The Colomoncaguan refugees said they would not return to subsistence farming. Instead, they would buy their food from their neighbors and concentrate their efforts on building a new city where they would put all the skills they had learned in exile into use. Segundo Montes City would become a hub of community and co-operative development. They would provide health clinics and schools for the neighboring communities; they would open carpentry, sewing, and bakery co-operative; and run shoe making, clothing, wood working, and metal working factories providing goods, services, and employment to the area.

The Bajo Lempa Repatriations

The return of the Colomoncagua refugees was huge. All over El Salvador and elsewhere, those involved in the popular movement were feeling signs of hope and inspiration. It was as if the only antidote to the horrific and tragic loss of the Jesuits and all they had contributed to advance peace and justice in Salvador, was going to be what would live on and flourish through the return of the repatriated communities and what they could succeed in building in a new, post-war country.

When the news about the repatriations from Honduras reached the refugees who had been living for close to a decade in Nicaragua and in Panama, they decided it was time to return home as well. Although there wasn’t quite as much fanfare, these repatriations were also incredibly moving and extremely important. It was decided that each of these two groups of returned refugees would settle in Usulutan province, in two communities near each other in the Bajo Lempa. Like their friends and family members in Morazan, they returned home to empty land and had to rebuild everything out of nothing, as the army had also destroyed this area during the war.

The refugees who had been living in Nicaragua had all the benefits of living under the Sandinista regime. They learned to work in agriculture co-operatives; they received training in acupuncture, massage, and holistic health care; teachers were trained in new methodologies; day care centers, nurseries, and schools all used progressive pedagogy. Women held positions of leadership in the community and participation and democratic governance were ideals they aimed to put into practice. They named their new community, Nueva Esperanza (New Hope).

Across the road from Nueva Esperanza, the refugees returning from Panama settled into a community they named, Ciudad Romero, after Archbishop Romero. The experience of the refugees who had lived in Panama was vastly different from their friends and families in Segundo Montes and Nueva Esperanza. They hadn’t had the benefits of living under the Sandinistas, or the assistance of the international agencies working in a camp, but rather had been given land in the jungle of Panama by then President Trujillo. They returned pretty much as they had left, small subsistence farmers living and working fairly independently.

Still the plan was for these communities, and others like them scattered through the country, to begin trading with each other, creating new economies and social structures, all based on democracy, participation, equality between the sexes, and new ideas. It was certainly a time of excitement, hope, and idealism.

Read Part V tomorrow.

Free eBook shows how co-ops create a fairer food system

AnthonyMurray — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 11:59:08 +0000

The ICA has teamed up with the Global News Hub, the Co-operative Group and Co-operatives UK to launch a series of eBooks to show how co-operatives provide an ethical alternative for business across the world (www.thenews.coop/ebooks).

The first eBook tackles food security and how the sector from smallholder farmers through to multi-billion dollar organisations is working to provide key commodities for the global population.

Dame Pauline Green, President of the International Co-operative Alliance, who has written an introduction for the first publication, says: “Co-operatives strengthen the bargaining power and livelihoods of small farmers who are less vulnerable to price fluctuations, through working together.

“Co-operatives from the UK, Sweden, Canada, the US, Norway, Japan and many other countries are working around the world to combat food insecurity and fight poverty.

“The United Nations designated 2012 as the International Year of Co-operatives demonstrating its recognition of the power of this business model to do good in the world. In a world where food insecurity threatens to increase in the coming decades,

co-operatives are an important part of the solution.”

Key sessions on food security from Co-operatives United, which will be hosted in Manchester, UK (October 29–November 2), will also be streamed on-line (www.thenews.coop/virtualevent); and an interactive platform will connect delegates at the event and thousands of viewers across the globe.

• To download the first eBook, visit: www.thenews.coop/ebooks ; and to find out more about Co-operatives United, visit: www.manchester2012.coop

The second eBook will be launched on 1 August and will show how Co-operatives build a better world through Finance.

Not Business As Usual: Getting their attention, ICA Director-General reports back from Beijing and Vietnam

AnthonyMurray — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 08:16:01 +0000

Not Business As Usual: Getting their attention, ICA Director-General reports back from Beijing and Vietnam:

charlesgould:

Co-operatives received some important high-level recognition this week when ICA’s President, Dame Pauline Green, and I were able to join representatives from China’s co-operative sector in a meeting with the Chinese Vice Premier, Hon. Mr. Hui Liangyu, in Beijing. Mr. Hui presented a four-part…

ICA Director-General Chuck Gould celebrates World Fisheries Co-operative Day

AnthonyMurray — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 17:29:28 +0000

ICA Director-General Chuck Gould celebrates World Fisheries Co-operative Day:

Over two hundred co-operators attended the World Fisheries Co-operative Day celebrations held in Da Nang, Vietnam today.

Fishing has been in a real crisis in recent years due to over exploitation, declining numbers of fishermen and commercialisation.

In 2010, the International Co-operative Fishing Organisation (ICFO) created the Seoul Declaration and agreed to hold an annual World Fisheries Co-operative Day each year to raise awarenesss of the crisis facing sustainable fishing; this was the second annual WFC day.

The event was hosted by President of the ICFO and last year’s winner of the Rochdale Pioneers award from the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA), Mr. Lee Jong-koo.

Chuck Gould, Director General for the International Co-operative Alliance, attended both of the annual WFC days. He said the industry has always had a co-operative tone to it because of the nature of danger attached to it and the recognition that they all have a shared resource.

He added: “It has always been a very poor industry, even today fishermen are some of the poorest of the different sectors, poorer even than farmers.”

fairtrade: Members of the Hop Tac coffee cooperative in Vietnam...

AnthonyMurray — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 10:12:54 +0000

fairtrade:

Members of the Hop Tac coffee cooperative in Vietnam were delighted when their Fairtrade sales soared this year. How did they do it and what will they do with the extra money? Find out here…