On finding that a farm in Vietnam was producing excess milk, a group of students from Singapore Polytechnic (SP) came up with a way to stop it going to waste and even help the farm make some cash – by turning it into soap.
Students from SP’s chemical and life sciences school developed a recipe to convert cows’ milk into soap during a two-week trip to Cu Chi village near Ho Chi Minh City in 2017.
The trip was part of SP’s learning express programme, which brings together students and their peers from overseas educational institutions, to design solutions for problems in developing countries.
More than 5,000 students have gone on these trips since the programme started in 2013.
The programme now has more than 30 partner institutions across countries in the region, like Thailand and Indonesia, and is looking to expand beyond to Japan and India, among others.
More than 15 projects over the years – ranging from food production and agriculture to engineering solutions – have been implemented in local communities.
Some have been adopted by SP’s business students and turned into business ventures.
Mr Sieng Chun Hon, 22, along with three coursemates, took on the project in Vietnam last year and turned it into a handmade artisanal soap business called Faire Soap.
The Singapore team members focus on sales and marketing, while their Vietnamese counterparts, who have graduated from the University of Economics in Ho Chi Minh City, handle the procurement of raw materials and production.
Both sides pumped in start-up capital of a few hundred dollars and recovered their costs within a month. The project has made about $13,000 in sales since last May.
Faire Soap, which has more than 20 clients, has since clinched deals with organisations such as property company Mapletree, which purchased soap bars as door gifts at a property launch in Vietnam.
In 2017, another group of students went to a village in the Philippines, where they found a way to deal with a surplus of tomatoes.
The community in Marcos village in Isabela province had been making tomato jam but it did not prove popular.
Ms Joan Charlotte Tng, 20, and three coursemates sought help from a lecturer at SP’s school of chemical and life sciences after the trip and tried out food preservation techniques to improve the villagers’ product.
They came up with a product called Binhi Tomato Jam that tastes slightly like Indian chutney. It has received positive feedback. Using natural preservatives, the jam has a shelf life of at least six months.
More than 300 bottles of the jam have been sold in the Philippines so far, with plans for it to be commercialised by September.
Read more here.
Source: The Straits Times, 20 May 2019