Clean drinking water

We have been funding a well in the Ethiopian village of Guramba Bata since 2015. Through this project, we provide one litre of water for every litre of water we extract from milk in the Netherlands to produce milk powder for the African consumer market.

Until 2035, which is the expected technical lifetime of the infrastructure, we will supply at least 525 million litres of clean drinking water to some 4,000 inhabitants. The water is led to four consumption points, among which a school and a health centre. A group of people have been trained to maintain the drinking water infrastructure. Coaches have also been trained to encourage people to change their hygiene behaviour.

Helping children in Liberia start their school day with a nutritious meal is the goal of the Milky Gari project that we launched in 2018 in partnership with our partner Hoogwegt. Many children in Liberia are malnourished and do not go to school.

Milky Gari is a nutritious porridge based on our enriched milk powder, locally grown cassava. International relief and recovery organisation ZOA provides this porridge to school-going children. This is an additional reason for many parents to send their children to school. The project makes an important contribution to the development of the local community by creating market links between local farmers and agricultural businesses to provide school children with a nutritious meal. Local farmers supply the cassava and receive training in increasing their yields. Local entrepreneurs process these into a dry mixture that the cooks at the school then make into a porridge. This is how we ensure that local farmers can increase their revenue by selling fresh products to agricultural businesses, which, in turn, offer nutritious school meals that both combat malnutrition among children and get children back in school. The project helps 15,240 people, and that is without counting the children who get the school meals.

The Milky Gari project is set to end in 2022. Together with ZOA, we intend to bring this project to an end in a sustainable way, whereby transferring it to a local party and seeking additional financing are two possible options we are looking into.

Vreugdenhil has the ambition to strike up strategic partnerships that are close to our core business. In 2021, explorations in this direction continued, with a view to ultimately launching new projects and partnerships. From 2022, this topic will be part of our nutritious and tasty products pillar.