Vietnam Seaports Association
The ceremony of the Asia Responsible Entrepreneurship Award (AREA) 2017 was held at the Renaissance Bangkok Ratchaprasong Hotel late Friday, with 300 CSR thought leaders and practitioners expected to attend from across the Asian region.
A total of 57 CSR programmes across Asia were selected as the recipients of the AREA 2017. Four units, including two Vietnamese enterprises, came from Vietnam.
Remarkable, TTC Group has become the first Vietnamese company to win this valuable award.
Crowds of foreign and local journalists asked multiple questions about the responsible of the businesses after winning the award to community.
Over 300 top CSR thought leaders, doers, speakers and practitioners from across the Asian region attended the event.
The ward is organized by Enterprise Asia, a non-governmental organization in pursuit of creating an Asia that is rich in entrepreneurship as an engine towards sustainable and progressive economic and social development within a world of economic equality.
It honors Asia businesses for championing sustainable and responsible business practices, demonstrating companies’ leadership, sincerity and on-going commitment in incorporating responsible and ethical values, compliance, investment in stakeholders, involvement in communities and protection of the environment into the way they run their businesses.
Besides being able to demonstrate the design and execution of sound and effective CSR programs, nominees are required to demonstrate the extend that CSR practises have been institutionalized within their organisations and the measurable impact of their programs to people, community and environment.
Dato’ William Ng, president of Enterprise Asia said: “The quality of this years’ submission is outstanding. It was a truly monumental task to decide on the best, as every submission was of very high quality – demonstrating the expertise and capability of the region’s CSR practitioners. This is a far cry from when we first started giving out the awards in the year 2009”.
Over 300 submissions from 14 countries were received from companies across Asia, with judges led by the Former Minister of Environment and Foreign Affairs of Taiwan, Dr. Eugene Chien, sieving through the submission over a three-month judging period.
Among them are many famous groups which come from developed countries, such as Sanyei Corporation (Japan), Plaza Premium Group (Hongkong), Siloso Beach Resort (Singapore), Thai Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd (Thailand), Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt Ltd (India), Cathay Financial Holdings Co., Ltd. (Taiwan), Air Asia Berhad (Malaysia)…
As for Vietnam, besides multinational corporations, six Vietnamese enterprises have been introduced, but only two of them won awards in the end.
This is also the 3rd time the International CSR Summit (ICS), Asia’s large-scale and regional summit, has combined with the Award Ceremony.
Themed “Sustainability Beyond Borders”, the summit offers high-level networking for the CSR community, delivering a platform that fosters interconnecting partnerships and urges global sustainability collaborations – a call to move beyond their borders.
Other highlights include mapping UN-SDGs into operations, industry-wide alliances, CSR ambassadors, CSR innovation, live discussions to brainstorm ideas and solution, and intriguing real life stories from CSR pioneers.
The summit featured a full suite of high-level speakers from CSR-oriented organizations that are well known in their fields of expertise.
Line-up of speakers include Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, Former Secretary-General UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Rapee Sucharitkul, Secretary-General, Securities and Exchange Commission, Rob Coombs, President and CEO from Interface Asia Pacific, Dr Eugene Chien, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and former Minister of Environment of Taiwan, Dr Naoki Adachi, Executive Director of Japan Business Initiative for Diversity, Tracy Nilsson, Senior Director of Social Environmental Affairs, Adidas Group and Stuart Hawkins, Sustainability Director from Coca-Cola ASEAN.
Dr. Wijarn Simachaya, Permanent Secretary from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment Thailand, expressed the honours of officiating the opening of the summit, and call for action for community.
As a company who has nominated many winning Vietnamese enterprises, Mr. Phua Koon Kee, Chief Executive Officer of Aquarius Vietnam JSC said that he always advises enterprise to focus on the “3 P” slogan: People, Profit and Planet.
“It is time countries came together to brave the waves of global sustainability challenges and brainstorm and define solutions. As CSR continues to be a dynamic element for all organizations, it is imperative that thought leaders need to manoeuvre the wheels of CSR transformation in their organizations”, Mr. Koon Kee said.
TTC Group CEO Thai Van Chuyen (L) and Vice Chairlady Dang Huynh Uc My receive the awards
Being the first Vietnamese enterprise to win the Green Leadership with the “Green & Win – Win” project, Mr. Thai Van Chuyen, CEO of TTC Group, proudly expressed that the award confirms their reputation and acts as a motivation for them to continue keeping up the good job.
“It’s not easy to win, but keeping your reputation and his award is more difficult. So, we must try to make efforts, especially invest more in the solar energy, in order to protect our planet”, Mr. Chuyen said.
At the event, a lot of international delegates have expressed their care about the video introducing the “Green & Win – Win” project from TTC.
According to Ms. Dang Huynh Uc My, Vice Chairlady of TTC Group, this is the procedure to develop organic material section, in order to make product which get the Organic USDA and Organic Farming, the world’s strictest certification.
“We continue to see sustainable leaders incorporating social purpose as vital components in building our strong organizational strategies. We focus on the sugarcane and coconut. The sugarcane will be planned on the organic field, without chemical fertilizer as well as non-change gene material… The sugarcane field was built into a natural ecosystem in order to kill the weeds, limit harmful insects.
The procedure of making sugar is also natural like biological, mechanics, physics, without using radiation and chemistry, which does not cause contamination and friendly to the environment. Same to the sugarcane, the coconut was planned as an organic schedule base of the national standard at the material area in Ben Tre Province, and bigger and bigger day by day”, Ms. My said.
ICS is a series of annual regional events in Asia where leaders and practitioners are brought together to talk CSR and sustainability.
The summits aim to strengthen ties, share experiences and insights, as well as brainstorm and define solutions for key global sustainability challenges.
The platform gathers impactful CSR doers and leaders to identify opportunities which shape Asia to be a more responsible, sustainable and progressive socio-economic market.
