Yili lends helping hand to deserving with targeted assistance program
Yili Group, the leading Chinese dairy company based in the Inner Mongolian capital of Hohhot, kickstarted its latest poverty-relief campaign in Meigu county, Sichuan province, recently, by donating dairy products to local schools.
About 456,000 cartons of milk were handed out to rural students during the campaign’s launch ceremony, held on Sept 5.
The event was witnessed by representatives from national and local charities, as well as government officials.
The campaign comes after the company’s announcement of a renewed corporate social responsibility strategy last year, highlighting “shared, healthy and sustainable development for the future”, according to Yili’s executives.
They said a “comprehensive and accurate poverty alleviation initiative based on its own industrial strength” was an important part of Yili’s CSR strategy.
The company sees infants, young children and seniors from impoverished families — as well as orphans and disabled people — as the targets of its assistance.
Yili’s new CSR campaign follows the country’s targeted poverty alleviation strategy put forward during the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in October 2017.
The national strategy proposed that poverty relief should be realized through industrial development, as well as improving the education and health conditions of residents.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, there were 30.46 million people classified as living in poverty at the end of last year. The central authorities aim to ensure that by 2020 nobody in the country will be living in poverty.
Yili was one of the first companies in the dairy industry to echo the national strategy by proposing a “Yili Nutrition 2020” program for targeted poverty alleviation, according to executives.
They said the company has collaborated with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the National Health Commission, the Chinese Red Cross Foundation and the Dairy Association of China, as well as with other national and local organizations, to relieve poverty through better nutritional solutions for children in poverty-stricken areas.
The company estimated that there are
We’d like to use the Yili Nutrition 2020 campaign as an opportunity to have more children in China covered by our CSR...” Zhang Jianqiu, executive president of Yili
Group
more than 40 million children living in China’s 680 poverty-stricken counties, with their development levels in health and education remarkably lower than the national average.
Yili’s executives said the company aims to improve health and education conditions for such regions by offering milk to school children in its selected regions for poverty alleviation.
In Meigu, a county in the Liangshan Yi autonomous region of Sichuan province, Yili selected a number of primary and middle schools in the townships of Luogu, Muer, Meisa as its targets for poverty relief.
Liangshan is a mountainous prefecture in the west of Sichuan, featuring adverse conditions for farming and living and a large impoverished population.
At the milk donation ceremony for local school children, Xiao Chun, deputy head of the Liangshan prefecture government, said the authorities and local people were very grateful for Yili’s strong support for local poverty alleviation.
“To help a school child is to help an entire family,” Xiao said, “because the locals regard children as the hope of a family.”
Yili began offering free milk to impoverished students 16 years ago, when the nation began to implement a “nutritious milk for students” campaign.
In 2017 alone, the company delivered 4.8 million cartons, or 12 million yuan ($1.75 million) worth of milk to 120,000 impoverished students in about one third of China’s provinces and autonomous regions, according to Yili.
The company said it will invest a total of 21 million yuan this year to offer free milk to 12,000 schools in 25 provinces and autonomous regions.
In addition, the company will cooperate with experts in various fields to hold training classes in impoverished areas, helping local children to raise their awareness in health and nutrition.
“Yili is not only a dairy company but also a health food enterprise,” said Zhang Jianqiu, executive president of the company.
He noted that Yili is engaged in various moves to help improve health for people in impoverished regions such as Liangshan, including education in nutritious improvements and for the prevention of AIDS.
“We’d like to use the Yili Nutrition 2020 campaign as an opportunity to have more children in China covered by our CSR and allow more people to benefit from the love and hope that are brought about with Yili’s health products,” Zhang said.