The 1st training on Governance and Supervisory Board in Vietnam – a success beyond expectations

It's the most common reaction from people working in cooperatives in Vietnam when they hear about governance training. In most cooperatives (especially the long-time established cooperatives), members of the board of directors are also members of day-to-day management, whereas supervisory Board members are very vulnerable and are not functioning. It is challenging to find qualified members in cooperatives performing Supervisory board duties. On the contrary, it is quite usual to find Supervisory board members who play an extremely passive role or who face great budget limitations that prevent them from doing their jobs. In turn, most often than not Supervisory board members misunderstand their responsibilities and confuse them with those of the Board of directors, which constitutes a big barrier for a cooperative to have healthy management.

These are the reasons why in late August the first training on Cooperative governance & Guidance and support for supervisory boards in Vietnam was conducted in Da Nang for 3 primary cooperatives/clients and 2 provincial cooperative alliances. Thanks to the input of Dik van de Koolwijk, Bertine Schieven, Carmen van Dam (coordinator of LTO Academy/programme manager of Agriterra Cooperative governance training) and one Agripool expert, Johan Klompe (Chairman of the CZAV Supervisory Board and former member of COSUN), we built a 4-day training programme.

We have confidence in our very experienced trainers and Agripool expert but still, there were lots of concerns. The reasons for these concerns are briefly described below:

• cooperative governance is a very sensitive topic in the hierarchical culture of Vietnam where there is a confusion between governance and management (or even lack of understanding of what governance is),
• we are combining two training programmes of 3 days each in a 4-day training, so time is significantly short,
• the current setup and methodology of Agriterra Cooperative governance and Guidance and support for supervisory boards training programmes are very different. Above all, the high-pressure situation for all of us is how to deliver a training that can really “open people’s minds” or even better “touch their hearts” on issues that they have hardly hear before like succession plan, the difference between governance and management, supervision versus controlling, etc.

Carmen as the manager and moderator of the programme designed a well-thought-out training agenda where participants were given lots of interactive opportunities. She also made sure to balance the participation of the groups. Whereas, Johan as the Agripool expert shared his personal experience in cooperative governance as well as the real-life case studies on board of directors and supervisory board roles. This peer-to-peer exchange of experience clarified and more importantly inspired participants to try out new ways of governance and supervising their cooperatives.

To start with, Johan actively engaged the participants by showing the similarities between Dutch and Vietnam cooperatives on small cooperative size, farmer production scale. The participants were eager to learn and enjoyed working with an active learning methodology. They were given the space to make their own decisions and participate in competitive games. All participants embraced the touching over teaching methodology and learnt by working on practical case studies and role-playing exercises. The sharing of practical governance cases and the variety of working methodology made a very interactive and truly dynamic training.

Picture of the participants, Agripool expert, Agritera trainers and Vietnam business advisors.

That is what we call success; when after a 4-day training, participants happily sign their action plans to improve their governance and supervision. The post-training evaluation also reported very high scores to the training content and methodology.

All Agriterra Vietnam business advisors* who joined the training as critical friends and co-facilitators also learnt a lot from the Agripool expert and the moderator. Of course, this is just the beginning of a governance programme. The business advisors responsible for these cooperatives must guide and advise the cooperatives on their committed follow-up plans from time to time.

Le Thi Thu Hien: Hien after becoming a local trainer of financial management for Agriterra partner organisations in Vietnam, she decided to join Agriterra Vietnam team as a business advisor. Hien strongly believes that her work experience and dedication will contribute to the establishment of healthy and effective partnerships between Agriterra and the farmer-led organisations in Vietnam.

*Le Thi Thu Hien, Nguyen Thi To Uyen, Tran Thi Tuyet, Ngo Thi Thanh Van