The signing ceremony between VietHarvest and partners in HCM City on Friday. — Photo Courtesy VietHarvest

HCM CITY — VietHarvest on Friday announced its national expansion to HCM City, a year after its Hà Nội launch.

The announcement included agreements with Vietnam Airlines and IHG, who have both pledged to support the growth of VietHarvest through the provision of surplus food.

Vietnam Airlines commits to supply excess food from its kitchens to the enterprise, ensuring that quality food is put to good use.

In addition to Vietnam Airlines' commitment, IHG doubled-down on its own work with VietHarvest. IHG was one of the founding partners of VietHarvest in Hà Nội. The group inked a partnership with VietHarvest that sees this commitment expand into the southern metropolis of HCM City.

VietHarvest - co-founded by long-time social enterprise advocate Jimmy Pham - works to collect quality surplus food from hotels, restaurants and other partners, and deliver it using refrigerated vehicles to underserved communities in Hà Nội and HCM City.

"Around the world and here in our country, people are suffering from hunger and with the amount of food that is wasted, this is hard to justify," Phạm said.  

“There are 570,000 people in Việt Nam experiencing food shortages, while at the same time, about 8.8 million tonnes of food is going to waste. VietHarvest’s mission is to close this gap and provide a practical and positive solution to reducing food waste and hunger,” he added.

VietHarvest will organise an event, CEO Cookoff, which will pair 40 of Việt Nam's most prominent CEOs with 10 chefs from around the nation and around the world, serving 150 guests to raise money to support disadvantaged people in Việt Nam and prevent food waste nationwide.

The inaugural CEO CookOff will help to raise awareness of these global challenges starting here in Vietnam, and raise funds to support the national expansion of the Hanoi-based enterprise.

VietHarvest is an international expansion of OzHarvest - represented at the ceremony by its founder Ronni Kahn in 2004 - and the organisation has grown in its native Australia to cover all states and territories.  — VNS