Cargills Sarubima wins Best Sustainability Project Award

Cargills 'Sarubima' won the Best Sustainability Project Award 2015 at the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce Best Corporate Citizen Awards Ceremony recently.

Cargills Sarubima is a fund established by Cargills (Ceylon) PLC in 2008 in Thanamalwila where the company initiated a concept of giving-back 50 cents for each kilogram of vegetables purchased from the farmers in the community to be utilised for community empowerment. Cargills first engaged the local agriculture community in 1999 with the commencement of its first collection centre for vegetables. Today this reach has created direct markets for over 20,000 farmers across Sri Lanka making Cargills the largest private-sector collector of fresh produce in Sri Lanka and the third largest milk collector in the country.

Explaining the concept, Deputy Chairman of Cargills Ranjit Page said, "the relationships we establish with farmers is a bond Cargills has with the fields they saw, the families they nurture, the communities they live in and the schools where their children learn. Cargills has therefore, initiated the Cargills Sarubima Fund which is used to empower agriculture communities and their children." For the year 2014/15 benefits included 204 scholarships with 35 university and vocational education scholarships, 65 Advanced Level Scholarships and 104 Year-5 Scholarships. In addition 18 exemplary farmers were recognised for their services to agriculture and the local community with the Cargills Sarubima Farmer Citizens Award 2015 presented by President Maithripala Sirisena.

Cargills has now extended the fund across all its fruit, vegetable and milk collection communities islandwide touching more than 20,000 farmers.