Products’ Prioritization from local stores and sustainable sources by Walailak University

07Nov 2022 by Krittayot Ritthijak

Sustainability and Stewardship

Walailak University places importance on coexistence in the community or university city by emphasizing the importance of living and having a good quality of life for people in the community, focusing on sustainable food purchases by prioritizing the purchase of products from local and sustainable sources. In 2021, the university, therefore, took action on prioritization products from the local community as follows:

1.Shop zone for entrepreneurs and community products:

The community alongside the university is Sathit Walailak Pattana Community, where the main occupation is agriculture, vegetable cultivation, fruit cultivation, and livestock. The university has undertaken academic projects to enhance careers throughout the supply chain from upstream (promote and develop safe agriculture), midstream (promote the management of enterprise groups and product processing), and downstream (promote marketing to provide distribution channels).

The Walailak University, therefore, supports the establishment of a zone for selling communities products located at Chor Praduu Food Center to strengthen the economic foundation for local villagers in the community and to support agricultural products produced by the local family and farming products purchased from the local villagers, so there are 12 stores from entrepreneurs residing at Sathit Walailak Pattana Community

That are promoted and enhanced by WU to be a community restaurant with food sanitation standards and modern as same as typical food stores without the cost of renting the space, and the seller must mainly focus on products or ingredients from local safe food sources, such as seasonal vegetables and fruits, identity food, etc. As a result, many families in the community have access to career opportunities to increase income. Also, personnel, students, and the public receive quality and safe products.

2. University souvenirs from community products:

There are “Professional Development and Job Creation Activity” from U2T in operation by the university. The activity aims to upgrade products based on community identity to develop products and services throughout the supply chain and value chain to achieve quality and market demand standards, increase income, and improve the original products and new products. The university is not only transferring the body of knowledge to develop and upgrade products to have a higher added value but also promotes online and offline marketing channels.

The university is partly one of the important markets as well. The university has a guideline for making various souvenirs for special occasions and festivals. The souvenirs of the university need to come from safe food sources that the university promotes. There are 2 forms:

1) Bringing raw materials to repackage

2) Bringing community products to arrange basket sets according to the target group, which is one way to help the community and enterprise groups to have additional income and create value for the product.

However, Walailak University wanted to create greater sustainability in food for food sanitation and quality-of-service standards to avoid damaging and wasting natural resources. In 2021, all involved sections at Walailak University reviewed all relevant policies and set a guideline on sustainable food consumption as a test policy. Upon the review in 2021, the new policy on Food Preparation and Sustainable Consumption was announced in 2022 and WU clearly stated in the item 5 regarding prioritizing local food purchase as shown below:

For Thai version, please click the link below.
https://cas.wu.ac.th/sdgs/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2022/11/เรื่อง-นโยบายด้านแนวปฏิบัติเกี่ยวกับการประกอบอาหารและการบริโภคอย่างยั่งยืน.pdf

Relevant Rules and Regulation: