The “Development of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Villages” project officially launched in Beijing on July 12. From 2019 to 2021, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), together with GF Securities Co., Ltd. and the China Agriculture Science and Education Foundation (CASEF), will have a strategic cooperation to create SDG Villages in 16 poverty-stricken villages in China. Through the “Internet + Agriculture + Finance” model, this project will help promoting China's rural revitalization strategy as well as SDG. The innovative poverty alleviation experiences learned from this project will also be shared with other developing countries.

The SDG Villages project will select four poverty-stricken villages in each of Longshan County of Hunan Province, Laifeng County of Hubei Province, Meigu County of Sichuan Province and Baisha County of Hainan Province as pilot villages. Focusing on agricultural industry development and adopting the “Internet + Agriculture + Finance” model, the project will provide comprehensive assistance to the 16 pilot villages. The assistance includes Farmer Field Schools (FFS), e-commerce platforms for agricultural products, and inviting celebrities to promote local agricultural products.

“This is the first time that FAO China implements a project fully funded by the private sector. This is a great example of a multi-stakeholder effort for fighting against poverty and promote rural revitalization. It is the result of our innovation programme we have established in FAO China since 2016, whereby we explore new ways of addressing development issues, together with a new range of partners,” said Mr. Vincent Martin, FAO Representative in China and DPR Korea.

Mr. Zhang Wanzhen, Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of CASEF, stressed that, "the strategic cooperation among CASEF, GF Securities and FAO is an innovative exploration that social forces and social capital participate in the rural revitalization. CASEF will follow up the project implementation and actively participate in the project review, to jointly promote the sustainability of the project. We will also take this opportunity to further play the role of social charity platform to mobilize more social forces and resources, to fund and support agricultural science and education, and to help promoting rural revitalization and agricultural and rural modernization."

The main focus of the project is to provide training on ecological planting skills to farmers. FFS will train farmers to observe, analyze and test different approaches during the entire growing season of crops, and promote green agricultural development. At the same time, the project will apply e-commerce sales channels and branding strategy, which includes cooperating with e-commerce platforms to provide e-commerce operation training to FFS participants, and offering package designing support for agricultural products selling on these platforms.

“In recent years, GF Securities has built our own model to alleviate poverty with financial, industrial, educational and charitable measures, and the results are satisfying,” GF Securities Chairman Mr. Sun Shuming said, “with the support of MARA, now we have the chance to work with international organizations to launch this project and to promote the implementation of China's rural revitalization strategy. At the same time, we hope to leverage our advantages in financial poverty alleviation to effectively connect poverty-stricken areas with capital markets.” At present, through various financial poverty-assistance mechanism like mergers and acquisitions, bond issuance, stock issuance, and financial leasing, GF Securities has assisted poverty-stricken areas and enterprises in those areas to finance more than 4.6 billion yuan, of which the amount of financial lease reached 540 million yuan.

"Poverty alleviation is the common responsibility of the whole society. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has widely mobilized our industry to fight poverty. At present, there are 100 securities companies in China which are helping 269 poverty-stricken counties, accounting for about one-third of the total number of poverty-stricken counties in the country.  This project is not only a new attempt on poverty alleviation, but also plays a leading role for securities industry in serving the rural revitalization strategy.” Mr. Yang Zhihai, Deputy Director of the Poverty Alleviation Office of CSRC, introduced.

Ms. Tong Yu’e, Director of the International Exchange Service Centre of MARA, said in her speech that, “with the efforts from international organization, financial institution and government, this project is bound to become a model for poverty alleviation. We hope that with the joint efforts of all parties, the project will achieve the expected objectives and contribute to the accomplishment of China’s first Centenary Goal, which is to build a moderately prosperous society by 2020.”

In September 2015, world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the UN Summit, which covers 17 SDGs. This project directly contributes to SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 2 (Zero Hunger). Applying innovative model in poverty-stricken counties, it will promote agricultural technology in a more inclusive way, and will train local agricultural experts and leaders in green value chain development. Furthermore, this project can accelerate the transformation from traditional agriculture to ecological agriculture, and ensure both economic development and environmental protection. The total investment of the project is one million US dollars. It is expected that more than 1,000 farmers will directly be benefited from the project.