OCT Group Boosts All-Round Poverty Alleviation

Overseas Chinese City Group (OCT Group) intends to promote poverty-alleviation from all aspects in 2020, a crucial year in winning the anti-poverty battle amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

On May 12, the company became one of the central SOEs to boost consumer-driven poverty-alleviation through an e-commerce platform.

The platform intends to use digital technology to widen sales of agricultural products from targeted poverty alleviation areas to lift them from poverty.

From the beginning of the year, OCT Group has helped its poverty-stricken areas move unsalable goods through diversified marketing ways like livestreaming and e-commerce platform cooperation.

About 12,000 salted duck eggs were sold within a three-hour livestreaming and the sales volume was much greater than that of last year during the May Day holiday.

The idea was initiated by Zhang Dalei, an employee sent to Sanhui county of Guizhou province by OCT Group to help the area escape poverty.

The "Shuiguma" salted duck eggs have become one of brands in the county promoted by Zhang.

When Zhang first arrived at the county, he found that the local agricultural products had a limited scale and most were fresh products with rough processing, which made them hard to store and transport. What's more, the products had quite low prices and lack of brand effect, which led to a high risk of unsaleability.

However, Zhang saw the unique resources the region has – a good natural environment and high-quality agricultural products.

Therefore, he worked on building an industrial chain to promote more local products in more places and improve the economic value added as a form of industrial poverty alleviation.

At present, the county has built several brands and all of them are on stage through Zhang's livestreaming.

Zhang Dalei helps promote locally produced salted duck eggs through livestream. [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]

During the Chinese New Year vacation, a New Year pack consisting of several kinds of agricultural products was livestreamed, which created more than 10 million yuan ($1.4 million) of sales.

OCT Life is an e-commerce platform launched by OCT Group. During the outbreak, products produced by Tianzhu county of Guizhou, which included duck eggs, smoked meat, mushrooms and chickens, were valued at about 215,000 yuan and sold through the platform.

More goods will debut in the special poverty-alleviation section of the platform this year. In the meantime, promotion activities will also be held in offline poverty-alleviation stores.

The company also said it would cooperate with other central SOEs, e-commerce platforms and farmer's markets to jointly promote poverty-alleviation products and contribute to consumer-driven poverty alleviation.

In addition to industrial and consumer-driven poverty alleviation, OCT Group highly values employment improvement and talent cultivation in poverty-stricken areas.

By the end of 2019, the company has invested more than 70 million yuan in poverty-alleviation projects, creating jobs. It has been advancing education and talent training in Sanhui and Tianzhu counties since 2003.

The two counties were removed from the poverty list respectively in 2019 and on March 3 this year by the local government.

This March, OCT Group released a key work on poverty alleviation in 2020 that requires the company to continue to play its role in the counties' development after they were announced as relieved from poverty. So far in 2020 the company has promoted tourism and intangible cultural heritage projects in the two counties.

Actually, the intangible cultural heritage projects were not newly initiated this year.

In recent years, the company took advantage of its rich cultural tourism resources and experience in the past 30 years and promoted an intangible cultural heritage-driven poverty alleviation based on ethnic Miao embroidery.

On April 29, an ethnic Miao embroidery workshop launched by a successor of that tradition in Sanhui, which was a part of OCT Group's poverty-alleviation project, signed an agreement with a Guangzhou-based e-commerce company. The latter will help the workshop build a cultural and creative brand and enable more people to become familiar with traditional skills.

With the help of OCT Group, the workshop's embroidery products were exhibited at several international and national cultural events like the Shenzhen International Cultural Industry Fair and the China Charity Fair.

Successors of the ethnic Miao embroidery demonstrate the traditional skill at the China Charity Fair. [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]

A cultural and tourism central SOE, OCT Group also initiated an innovative way to make full use of rural attractions and promote local tourism.

For example, in Southwest China's Yunnan province, OCT Group's subsidiary in the province proposed a project through which tourists can experience farming on the Hani terraced fields in Yuanyang county and participate in terrace field protection.

So far, the mode had been promoted in more than 100 villages and more than 500 households have benefited from the tourism industry. About 1,500 people are now working at the scenic spots and more than 7,000 people have gained jobs indirectly thanks to tourism development.

OCT Group will continue to make full use of its industrial advantage and launch innovative ways to consolidate the current poverty-alleviation achievements based on local situations.

People experience farming on a terrace field at Yuanyang county. [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]

(Executive editor: Zhang Tianyuan)