Recently, Ajinomoto Vietnam has co-operated with Lang Son Department of Education and Training to organize a visit to the “Model Kitchen” at Hoang Van Thu Primary School, Lang Son City.

Mr. Le Xuan Truong - Representative of Lang Son Department of Education and Training was sharing the Project's contributions to improving education quality.

Mr. Ngo Hien – Head of Lang Son City Department of Education and Training (rightmost) and delegates visiting the “Model Kitchen”.

Ms. Ngo Thu Ha – Principal of Hoang Van Thu Primary School was guiding delegates around the kitchen area.

Dr. Nguyen Thi Nghia – Deputy Minister of Education and Training and Mr. Keiji Kaneko – General Director of Ajinomoto Vietnam were visiting the “Model Kitchen”.

  
Participating in the visit were officers of Lang Son Department of Education and Training, Lang Son Food Administration, Lang Son Department of Health’s Operation Division, and Lang Son Center of Disease Control and Prevention together with School Management Boards and Parents Associations’ representatives of primary schools in Lang Son City.
Inaugurated on May 23rd, 2018, the “Model Kitchen” at Hoang Van Thu Primary School officially comes into operation in the 2018-2019 schoolyear, providing boarding lunches for 1,500 pupils studying at the school. This is an important content of the School Meal Project initiated by Ajinomoto Vietnam in 2012. The Project receives support and professional advice from the National Institute of Nutrition - Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education and Training in the implementation to schools.

The “Model Kitchen” was built with the total budget of nearly 2.3 billion VND under the main sponsorship of the Embassy of Japan in Vietnam through the non-refundable aid program from Japanese Government. In addition to contributing to the kitchen’s construction cost, Ajinomoto Vietnam also provides consultations and training in standard operating procedures in the kitchen to help the school maximize the kitchen’s benefits.

The “Model Kitchen” at Hoang Van Thu Primary School is designed and built according to Japanese standards, strictly adhering to food safety and hygiene principles as well as optimizing the kitchen’s productivity:

• Apply the one-way rule from raw materials receiving to processing and post-meal cleaning with clear guidelines at each stage.
• The kitchen’s design divided into separate areas such as raw materials receiving area, preliminary processing area, cooking area, cleaning area, with different regulations in clothes in each area and utensils marked by colors, helping the whole process of cooking be strictly controlled, ensuring the prevention of cross-contamination among stages.
• Separately constructed from toilets and other pollution sources.
• Equipped with necessary and modern devices such as the "rotary pot" system and stew pot with the capacity of 2-3 times higher than normal ones, portable water supply system that can quickly supply water to each area, food trolleys, etc., helping to reduce heavy workload as well as save time for kitchen staff during preliminary processing and cooking stages. 
With its outstanding features, the kitchen has helped the school organize the boarding work effectively, especially in the application of menu sets in the “Nutrition-balanced Menu Development Software” under the School Meal Project. Moreover, the construction of the “Model Kitchen” also facilitates primary schools in Lang Son as well as Northern provinces to visit, study and apply suitably with each place.

In addition to visiting the kitchen area and observing its operating procedures, delegates and leaders of Hoang Van Thu Primary School also discussed the issues of food hygiene and safety, school nutrition and the management of boarding kitchen. Other contents of the Project such as the “Nutrition-balanced Menu Development Software”, the poster of “Three Minutes to Change Awareness” were also discussed and shared to exchange experience in preparing menus and educating pupils on nutritional knowledge.
Visiting the “Model Kitchen”, schools have gained more experience about the kitchen and its operating procedure as a one-way kitchen of Japanese standards, from which they will apply suitably to the actual condition of each school, contributing to the improvement of kitchen quality and school nutrition.
It is known that this is the second “Model Kitchen” constructed by the School Meal Project. Previously, Ajinomoto Vietnam sponsored and co-operated with Ho Chi Minh City Education and Training Department to build the first “Model Kitchen” at Trung Trac Primary School (District 11, Ho Chi Minh City) in 2014. So far, this “Model Kitchen” has welcomed more than 1,000 units from schools and organizations of many provinces and cities across the country to visit and study.

In the upcoming time, Ajinomoto Vietnam will continue cooperating with Lang Son Department of Education and Training and Hoang Van Thu Primary School to further expand the activity of visiting the “Model Kitchen” for all schools in the province, thus promoting the standardization of boarding kitchens in Northern schools.