Young girl "leaves the city for the forest" with the dream of bringing benefits to the community

Once a student at a specialized school, her family oriented her to work in a state agency for stability, but Mai Thi My Lam decided to step out of her "comfort zone", leave the city for the forest to start a business with a group of friends towards the community.

My Lam was born in 1996, from Khanh Hoa, graduated with a degree in Land Management Engineering and was the valedictorian of the Forestry University, Dong Nai province branch, with 4 consecutive years of receiving excellent scholarships at the school and being a "5 Good Students" of Dong Nai province. Right after graduating, My Lam was recruited directly to the position of digital map technician at the General Staff Surveying and Mapping Company - Ministry of National Defense, a dream job for many people. However, after 5 years of working, the young girl's "heart" is still directed towards the community and loves nature.

My Lam decided to step out of her comfort zone and embark on a new journey, returning to the starting line to start over. Knowing that it would be difficult and hard, she still promised herself that she would try to overcome everything to achieve success. My Lam chose the land of Hamlet 1 in An Toan commune, An Lao district (Binh Dinh province), with an altitude of more than 1,000m, known as the "gate to heaven" with many difficulties to realize her dream. Taking advantage of the year-round cool climate and soil here, she and some colleagues began to search for natural medicinal resources on the spot, precious remedies of Binh Dinh people and indigenous Bana people.

At first, Lam and her group members encountered many difficulties because they did not have much experience in preparing herbal medicines. With the determination not to give up and to continue pursuing her chosen passion, My Lam confided: "When I quit my job to pursue my dream, I felt a lot of pressure. There were times when I thought about giving up everything and going home to my mother. However, looking at the innocent eyes and loving calls of the children here gave me the motivation to continue pursuing the path I had chosen. In this place, I found myself again, found my true feelings."

Cô gái trẻ “bỏ phố về rừng” với ước mơ mang lợi ích đến cộng đồng- Ảnh 1. — Vice President of Vietnam Women's Union Nguyen Thi Minh Huong (right cover) and President of Binh Dinh Women's Union awarded the certificate and flowers to My Lam for the first prize winning idea of the contest "Binh Dinh Women's Creative Startup and Green Transformation" in Binh Dinh province in 2024.

With the motto of "protecting health from Body - Mind - Spirit", creating products extracted from medicinal plants grown on site, meticulously prepared and distilled to bring consumers the best health care products, currently, the products of the An Toan Cooperative established by My Lam have launched key products such as: Da Cam Tea, herbal shampoo, cough syrup, blood circulation pills, nutritional pills... In addition to growing medicinal plants and guiding local people to convert crops to get rich from medicinal plants, Lam and his group have linked up with local people to do tourism and build 2 homestays for tourists to experience relaxation.

"At first, when I left the city and returned to the forest, it took me a while to get used to it and adapt. Life in the wilderness with all kinds of deprivation was not as simple as I imagined. Before, I was wrapped up in 8-hour work every day, and when I got home, I had to take care of the previous day's backlog. Sometimes, these pressures made me feel overwhelmed, and I didn't even understand the purpose and meaning of my life. Now, although I don't earn much money, I can do what I like, have time to enjoy life, and enjoy simple things that I had never experienced before," My Lam confided.

My Lam's project on developing green agricultural chemicals and ethnic minority community tourism won first prize in the "Binh Dinh Women's Creative Startup and Green Transformation" Contest in Binh Dinh province in 2024. This is a stepping stone for the project to continue to expand and develop further, bringing health and spiritual values and achieving My Lam's goals and dreams of sustainably developing a green medicinal herb growing area, preserving rare medicinal plant genes and developing a community tourism economy imbued with the cultural identity of indigenous people.

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