My three weeks as a sustainability consultant

The end of October marked the end of my three weeks with the Orange ASEAN Factory – a sustainability consulting training program for “young” professionals (yes, I made the cut!) from Southeast Asia and the Netherlands. This run brought together 20 participants from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Netherlands, grouped us into small teams, and had us work on business cases for real-life sustainability issues from their partner companies. The OAF was initiated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and is currently organized by TheRockGroup, a sustainability consulting company in the Netherlands. This Manila run was the 7th run since OAF started in 2016.

I applied to join OAF because 1) sustainability-related training is hard to come by in general (and especially in the Philippines), and 2) I wanted experience in other industries. This 7th edition was held in Manila, so fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t go far. Previous runs were held in Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh, Jakarta, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur. Would have been nice to work in another country for a change but there were still advantages to staying close to home.