Sharing lessons from the field: SAV presents at EA Summit Vietnam 2026

Sentient Animals Vietnam’s co-founder, My Nguyen, delivering a talk at EA Summit Vietnam 2026

On July 11, 2026, our co-founder, My Nguyen, took the stage at EA Summit Vietnam 2026 to share how Sentient Animals Vietnam approaches one of the hardest parts of our work: mapping the duck industry and its key issues.

The Summit brought together people interested in how to make a meaningful difference in Vietnam and beyond. Rather than presenting findings, we used our time to walk through process — specifically, how we conducted a scoping study on duck welfare in an industry where farm animal welfare research is still scarce.

Why Scoping Comes First

Before we can design an intervention, we need to understand the reality of an issue: the species involved, the farming practices in use, how the industry is structured, and the perspectives of industry stakeholders. In Vietnam, where resources and existing research on farm animal welfare are limited, desk research alone cannot provide the full picture. Research on the ground is essential.

Our talk focused on what that groundwork actually looks like in practice: the planning, the field visits, and the adjustments we made along the way as the reality on the ground didn't always match our assumptions going in.

What We Learned About Scoping a Neglected Field

Some of the key lessons we shared with the audience:

• Adaptability is crucial. Field conditions in a nascent advocacy space are unpredictable, and a scoping process has to be flexible enough to adapt.

• Uncertainty is part of the work, not a failure of it. Operating in a neglected space means accepting that some questions won't have clean answers yet, and building a process that can still move forward.

Why We Shared This

Farm animal welfare advocacy is still new in Vietnam. By sharing our process, we hope other advocates, researchers, and organisations working in neglected spaces in Vietnam and elsewhere can learn from our lessons.

We are grateful to the EA Summit Vietnam organizers for the opportunity to present, and to everyone who came by to ask questions and share their own experiences working on the ground.