What exactly are we doing?

We are working for an aid organization created out of a UN conference, dedicated to eliminating malnutrition in the world.  Some facts on global malnutrition and hunger:

• It is responsible for more than half of the 10 million children under the age of five who die every year in developing countries
• It accounts for over 11% of the world's disease burden
• Nearly 150 million children under age five in the developing world are underweight for their age
• About 178 million children under five are stunted (low height for age) as a result of insufficient food, poor diet and diseases according to WHO
• An estimated 55 million children, or 10 percent of the world’s children, are wasted. Wasting is a severe form of malnutrition and demands emergency nutritional interventions. According to WHO, about 1.5 million children die each year due to wasting
• Countries may lose two to three percent of their GDP as a result of iron, iodine and zinc deficiencies
• 25,000 people die every day from hunger and related causes
• Nearly one billion people in developing countries do not have enough to eat - more than the populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union combined
• The number of undernourished people in the world increased by 75 million in 2007, largely due to higher food prices

The organization's approach is to work with governments, NGOs, and the private sector to create sustainable solutions to malnutrition by fortifying local food supplies.

One of the keys to their approach is the sustainability piece - they are not interested in simply donating food or money for a short-term solution, they instead seek to put in place the right political, infrastructure, and private sector foundations for a region to acquire the capability for producing their own food supply with sufficient nutrient content.

Our job is helping them develop the process for going in to target countries and conducting the assessments that will guide their efforts and investments, which could range from advocating for new legislation, conducting publicity campaigns, making investments in infrastructure, establishing access to capital for local food manufacturers and distributors, directly investing in local businesses, etc.

We will be piloting the process by conducting assessments in Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Rajasthan (a very poor state in India that borders Pakistan... there is a new state government in place that may not be receptive to our efforts, so we may have to shift our focus to a different Indian state), and Bangladesh.

The nutrients we are working with are: 

• Folic acid - prevents neural tube defects in infants
• Iodine - prevents goiter and mental retardation
• Vitamin B - a deficiency can cause a slew of serious problems, including retardation, weakened immune systems, neurological diseases
• Iron - to prevent anemia
• Zinc - another mineral critical for immune function, neural development, heart function

Our work will focus on finding ways to get these fortifications into local food staples and condiments, such as rice, wheat and corn flour, vegetable oils, salt, sugar, milk, soy sauce, and fish sauce.