Last month, two of my team members had an opportunity to go to Monrovia, Liberia to work on a project intended to save lives of those in the malnourished and HIV-stricken country.
Chris Harper, my Video Producer, and Sarah Jane Griesemer, VP of Project Management, accepted the call to go to Liberia and meet the needs of people through a project called The Peanut Butter House. What they experienced during their week-long trip was undoubtedly life-changing.
Paraphrased from the official website...
The Peanut Butter House is a joint effort between First Presbyterian Church of Fort Collins, Colorado and Hope Feeds, a program of Global Strategies for HIV Prevention. The project seeks to be an answer to the nutrition problems that plague developing countries through the use of Ready-to-Use-Therapeutic-Foods (RUTF's). Rather than importing rice and corn that provide minimal nutritional value, the Peanut Butter House empowers the people of the countries in need by taking advantage of the highly nutritious and locally grown peanut. The highly nutritious mixture of peanut butter, powdered sugar and vitamins is easy to manufacture, easy to distribute, and perhaps most importantly, it tastes good and is therefore easy to get children to eat it.
The Peanut Butter House was first constructed in Fort Collins in the summer of 2008. While it sat on the lawn of First Presbyterian, it hosted tours and dinners designed to raise awareness of both malnutrition and RUTF's. While the peanut butter making equipment went to another church to spark similar programs, work was being done to find a permanent home for the structure which would house all the equipment needed to make the fortified peanut butter. Working with existing contacts from Hope Feeds, the Peanut Butter House has finally found a final destination in Monrovia, Liberia. The house has been erected on the property of Transformation International, an NGO working with orphaned young men, who will be the first team of workers to staff the Peanut Butter House. From this location, it will be able to provide peanut butter to local hospitals, orphanages, and feeding programs.
You can see pictures and read about Chris, Sarah Jane, and the rest of the teams' experience at PeanutButterHouse.org.
Here is a video that Chris produced while on location.
If you are able to support this effort in any way, click here to get involved.
Great article and amazing what people can do when they set their minds to helping others. Will you also run something that will inspire people to help by becoming stem cell donors? So many people need a stem cell or bone marrow transplant and are waiting for a match to be found(my dad is one of these people). Saving a life is simple!! Registering is easy! www.marrow.org for more information. Thanks!
Save some money on the peanut butter. Here in the Philippines we go to the local market, buy peanuts, take them to the grinder stall and have them ground into peanut butter. No need to add sugar, it tastes fine without it and if you follow the sugar story since the publication of "Sugar Blues" many years ago to Dr. Mercola today you will understand that sugar is really not such a good thing to feed people.
Teaching them to grow something nutritious locally is such a great thing to do. Maybe we can ignite the political will to send them butter from the American surplus stocks paid for by the American taxpayers for the purpose of proping up the dairy prices.
Everything in stages. This is a great program and stepping stone to better things. Maximizing nutrition to malnourished populations at an affordable sustainable cost is a huge blessing and something to build on. Whether sugar is added to make it taste better so that kids will enjoy eating the nutrition is a petty complaint Carl. Can it be eliminated or substituted I would say yes and I would also say that it has been studied. It may cost more which would reduce the overall number that benefit, I am not sure. As an adult I can eat raw peanut butter paste but it isn't that yummy Kids are even more fickle flavor wise. Remember this is only one building block toward the greater goal of eliminating hunger and malnourishment worldwide which is certainly doable and in fact shame on the developed countries that it is even still an incredible problem.
This is really amazing. I like seeing stories of people who have gone to Liberia to help build the country back up. I've been deeded an acre of land to go there to build the firts women's business center. I am really excited about that. I will take my first trip in September.