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Every six seconds, a child dies from malnutrition. Worldwide, more than 800 million people are threatened by it. These statistics are what prompted Nu Skin, a global direct selling company based in Provo, Utah, to launch its Nourish the Children initiative to fight world hunger. Since 2002, Nu Skin and its 750,000 distributors have provided 150 million units of the company’s nutrient-rich VitaMeal to starving children around the globe.
In Malawi, a country devastated by a 2002 drought, one in three people is threatened with starvation. Through the Nourish the Children initiative, more than 80,000 meals are now provided each day to Malawian children, including an estimated 2 million orphans. In addition, the company’s Force for Good Foundation has helped villagers establish its own plant for the production of VitaMeal, and has created a “living classroom” that trains Malawians in much-needed farming skills that they can then take back to their villages and teach to others. Nu Skin CEO Truman Hunt says that these efforts are just part of the company’s dream “to change the world, one hungry child at a time.”
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| The effects of VitaMeal on the children of Malawi have already proven to be substantial. Recent statistics show that children receiving VitaMeal are 25 percent higher in average weight than others. |
To outsiders, the haunting drumbeats that fill the Malawian night might appear to be the rhythmic cry of a nation that ranks as one of the poorest in the world, one ravaged by the AIDS epidemic, where mortality rates among children are high and life expectancy for adults is, according to the Malawi Project, a humanitarian aid organization, expected to decrease from 57 years of age to 37 by 2010.
Yet, listen closely to those drumbeats, and you will hear joyous voices accompanying them. Malawi is known as the “warm heart of Africa,” a nation in which the kind and hospitable spirit of its people belies the sad statistics.
“Malawi is such a contrast of happy people and sad circumstances,” Hunt says. “[They are] poor in materials, but rich in human spirit. [It’s] Africa the way it was before much of it was corrupted by greed, famine, disease, crime and warlords.”
The residual effects of the 2002 drought have left Malawi’s farmers, who make up 90 percent of the population, to live on less than a dollar a day. For the children, malnutrition has manifested itself in anemia, weakened immune systems and decreased learning capacity. Nearly a third of the children are underweight, and half under the age of 5 have stunted growth.
When Nu Skin established Nourish the Children, it partnered with reputable humanitarian agencies to deliver VitaMeal to malnourished children around the globe. One of those organizations was Feed the Children, one of the largest charities in the United States, which knew of Malawian leader Napolean Dzombe’s efforts to seek a solution to his country’s plight.
“We were not experts in any of this, so it was important that we partner with Feed the Children,” says Brent Goddard, Director of Nourish the Children. “The company became aware of Napolean and started shipping VitaMeal. As we heard more about Malawi, we became thrilled and visited in 2003. We were so impressed with Napoleon that we decided to help him build his dream.”
That dream included the construction of a plant that now allows for the production of VitaMeal in Malawi using the main agricultural crop—maize—in a revised formula that combines roasted corn and soybean into a mixture called msima. Now, Malawians have an ongoing food source that, unlike the high-calorie meals given by other humanitarian groups, is full of rich nutrients and vitamins needed for normal brain and skeletal development, skin health, muscle function and immune defense.
“Just as we have always made sure that our products were scientifically backed and of high quality, so it is the same for VitaMeal,” says Kara Schneck, Director of Corporate Communications for Nu Skin. Scientists from Pharmanex, the nutritional-supplement division of Nu Skin, teamed with child-nutrition experts at the University of California, Davis, to ensure that VitaMeal contained the carbohydrates, protein, fat and fiber needed for children suffering from malnutrition.
The effects of VitaMeal on the children of Malawi have already proven substantial. Recent statistics show that children receiving VitaMeal are 25 percent higher in average weight than others. Schneck, who has visited Malawi four times, has seen visible evidence in the children she has come to know. “One little boy named Anderson was not healthy at all on my first visit here,” she says. “Now he is out playing with the others. And Janet, who was brought to the orphanage by an older sister who tried to care for her after their parents died, was in dire straits when she arrived. VitaMeal has helped nurse her back to health.”
The plant in Malawi has the capacity to produce 100,000 bags of VitaMeal a month. It has also provided income for 60–80 workers and hundreds of farmers. However, while the plant will continue to help provide sustenance to a starving nation for years to come, it is, in itself, another initiative that Nu Skin helped Dzombe and local charities build that is leading many to believe that Malawi will become a self-supporting nation.
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Nu Skin’s Force for Good Foundation charitable work includes hundreds of humanitarian projects that support children in 50 countries.Visit www.forceforgood.org for more information. |
Mtalimanja, a small village two hours from the capital of Lilongwe, means “the long hands that give” in the Chichewa language spoken in Malawi. It was there—where Napolean Dzombe’s father was a tribal chieftain—that the graduation ceremonies Nu Skin executives had come to witness took place.
In 2007, funds from Nu Skin’s Force for Good Foundation, as well as those from nonprofit organizations and civic groups, helped build a “living classroom” that gave 30 families from nearby villages the opportunity to live in an agricultural teaching village in order to learn vital skills in farming, drip irrigation, animal husbandry, fishing and tree farming.
The School of Agriculture for Family Independence (SAFI), as it is called, is a two-year program in which husbands and wives attend classes together while their children attend school. This past May, commencement exercises were held, full of all the pomp and circumstance of American graduations. Tents were set up to shield visitors from the blazing African sun, ribbons and balloons decorated the tents, and the graduates themselves danced their way through the processional line to receive their diplomas.
Steve Lund, Executive Director of Nourish the Children and Vice President of Nu Skin, told the villagers during the commencement speech, “You thought you came here to be students, but you really came here to be teachers.” In truth, that is what these farmers are—teachers. They will now return to their own villages and teach others the skills they have learned.
“They go out confident that they can now provide for their families as well as teach others the same things,” says Hunt, who handed out the diplomas during the graduation ceremony. “It’s really the essence of direct selling—to teach another person.”
That teaching is, as Lund noted, Malawi’s hope for a nation without hunger.
And there is good reason for that hope. The results of the “living classroom” in Mtalimanja are staggering. Average productivity of village farms in Malawi is 2,000-3,000 kilograms per hectare. In its first year, the average yield in Mtalimanja was 3,000-7,000; last year, the yield was 4,000-9,000.
“It’s evident that Nu Skin’s model for helping Malawians is extremely innovative. The sustainable nature of our giving enables us to have a lasting impact here—so the good we do will not leave once we do,” Schneck says. “The same business rigor that has made Nu Skin such a success is also helping build hope and self-reliance for the people of Malawi.”
What may be just as important as the crop yields is something else Nu Skin is giving the people of Malawi—dignity. When Schneck showed Moses Khombe, Napolean Dzombe’s aide, the diplomas that she had brought with her from the United States, Khombe paused long enough to make Schneck think she had done something wrong. He then looked at her and said, “You’ve given our farmers their dignity.”
“The diploma will be one of their most prized possessions,” Schneck says. “They will keep it for life. It represents all the hard work and the accomplishments that the farmers have put into the program.”
While the results of the living classroom are encouraging, the village is not shielded from the real-world troubles that still rage around it. A dam that Nu Skin helped build in Mtalimanja created a pond in which fish were stocked. The villagers agreed not to fish in it for a period of time in order to allow the fish to breed. However, the hunger that stalks most Malawians can give rise to desperate acts. Outsiders attempted to take the fish. When Dzombe’s father tried to stop them, he was killed.
Still, aside from the personal tragedy Dzombe suffered, he is confident his nation is moving in the right direction. At the graduation ceremony, he helped introduce the next group of villagers who will live and work in Mtalimanja. It is a cycle that will repeat itself every few years and bring the critical knowledge needed to help Malawi support itself long after humanitarian aid has left.
Nourish the Children, Brent Goddard says, benefits everyone—the children in Malawi and other parts of the world who receive the lifesaving meals, the distributors who know that the products they sell are giving life around the world, and Nu Skin itself, which sees the tangible results of its efforts to make the world a better place to live.
“It’s the sustainable nature of the program,” Goddard says. “What is happening in Mtalimanja really parallels the direct selling model. We are providing Malawians with the training needed for a better life. For our distributors, we are providing business opportunities that can help them create a better life, as well.”
On his first night in Malawi, Truman Hunt was told by a dinner guest, “One of the most valuable sounds in the world is peace.” A sense of peace is what Nu Skin is bringing to the Malawian people.
It can be found in the smiles of the farmers who welcome the knowledge you share; in the wide eyes of orphans who dream big dreams for their lives because of the hope you provide; in the voices of a proud people who thank you for investing in the future of their country.
And it is found in the little hand of a Malawian boy who grabs your hand, climbs into your lap and falls asleep in your arms in the middle of a graduation ceremony, secure in the comfort you bring.
